#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

Kia Pedersen, A Change in the Wind, Dec. 15 - Jan. 23, 2012

Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present Kia Pedersen, A Change in the Wind, opening Saturday, Dec. 15, from 5 - 8 p.m.

  Trained as a printmaker, sculptor, painter and architect, Pedersen fuses these practices to achieve her goal of subverting traditional methods of printmaking. She deconstructs the standard intaglio printmaking process by rearranging and/ or eliminating certain steps. Her prints begin as thick, dense asphaltum paintings whose complex history and texture generate varied unique surfaces. Engaging an earthy and mineral-rich palette of inks, some of her best intaglio prints express a tactile grittiness and surprising depth. Often, her dramatically eroded and brittle, lace-like copper plates never make it to press, only and always to exist as striking sculptural reliefs.

  In Pedersen's current work she omits the printing process altogether. Asphaltum is applied directly to a copper plate, and organic materials, such as salt water from the bays near her Shelter Island studio, are used to corrode the remaining exposed area. Process and material determine the final outcome rather than planned compositional schemes. Recently, she has been using the wind as her source of formal composition. As a result, some of the works reveal a pattern of orderly directional marks, while others seem to have derived from eddies and swirls. Pedersen, an accomplished sailor, is sensitive to subtle changes in the wind and allows them the autonomy to determine design. Although the work is co-authored with the wind, it is unified by a set of parameters; medium, process, material and palette are the constants that give the work its voice.

  The exhibition will run through Jan. 23rd. For more information and images contact Sara Nightingale at sara@saranightingale.com

  Image: Kia Pedersen, Wind/ Tar Series #6, tar and sea salt on copper, 30" x 30"

Thanksgiving/ Gratitude party, Friday, Nov. 23, 6 - 8 p.m.

Please join us at the gallery on Friday, Nov. 23 from 6 - 8 for an evening of music with Dalton Portella and Jorge Castano. Eric Dever's exhibition, s.Ram, Red, White, and Black Paintings has been extended until Dec. 12. We are celebrating Thanksgiving and Gratitude with music, drinks and fun. See you there.

Eric Dever Open House, Sat. - Mon. November 9 - 12

Please join us in celebrating the opening of the new Parrish Art Museum this weekend. The gallery will be hosting an Open House from 11 - 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sunday and Monday of this weekend. Come view Eric Dever's stunning solo show and have a glass of wine with us.

Eric Dever, s.Ram: Red, White and Black Paintings opening Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012

The methods and materials of painting have long been the subject of Dever's practice. Since 2006, he has worked exclusively in black and white on a variety of supports. For this, his fifth solo exhibition at the gallery, Dever has expanded into the color red. His intention is to bring color back into his work through a slow, deliberate process, one color at a time. 

In 2011, Dever traveled to Southern France, through Languedoc, a land marked by wars and wine. For inspiration, he packed Roland Barthes’ essay, Wine and Milk. "Red, while also the color of blood, is above all a converting substance capable of reversing situations and states, and of extracting from objects their opposites. Hence its old alchemical heredity, its philosophical power to transmute and create ex nihilo."

Dever's yoga practice has introduced him to the three gunas and their corresponding colors and qualities: tamas, or black, darkness, matter; satva, or white, light and the ether sphere; and rajas, red, the energy which binds each of these qualities as well as all existence. This association compelled Dever to introduce Naphthol Scarlet Red to his existing palette of Titanium White and Ivory Black. Since doing so, he has discovered an unlimited succession of outcomes and unearthed a wide range of red tints, shades and tones. The essence of Dever's work resides in his mixing proportions of light, energy and matter.

The exhibition opens on Saturday, Oct. 20 with a reception from 6 - 8 p.m. and will run through Nov. 21st. For more information and images, contact Sara Nightingale at sara@saranightingale.com. 631-793-2256.

images: Eric Dever, NSIBTW-13, NSIBTW-17, oil on canvas, 36" x 36" each, photo credit Gary Mamay

Perry Burns, A Picture's Half Silence

                 

                  Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present, A Picture's Half Silence, a solo exhibition of new works by Perry Burns, opening Saturday, June 30 from 6 - 8 p.m

                   A well known abstract painter, Burns has for years been making oil paintings imbued with Islamic motifs and patterns. Spirituality, both personal and collective, has always played an important role in his work. Since 9/11, however, while continuing to produce his velvety, layered abstractions, Burns has been exploring political issues surrounding Islamic cultures, particularly events and imagery that have been filtered and distorted by the media, as well as by our personal perspectives and prejudices.

                  The works are primarily about crowds and often depict either scenes of uprisings or people engaged in prayer. Technology and it's ability to function as both a tool of peace -The Arab Spring and Twitter, for example- and of war, is evoked in the works by colorful square pixels that often conceal large sections of the source photographs in these mixed media works. Drawing from licensed imagery that he finds online, as well as from his own photographs, Burns has developed an elaborate process of transferring photographic images to large scale canvasses. Even in the work itself, technology plays a central role.

                  In Jali, a square painting in which a photograph of a group of Islamic women is nearly indiscernible due to the application of a black pixelated pattern such as one that might be found in a QR Code, the title refers to a term for a perforated stone or latticed screen common in Islamic architecture. The pattern obstructs an image of Pakistani women wearing burqas and thus reveals multiple layers of separation between the viewer (us) and the subjects of the painting (them). 

In his Satellite images, Burns employs military aerial photos taken from space of "target" locations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While the imagery suggests future strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles, Burns finds beauty in these contemporary "pre-strike" landscapes and embellishes them with swatches of patterned color. 

The exhibition will run through July 30. For more information and images contact Sara Nightingale, 631-793-2256 or reply to this email.

Image: Perry Burns, Revolution #11, mixed media on canvas, 60" x 80", 2012