"Picture Perfect: Director's Choice"
"Director's Choice"
Artists from our 1st International Juried Photo Competition
curated by Vernita Nemec
November 8th to December 3rd, 2011
opening reception Saturday November 19th, 4-7PM
Matthew Derezinski * Gordon Gilbert * John Haines * Barbara Hillerman * Chris Jordan * Andrea Kemler * Thomas Krueger * Jane McWhorter * Darryl Moody * Shirley Pasternak * Vera Sprunt * Soni Wallace
Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present "Picture Perfect: Director's Choice", an exhibition of photographically based art to occur November 8th to December 3rd, 2011 at our new location at 548 West 28th Street, also accessible from 547 W 27th Street. There will be an opening reception Saturday November 19th, 4-7PM Although these artists/photographers were not “winners” of Viridian's 1st International Juried Photo Competition juried by Elisabeth Sussman of the Whitney Museum, Vernita Nemec, the gallery director of Viridian felt the images of these twelve photographers to be as uniquely interesting as some of those chosen by the Whitney Curator. And as we all know, professional opinions vary widely regarding what is the "best" art, for in the end it is a question of taste even in the eye of the professional and one of Viridian's missions is to provide meaningful exposure to underknown artists. Previously, these images were shown only in a power point presentation during the Juried exhibition last season, but Nemec felt the images to be worthy of their own exhibition and hence we bring the actual works together now. Each of these artists has their own personal obsession in their search for images in reality to record, capture or alter which they then transform into their own reality. Many of these artists work with enhanced & nearly surreal color changes and imagery, while others take the reality of reality and leave it as is. Andrea Kemler's still lifes look like Renaissance paintings, Shirley Pasternak duets with Romantic painters while Soni Wallace creates layered photomontage of fragments from nature which she photographs with a 35mm film camera and calls still lifes. Thomas Krueger's imagery focuses on the mundane and overlooked, creating gelatin silver prints. John Haines, Vera Sprunt and Gordon Gilbert all deal with nature but Sprunt adds acrylic to her layered images while Haines captures his version of the beauty of nature as he sees it in his surroundings and Gilbert heightens his colors to a surreal pitch. Jane McWhorter focuses on the sky and nothing else in the series presented here. More urban are the images of Barbara Hillerman who captures overlooked images in the reflections on automobiles and Darryl Moody who finds torn fragments of street posters from the walls of city buildings which he isolates and gives new meanings. Matthew Derezinski's images are filled with a haunting gothic aura and Chris Jordan, a photo professor at Alabama University, gives us his view of a sublime suburbia.