Press Release: The Salon Show

December 8, 2017 - January 28, 2018
Opening Reception: December 8th, 5 - 8 pm

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present The Salon Show, an annual group exhibition curated to showcase strong new pieces by its represented artists, as well as introduce high quality work by emerging artists. Featuring mostly local artists, The Salon Show seeks to open dialogue within the Boston arts, focusing on work that presents an interesting process or concept. The artists featured represent many different mediums and disciplines, and come together to form a full picture of the rich variety in contemporary art today.

Elisa Adams’ stone sculpture is about the paths in life. The twists and turns life offers us, represented in the openings and curves in the sculptures, take the viewer on a journey. To sense ease and flow is essential in her art, with the hope to rest the mind from external stressors. A chance for some breathing room to recalibrate and feel peace, quiet and connection again. 

Ariel Basson Freiberg’s paintings are intense, acidic statements about female sexuality that offer the viewer temptation and denial in a single image. Freiberg’s women emerge from a saturated background in undeniably erotic poses, but with all of the key information concealed with thick smears of paint: faces, genitals, anything that might expose her subjects. Born in Texas of Iraqi/Israeli background, has a MFA in painting from Boston University and a BA from Smith College.

Anna Schuleit Haber features work from The Voice Imitator series, an ongoing series of 104 paintings. The series is a collaborative project by artist Anna Schuleit Haber and composer Yotam Haber. Yotam and Anna discovered that they shared a fascination for the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard: the sweep and focus of his narratives, the stark voices of his characters, his mastery of seemingly effortless perspective changes within his stories, and his interest in everyday situations that often end in the absurd. Schuleit Haber was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006.

Holly Harrison is a mixed media artist whose collages use a variety of techniques to explore the juxtaposition of layering, poetic thought lines, subtle textures and attention to detail. In her new series, Harrison explores the relationships between forms, color, texture rather than referencing images. She uses diverse materials including painting, photography, paper ephemera, fiberglass screen, her daughter’s drawings and handwriting samples, and pieces of her husband’s discarded paintings, which she weaves together in a slow accumulation of layers.

Lavaughan Jenkins - A prequel to his 3-D paintings, Jenkins employs traditional methods to build layer after layer of vibrant brushstrokes until his paintings come off the canvas. His figures are inspired by Francisco Goya’s painting, Third of May 1808, and the Kerry James Marshall exhibition at the Met Breuer in 2016-2017. Jenkins has a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and has participated in the Yale University Norfolk Residency Program.

Kristina McComb’s practice intersects photography and sculpture and focuses on the impact of time when selecting materials and subjects. For McComb, time stands as a dichotomy as it represents both death and life, it naturally, slowly and steadily destroys but also gives life. No part of life is untouched by times impact.  McComb’s newest lightbox series, Two Sides of Self #1, is inspired by her own life experiences. She aims to blend the place she grew up in Western Massachusetts and her new home of Boston. She received her BFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts.

Marie Najera combines different styles and techniques to depict a shifting netherworld beyond her canvas in abstract paintings that show the constant change the artist’s inner life undergoes in the process of painting, each layer imparting a singular aspect of her psyche. Najera works without any preconceived notions about the finished piece, applying her mixed media materials freely. Najera lives and works in San Diego, California.

Victoria V. Nunley’s artwork explores the experience of transitioning from girl to woman. While in this prolonged identity limbo, her subjects are desperately searching for answers on how to successfully perform womanhood, consistently confused by what is real and what is a media construct. Nunley’s subjects are frequently engaging in gossip, conforming to social pressures, and outwardly expressing their emotions. Nunley says “The characters in my work, like real teenagers, are completely sincere no matter how exaggerated their emotions appear to be. Looking at this work, one might laugh at the triviality of the event at hand; however we have hindsight and they do not.” Nunley will receive her MFA from Boston University in 2018.

Nicole Patel’s artwork is at once minimal and nuanced. Her geometric grids explore elements of drawing and design through textile. She winds a single thread in muted colors across the clean, off-white surface of each piece, rooted with precisely placed nails on the back of the canvas. She works with only organic, sustainable medium. Patel sees the full potential of raw materials, without the irreversible alterations of cutting, coloring, and marking. Her pieces can all be disassembled and reassembled limitlessly. The resulting work is a meticulous arrangement of line and space. 

Tony Perez’s drawings incorporate imagery, poetry and sound. His artwork seeks to offer opportunities for the viewers to explore and converse on the complex relationships between the African, Indigenous and European diasporas. Placing the viewer in an immersive artistic experience, Perez strives to create an environment that starts conversation about complexities within issues. He hopes to begin discussions around police brutality, rape culture, racism both internal and institutional, the importance of preset parenthood and various forms of systemic oppression. Perez received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design in 2017.

Julia S. Powell’s oil paintings, teeming with lively brushstrokes and mottled with vibrant color, depict scenes that can’t be found anywhere on Earth, but carry the essence of the natural world within them. By contemporizing landscape painting, Powell brings the subject of nature into modern appreciation, creating a connection between the viewer and nature that can’t be accessed through any other perspective.

Natalia Wróbel’s pieces reference ancient architecture, elements from nature, and neural networks to elicit imagined, meditative pseudo-landscapes. By weaving in subtle hatch-work of marks in complementary colors, more chartreuse greens and yellows, and a few thicker paint applications of the palest pink, Wróbel’s allows her artwork to evolve from her surroundings. She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.