Cara Enteles, Gone Wild, Oil on acrylic panel, 48” x 43"
Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present Cara Enteles, Mirrors in the Garden, opening Saturday, November 14th, from 5 - 7 p.m.
In this selection of recent paintings Cara Enteles explores the impossibility of symmetry, order and exactness in nature. Drawing from Shakespeare’s line in Hamlet, “art holds a mirror up to nature”, she seeks to illustrate the dichotomy between organic, natural growth and the human gardener's attempt to control it. An avid gardener herself, Enteles splits her time between New York City and a home in the Catskills where access to the surrounding wilderness informs her work.
Enteles has long been addressing environmental issues in her work - oil spills, colony collapse disorder, and fracking are some examples - and her paintings allude to circumstances in which human activity threatens nature. Yet the work is 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 paints on industrial supports, aluminum sheets and layers of plexiglas often bolted to the wall, Enteles’ work contains an inherent tension between the organic subject matter depicted and the materials with which they are constructed. 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 acknowledging the implicit contradiction that plexiglas is itself a man-made, petroleum based product.
Enteles received her BFA from Parsons School of Design. She exhibits internationally and her work is held in private and public collections including Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Microsoft and WilmerHale. Her work has been shown at Wave Hill, The HVCCA and The Islip Art Museum. This will be her third solo exhibition at the gallery.
The exhibition will run through December 14th.
For information or more images contact Sara Nightingale at 631-793-2256
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