FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Please List
"Incongruent Realities"
A Virtual Exhibit
February 4 – February 27, 2021
Marie-Ange Hoda Ackad * Jenny Belin * Joshua Greenberg * Yu Huang
Shawn Marshall * Sarah Riley * Kathleen Shanahan
Stuart Skalka * Sheila Smith
Chelsea NY: Viridian Artists is pleased to present an exhibition of outstanding art by nine artists who are part of Viridian Artists' Affiliate program. The show opens February 4 and continues through February 27, 2021. Because Viridian is currently open only virtually, you can see this fascinating virtual exhibit on the Viridian Artists website at www.viridianartists.com.
In these new works, Marie-Ange Hoda Ackad draws on her imagination, adding lushly painted people, flowers, and exotic butterflies transparently to her photomontages, merging real and imagined objects to create a third world that becomes another reality.
Sheila Smith has been a painter and photographer for close to fifty years. She created these collages of torn photographs from the thousands that she has taken over the years, upcycling them, rather than discarding them. The artist has found a new form of expression as well helping to save the environment.
Jenny Belin’s “botanical paintings” are inspired by antique garden catalogs and seed packaging. Belin says, “the cat and butterfly vases represent the nostalgia that I feel for the vintage objects once found on road trips taken prior to the pandemic.”
Soon after Stuart Skalka moved to Las Vegas in 2010, he discovered the Las Vegas that tourists miss, particularly the surviving motels from before The Strip came to characterize the city. Since then, he has been passionately documenting old Las Vegas in color and black & white without any post-processing.
Shawn Marshall seeks to create depth, atmosphere, and to escape on the canvas, often with a focus on the horizon. For her, details about season or specific location are not as important as the emphasis on the point where earth and sky meet. And though reaching that point is never physically possible, it suggests there is always hope.
Amidst the Covid pandemic, Sarah Riley turned to watercolor to joyfully celebrate color, transparency, and experimentation.
In Repetitions, Joshua Greenberg uses photo-based imagery to create abstract art from urban settings. Squares of windows, color, and glass all become objects of repetition while reflected clouds, sky, and sunlight give foreground, background, and a sense of depth. Finally, he adds building profiles to project a sense of movement and balance to the emerging art.
Using a mixed media approach, Kathleen Shanahan created a series of county plat “maps”, with each map providing a “matrix for moves” that becomes a lattice or armature for attaching elements of visual and thematic connections.
Yu Huang regards her paintings as a witness of both her own history and the reflection of our time. In them, she is contemplating the issues of genders, social justice, and the challenges of art.
Viridian has created several programs to give outstanding “underknown” artists an opportunity to have their work seen. Our Affiliate program gives artists an opportunity to show a small series of artworks annually. Sadly, in these times of the Covid Virus, seeing art virtually is the safest way for all and thankfully websites and social media are making it possible for more & more individuals to have alternative opportunities. And the public has an opportunity to see art as well as purchase it for their collections. We hope you will enjoy this virtual exhibit that you can view on our website at www.viridianartists.com.
Viridian is currently operating virtually
For further information please contact Vernita Nemec, Director or Jenny Belin, Assistant Director
visit instagram @viridianartistsinc or email us at viridianartistsinc@gmail.com.
