In Stereo installation/ images

Peter Sabbeth, Ross Watts, In Stereo, Opening Reception: Saturday, Nov. 9, 5:30 - 8:00 p.m.

Peter Sabbeth addresses the rapidly changing information culture by preserving and honoring obsolete artifacts, in this case handwriting. While acknowledging the abundant creativity of our time, he laments the loss of longstanding staples of culture such as newspapers, home telephones and the intimacy of the handwriting of loved ones. Yet there is actually no real handwriting or meaning in the paintings at all. The spectator is removed from the responsibility for translation or literal engagement. Data becomes pattern. The energy and beauty of line become an epitaph for the future moment when handwriting will be so rare that it has earned a place on the wall.

Ross Watts creates minimal, conceptual paintings, sculptures, and installations. The repetition of simple activities, such as alterations of paper, and engagement with surrounding architecture are motifs that inform Watts' study of urban architecture and the grid. Recent work, influenced by a move to Sag Harbor, NY, has involved a turn toward the natural world — stones carved from the pages of books and paintings made from stencils of layered fishing nets stretch the grid into more organic forms. Conceived as minimalist paintings, the wall sculptures are composed of hundreds of strips of paper, torn or cut by hand and held to the wall by compression. The "paintings" become constructions dependent upon the wall itself for their existence.

For more information and images contact Sara Nightingale at sara@saranightingale.com or 631-793-2256. The gallery will be open on Friday, Nov. 8th, from 6 - 8 p.m. to accommodate those visiting the Parrish Art Museum's Members' Preview for Artists Choose Artists. The Parrish will host another reception for members on Saturday from 6 - 8 p.m., so those wishing to visit the museum the same evening as the gallery opening will be able to do so. It is suggested that attendees rsvp for the Parrish event. rsvp@parrishart.org. Join the Parrish: http://parrishart.org/join-parrish Ashley Dye's HANG gallery and artisan market will be open as well and serving libations. 

The exhibition runs through Dec. 10th.

Bill Armstrong, Buddha & Mandala, Opening Aug.3, 2013

Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present Bill Armstrong, Buddha & Mandala, opening Saturday, August 3, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Through Sept. 23rd.

         This will be Armstrong's 10th anniversary with Sara Nightingale. In August of 2003, Armstrong had his breakout show at the gallery. Since then he has gone on to become a well-established international artist. We commemorate that show with an exciting installation of new floating Buddhas hanging in the center of the gallery accompanied on the walls by Mandalas that were shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2008.

         Armstrong's Infinity Series, begun in 1977, includes a wide range of portfolios made by photographing found images with the camera's focusing ring set at infinity. The appropriated images are subjected to several manipulations - photocopying, cutting, painting, re-photographing - which transform the originals and provide new context. The results hover between the real and the fantastic, dreams and memory, and point toward a parallel universe. Place is suggested, but is never defined, and the identity of the amorphous figures remains in question. Extreme de-focusing enables Armstrong to blend and distill hues, creating rhapsodies of color that inspire meditation. He has said that color is the subject of the work. 

         Armstrong’s work was featured in a two-person exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2008. He has exhibited work in numerous other museums including the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; Hayward Gallery, London; Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; Centro Internazionale di Fotografia, Milan; and FOAM, Amsterdam. His photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Vatican Museum, Rome; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Houston Museum of Fine Arts; and the Bibliothèque National de France, Paris; among many others. 

  Armstrong’s work appears in Face: The New Photographic Portrait by William Ewing and Exploring Color Photography by Robert Hirsch, among others, and his Mandala #450 is the cover image for The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography by Lyle Rexer (Aperture, 2009). He has also been published in numerous periodicals including The New Yorker, The New York Times and Harper’s. Armstrong is on the faculty at the International Center of Photography and the School of Visual Arts.

Meditation Room, a group exhibition in the project space, will run concurrently with Bill Armstrong's show and will include works by Eric Dever, Cara Enteles, Glenn Fischer, William Pagano, Kia Pedersen, Peter Sabbeth, Mike Solomon, and Ross Watts.

The exhibitions will run through Sept. 23rd. For more images or information contact Sara Nightingale at 631-793-2256. sara@saranightingale.com

Images: Bill Armstrong, Buddha 711, Buddha 712, C-Prints, 48" x 40", 36" x 30", 24" x 20"

Ross Watts, Open, Paper, steel, tape, 9" x 10" x 1"

William Pagano, Here and Sometimes There, July 6 - July 31, 2013

Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present William Pagano, Here and Sometimes There, opening on Sat. July 6, from 6 - 8 p.m.

  As a child, William Pagano had the good fortune of attending the opening of the new Idlewild Airport, now JFK, as well as the 1964/65 World's Fair. The architecture he observed at these events left a lasting imprint on his work. Utopian minimalist American architecture is the driving influence behind his work. "I select iconic buildings with wide open designs that address light and space and hope for the future," he says. In his Modern House Series, two well known mid century homes serve as inspiration: the Stahl House by Pierre Koenig and Twin Palms, by E. Stewart Williams. The Dulles airport terminal designed by Eero Saarinen as well as various highway interchanges also provide subject matter.

 Using both his own photographs and appropriated images as source material, Pagano pairs down his compositions, stripping away the unnecessary and focusing on the line, shape and space that remains. Linear perspective is used and misused to create order, tension and contradiction. Pagano achieves crisp edges and lines by working with traditional drafting tools, which serve as a connection to the original architectural forms.

     Like the Light and Space artists of Southern California in the 60's, Pagano's concerns are volume, scale and light. He utilizes the translucency of oil paint to emphasize these qualities. "I have sought out public venues that speak to an idealized spectacle, while the houses I have chosen emphasize a structure's primary function: shelter." The resulting paintings, however, are devoid of human figures, and thus generate tension between beauty and alienation.

Pagano is a New York based artist who has an MA in sculpture from C.W. Post College. This will be his debut solo exhibition at the gallery.

  The exhibition will run through July 31. For information or more images contact Sara Nightingale at sara@saranightingale.com

Meet the artist/ Cara Enteles

Friends and Supporters,

Please join Cara Enteles for refreshments and conversation in the gallery on Friday, June 28 and Saturday, June 29 from 4 - 8 p.m.

Her exhibition, Sheen, is up for another week and if you haven't yet had a chance to see it, this would be a great opportunity. On Saturday, June 29th, Hang (behind the Suki Zuki parking lot) will also be having an opening reception, Beyond Pigment, from 6 - 8 p.m. 

Cara Enteles aims to subtly point out situations where human activity threatens the environment while still conveying the beauty found in nature. The works are organized in thematic series based on specific environmental issues. Of particular concern to Enteles recently have been Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious disappearance of honey bees, and the 2010 oil spill in the gulf, as well as other threats to water pollution such as fracking and nuclear power. Though the works are meant to bring about awareness of these controversial subjects, they are neither sententious nor moralistic. In fact, the casual observer will find a collection of beautiful paintings of plants and animals, albeit with an unusual sheen in the surrounding water or an emphasis on "alternative pollinators" should the honey bees become extinct. 

 Because she works on industrial supports, aluminum sheets and layers of Plexiglas, which are often bolted to the wall, Enteles' work contains an inherent tension between the painterly, organic subject matter depicted and the materials with which she constructs them. Birds, butterflies, bees and flowers set against a backdrop of reflective Plexiglas literally hold a mirror up to nature, while gold-toned Plexiglas backings on her bee paintings evoke pollen. The transparency that Plexiglas affords provides a means for three- dimensional representation -Enteles paints on both sides of the Plexiglas- further reinforcing the realistic and imperative nature of her concerns, while also nodding to the implicit contradiction that Plexiglas itself is a petroleum product.

Enteles received her BFA from Parsons School of Design. She has had solo shows at numerous galleries throughout the US and internationally and has participated in group shows at The Islip Art Museum, The Alexandria Museum of Art, The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art and Wave Hill. Her work is held in several public collections. For more information or images please contact Sara Nightingale at sara@saranightingale.com. The show will run through July 4th.

Two Men, Opening Saturday, May 4, 6 - 8 p.m.

Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present, Two Men, photographs and a book signing by John Jonas Gruen and recent paintings by Gus Yero, opening on Saturday, May 4th from 6 - 8 p.m. As part of the ongoing #blinddates/musiclab series, Erez and Jonah Kreitner, aka Fiddle N Bones, will provide musical entertainment with Dalton Portella on djembe and conga.

  One likes to hope that an art object transcends gender, or at least conceals the gender of its maker. But the photographs of John Jonas Gruen, from his new book, Two Men, do not aspire to this. Specifically about gender, they explore relationships of intimacy between men, some of whom are lovers and some who are not. "From the first, men have been assigned the role of leader, provider, decider, protector, instigator, fighter and wooer," he writes in the forward to the book. "All of us will continuously and forever be subjected to what the world...thinks a man should be." In American culture this includes eschewing same sex public displays of affection. 

  Each of the photographs in the book, thirty of which will be on display, depicts two men interacting in an intimate way. American construction workers, Italian waiters, prominent artists and fathers and sons are among the characters found in these small black and white photographs, which date from the 1960's through the present and include several images that were taken in Water Mill. The collection consists of both candid and posed shots of couples and nudges traditional portraiture toward storytelling. The images serve as narratives whose subtexts can be deciphered by the subjects' surroundings, their attire, and their expressions. Only a lit cigarette, a wedding band, or a twisted tie serve as clues as to what might have transpired before the shot was taken, what may happen next, and what nuance, erotic or otherwise, exists in the relationship between the two men pictured. 

  John Jonas Gruen, who is also a playwright, journalist and composer, will be in attendance with his editor and archivist, Sam Swasey, to sign and sell copies of the book. "This is not a gay book or a straight book but something you've got to do a little thinking about," says Gruen.

 Gus Yero is an abstract painter who pushes boundaries and experiments with formal composition. A natural colorist, he continuously plays with shape, scale, and pattern, inventing images that challenge and arouse questioning in the viewer. "When I was traveling this year in Sedona Arizona I was inspired by what I saw there," he says. "The architectural landscape of the red rocks, their layers and flat surfaces, as well as the influences of Navajo weavings and the artisans of the Hopi Indians, have all found their way into these paintings. I see everything as color and shapes. When painting I use color as my vocabulary to create and inspire stories." 

  Erez and Jonah Kreitner are a father and son musical duo from New York, NY. Jonah K "Bones" is a multi-instrumentalist who focuses on the violin. He is 10 years old and has been studying violin and improvisation with Regina Sadowski since age five. He has performed internationally in Israel and Italy and most recently at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Erez K "ZZ" is a New York City based singer songwriter and guitarist. He has performed with numerous bands over the past two decades most notably as an original member of Pleasuredog. Dalton Portella is an artist, surfer and musician from Montauk, NY.

 above image: John Jonas Gruen, Dinos and Jake Chapman, New York, NY 1997

 below image: Gus Yero, Ocean, acrylic on canvas, 60" x 48", 2013

#blinddates/musiclab, 1st edition, Thursday, April 18, 6 - 8 p.m.

Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to announce the launch of a new music performance program, #blinddates/musiclab, that will bring together two or more musicians who have never met one another and ask them to perform together in front of an audience. The inaugural performance, on Thursday, April 18th from 6 - 8 p.m. at Sara Nightingale Gallery will feature Ryan Messina on trumpet and Dalton Portella on guitar. 

 Initially, the musicians in this ongoing program will be selected by the gallery. But as the series develops, friends and friends of friends, etc.. will be able to recommend new musicians, leading to the eventual dissipation of curatorial oversight and allowing the series to grow itself organically. Its ultimate evolution will result in a networking system for performers and listeners alike. Audience participation is encouraged in the form of dancing, filming, posting to social media, or simply spreading the word verbally about the musicians they discover at the events. The performances are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Like a blind date, each performance has the potential to go tremendously wrong. But it could also work extremely well, spark great chemistry among the participants, and initiate a musical dialogue that may or may not be continued elsewhere later. There is no particular formula for the selection of musical preferences and styles. Unlike internet dating, mismatched genres or quirky pairings may result. However, the hope is that the openness of the gallery setting will serve as an experimental laboratory where courage, skill and creativity can flourish. 

Musicians who are interested in participating in future #blinddates/musiclab performances are encouraged to contact the gallery.

Dalton Portella (right) of Montauk, NY is an artist, surfer and musician whose photographs have been exhibited at the gallery.

Ryan Messina (left) of Brooklyn, NY is a sailor, teacher and musician.

For more information contact sara@saranightingale.com.

New works by Cara Enteles, Feb. 2013

Cara Enteles, Oiled Gannet, oil on acrylic sheet 48 x36 inches

Cara Enteles, Pollinators at Work 2, Oil on acrylic sheet, 24x24 inches

Cara Enteles, Summer Rain, Oil on acrylic sheet, 24x24 inches

Cara Enteles, Starling, oil on acrylic sheet, 24x24 inches