2016 Mohawk Hudson Regional Invitational
Tags: Gallery News
ALBANY CENTER GALLERY PRESENTS THE WORK OF FOUR INSPIRING LOCAL ARTISTS AT ITS ANNUAL MOHAWK HUDSON REGIONAL INVITATIONAL
From May 6 – June 12, 2016, Albany Center Gallery will present the 2016 Mohawk Hudson Regional Invitational, which features the work of acclaimed regional artists Fern Apfel, Jess Ayotte, Roger Bisbing and Thomas Huber. An artists’ reception held from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Friday, May 6, 2016, and the public is invited to attend
Each year, Albany Center Gallery highlights selected artists from the previous year’s Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region exhibit, a rotating juried exhibition that is always one of the area’s most prestigious and popular shows. This year, ACG Executive Director Tony Iadicicco selected Fern Apfel, Jess Ayotte, Roger Bisbing and Thomas Huber from more than 40 artists who were included in the 2015 Artists of the Mohawk Region show at the University Art Museum at the University at Albany. The gallery is proud to provide these four accomplished and stimulating artists with an opportunity to showcase their work in greater depth.
Jess Ayotte is a recent graduate from The College of Saint Rose, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. Her primary concentration was photography, with a minor in art history. Ayotte is passionate about photography and likes to photograph everything from live events to still-life scenes. Ayotte is a freelance photographer as well as a photographer and social media specialist for Nemer Motor Group and JeepWorld. com. In 2015, Ayotte received the Student Juror’s Award in the 37th Annual Photography Regional along with being published in Photographer’s Forum’s Best of College & High School 2015.
Fern T. Apfel is a portraitist – not of people, but of things. Remnants of the past – old stamps, pages of diaries, pieces from well-thumbed books – are her subjects. By invoking materials of the past, Apfel’s work quietly suggests the symbiotic relationship between our past and our present, and speaks to our yearning for simplicity and authenticity. Apfel combines collage with water-based lithography ink, and layers of acrylic, casein and gouache paints. The result is a pastiche of image and text that is at once nostalgic and provocative, creating a tension that imbues the painted objects with an elusive and often ambiguous new meaning. Apfel has work in the permanent collections of The Hyde Collection, the Tang Teaching Museum, SUNY Albany’s University Art Museum, the Albany Institute of History & Art , the Shaker Museum & Library, the Columbia County Museum & Library, the Art Students League of New York, and numerous private collections.
Roger Bisbing’s broad definition of sculpture and varied approaches to making it enable him to modulate among different kinds of processes – sometimes making discrete objects, other times creating environments. Bisbing’s methods are usually labor intensive and the end products betray little evidence of their making. Lately, he has been building and arranging miniature chairs and tables on patterned floors in order to explore common histories. The settings are sparse – no figures or details other than furniture, floors, and sometimes partial walls. The absence of attendees places an intended assembly in a peculiar past/future tense, more dynamic by virtue of its open-ended potential than the specifically defined but unknown event for which the furniture has been arranged. The furniture placement suggests relationships and sometimes establishes hierarchies among participants without telling a particular story. Bisbing graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Columbus College of Fine Arts and received his Master’s in Fine Arts at Syracuse University. Bisbing has been reviewed by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Times Union, and has received many awards including Best of Show in Made in New York at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in 2009 and the Second Place Award in the 10th Annual Blanche Ames National Art Exhibition in 2012.
Thomas Huber’s paintings merge various unrelated media into a unified picture –
a free flowing record of open creative process over time that calls into question dualities such as flatness and perspective, internal and external, past and future. He starts by creating a thickly sculpted gesso ground that he gouges into and builds a collage of found items mostly made by others; he then uses other various media to create layers of organic and architectural forms that flow in and out of each other, revealing recognizable and semi-recognizable images and words. The resulting layered web evokes potential energy, inviting one to make synaptic connections in a journey through space and time. Huber received his Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honors degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Along with showing this year at Albany Center Gallery, Huber has exhibited his work at Emma Willard School in a two-person show and at Woodstock Framing Gallery for a group show.
An opening reception for the 2016 Mohawk Hudson Regional Invitational will be held from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Friday, May 6, 2016. The public is invited to attend.
Exhibit Sponsor: Accounting For All