Brooks Frederick, Black Iso, 2020, oil on canvas, 8”x10”
Artists: Pamela Casper, Won Young Chang, Carlo Cittadini, Kathy Creutzburg, Camilla Fallon, Brooks Frederick, Iris Hu, Karen Kertesz-Sklar, Alison Kudlow, Christina Massey, Julianne Nash, Daniel Peddle, Madara Tropa, Evie Woltil Richner, Constance N. Stancell, Susan Stillman, and Natasha Zeta
September 10th — October 3rd, 2020
Outdoors Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10th, 6 — 8 PM*
Juried and Curated by: Peter Gynd, Margaret Krug, Peter Trippi, and Jimmy Wright
245 Broome Street, New York, NY, 10002
As we continue to bear witness to a suffering world torn asunder by contagion and the seeming worst of human failings, the need for some relief, specifically aimed to soothe our troubled souls, becomes paramount. It is to this calling that Equity Gallery stages a juried exhibition of artworks that aspire to a paradisiacal idyll, a higher place of virtuous delight---an eternity untainted.
Historically this imagined terrestrial abode has been depicted as a garden of innocent and sensuous delight. Taking this motif as a starting point, artists Camilla Fallon, Brooks Frederick, and Constance N. Stancell displays works that depict flowers, a mainstay subject for artists seeking to depict fleeting beauty and the concurrent mythological and religious undertow that temporality and fragility engender. As a prevalent and prolific genre, one can trace art historical developments, and their ascendant motives and expressions, with flower art --from works that embody enlightenment philosophies to those seeking to capture the scintillating light of a summer day.
Daniel Peddle, Evie Richner, and Susan Stillman embrace landscape motifs and frame the oft overlooked oases that exist out our backdoors and bedroom windows. Karen Kertesz-Sklar, Iris Hu, and Kathy Creutzburg disavow the temporal, and with sublime imagery signal an interior journey ushered by mediation and dreams.
As an ensemble, Il Paradiso’s collection of artworks, with a focus on flowers, botanicals, and the untamed wilderness both within and without, offers a powerful and seductive display of decorative effects and archaic symbolism that signify prosperity, rebirth, healing, and love itself. As such, Il Paradiso functions as a repudiation, commentary, and a reprieve from the follies of our current anthropocene age. Our world and our time, as did the world and its times of crisis before us, needs a bit of heaven and a lot more love. Il Paradiso offers us a glimpse.
*Equity Gallery will be holding an Outdoor Opening Reception and Limited Viewing Room for Il Paradiso. We require all attendees to wear masks and adhere to NY State Social Distancing Guidelines.
Il Paradiso: Imagining the Eternal was made possible in part from support from our sponsors-
