For this project, Leventi shot more than 40 opera houses in almost 20 countries, from the tiny (Teatro di Villa Aldrovandi Mazzacorati, capacity: 80) to the mammoth (The Metropolitan Opera, capacity: 3,975). The work is being exhibited at Rick Wester Fine Art (with prints up to seven and a half feet wide) starting May 7 and is being released as a book by Damiani in June 2015.
Coastal Paintings is David Bates’ eighth exhibition with the gallery and consists of small- to large-scale oil paintings on canvas and panel. Employing his distinctive bold style, Bates continues to document the people and landscapes of the Gulf Coast. His portraits of fishermen and coast natives avow his esteem for his subjects and their absolute fortitude. Like them, his striking landscapes evoke a quiet solitude, yet often with hints of recovery from or preparation for more ominous times. Equally resilient and captivating are the Magnolias and other flora realized by his characteristic and masterful thick, lush strokes.
Artist John Alexander talks about his artistic production over the past decade. An SMU alumnus who studied under Roger Winter, John’s early work was rooted in experiences from his native environment around Beaumont, Texas. While a graduate student at SMU in the early 1970s, John worked as a preparator at the Meadows Museum, where he spent a good deal of time hanging and rehanging the works of Francisco de Goya. The satirical prints of Goya have remained for Alexander a source of inspiration throughout his career and can be seen most clearly in his images of people who assume animal characteristics and in the tension that hides just beneath the surface of his landscape paintings.
This is Amer Kobaslija’s first exhibition with the gallery. Featured are small- to large-scale painted representations of artist studios on Plexiglas and wooden panels. Among them include his own studio, those of friends, as well as those of famous artists Balthus and Jackson Pollock.
At 69, John Alexander has lived an extraordinary life. He sails the Caribbean with rocker Jimmy Buffett and counts among his other pals such Saturday Night Live luminaries as Lorne Michaels and Dan Aykroyd, his partner in a prosperous venture that serves vodka in skull-shaped drinking vessels. He spends his summers on Amagansett, Long Island, but for 35 years has occupied a SoHo loft in New York City, where he long ago established a reputation as a mesmerizing artist, one with a social conscience.
Lin Emery’s kinetic sculptures epitomize that kind of timeless and finely tuned consistency. But like the timeless, pristine miracles of the natural world on which they are based, they can be easy to take for granted — unless something changes, as appears to be the case in her current show at Arthur Roger Gallery.
John Alexander nearly presses his nose against a charcoal image of a lobster and laughs when he says looking into the drawing’s eyes reminds him of his dog. We’re in the downstairs gallery where a series of drawings serve as a prelude to the exhibition at the Meadows Museum, Human/nature. The Ridiculous and Sublime: Recent Works by John Alexander. Alexander jokes in his rich Texan drawl that his assistant had to explain to him what “prelude” meant. Certainly these beautiful, mysterious charcoal drawings of deceptively simple subjects — the lobster, an array of lily pads, a jellyfish and oyster shells — set the tone for the paintings that follow.
Courtney Egan discusses her January 2015 exhibition Circulation of Light at the Arthur Roger Gallery.
