Visions

From August 4 - 28, 2020, Albany Center Gallery (ACG) will present Visions, featuring the work of regional artists Virginia Bryant, Jon Gernon, Diane Golden, Andrea Hersh, Robert Morgan, and Christopher Murray. ACG will be following CDC guidelines for visitation to ensure the safety and wellness of all our visitors. Please note, at this time we will not be hosting an Opening Reception. Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, Noon - 5 p.m.. Exhibit is free and open to the public.

Visions explores the depths of the human subconscious through the lens of six local artists. Colorful dreamscapes are presented to us on both flat surfaces and in three dimensional space; each is an interpretation by the artist of what we experience when we’re dreaming.

Painter Virginia Bryant has exhibited her works throughout the country. Informed by previous work in theater, design, and dance, Bryant’s paintings flow and ebb in a melodic and lyrical fashion. Bryant is inspired by patterns, rhythms and metaphoric transformations such as alchemy, Taoist thought, music and poetry. Improvisational in process, her painting is informed by musical structures such as "combining opposing patterns to create harmonic compositions of seemingly dissonant elements."

Jon Gernon is a painter and independent curator based in Troy, New York. Gernon’s current body of work began in 2016 with the idea of creating larger works in a looser fashion. Combining sensuous richness, historical myths and a studio filled with background sounds of shoegazing, dreampop, and noise, Gernon creates moments of conscious dreams and floating beauty. With no intentions other than to manifest genuine beauty, Gernon has created a body of myths and fables for the viewer’s personal interpretation, as well as a collection of stories to include and inspire people. 

Sculptor Diane Golden creates assemblage works in “boxed” structures out of mostly found and recycled objects. Golden’s intuitive practice allows her to transform materials such as old paper, bone, metal and wood into completely unique and cohesive wholes. Objects in these boxes range from valuable pieces, discarded scraps, or subjects from nature. Golden worked as a graphic designer, psychotherapist, and administrator before retiring and beginning her art practice. 

Andrea Hersh is a visual artist who paints, draws, sculpts, photographs and dances. Hersh places part-vegetable, part-human hybrid forms in dangerous and toxic situations to explore themes of vulnerability, desire, greed, and industry gone awry. Representing fragments of dreams, fantasies, and moments in time, Hersh’s works are whimsical, colorful, and somewhat uncanny. The goal of Hersh’s art practice and life is to ultimately create a balance, whether between family and work, whimsy and reality. Her body of work balances the beauty of nature with what the artist describes as “the ugliness… of a disposable culture.”

Robert Morgan is a painter who has exhibited his works across the United States and internationally. Working in watercolor, Morgan’s approach in practice creates works that he feels “vibrate on a frequency that sets off a chain reaction of personal conflicts and comparisons.” This latest body of work is a series of large, densely hued paintings or fragments that are cut out and glued together to create various visual planes. Though the works contain a polished fine craftsmanship, Morgan is also seeking to share the tension inevitably lurking behind the beauty. Though they are “outwardly simple” large-scale paintings, Morgan weaves the complexity through the juxtaposition of contrasting elements. 

Upstate New York-based artist and teacher Christopher Murray has exhibited his works widely throughout the state over a career that has spanned decades. Primarily a painter, Murray also includes drawing and collage extensively in mixed-media pieces. The subjects of Murray’s works range from mountain landscapes to abstract gestural expressions and, more recently, fractured layers of text, colors, symbols, vintage illustration, and objects supporting concepts that express deeply felt emotions: joy, melancholy, affection, and loss. 

Visions, on display at Albany Center Gallery from Tuesday, August 4, to Friday, August 28, will feature the work of five regional artists: Virginia Bryant, Jon Gernon, Diane Golden, Andrea Hersh, Robert Morgan, and Christopher Murray. The exhibit is free and open to the public. Masks and social distancing required. 

The exhibit is sponsored by ACG Premier Sponsors Howard Hanna & David Phaff, as well as Scott & Helen Spiro, ParkAlbany, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Albany Wine & Dine for the Arts Festival.