MIXED GREENS GALLERY – Howard Fonda, Anita Thacher
HOWARD FONDA
I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it’s not pretty.
it was the first time I’d
realized
that.
—Charles Bukowski
Mixed Greens is thrilled to announce Howard Fonda’s fifth solo
exhibition with the gallery. In his eponymously titled exhibition, he
will exhibit a new series of abstract oil paintings.
Bukowski’s poem, I Met A Genius, describes a moment of seeing
things for what they really are—overcoming assumptions and
formal education to reveal truths. Fonda is searching for those
moments in painting by pushing himself to navigate color and form
with fresh eyes that not only reveal beauty, but its opposite. The
mark making is riskier, the colors more natural, and the paint thicker
and more dense. He is intuitively going back to basics, where a
large palette and a blank canvas are the main protagonists. They are
paintings.
Since Fonda began making paintings, he has been on a quest for
sincerity and truth in mark making. That exploration has inspired
him to paint still lifes, portraits, patterns, even recreate Manet’s last
flower paintings, and paint a series of trees in an attempt to blur
the boundaries between representation and abstraction.
To the viewer, these new works may have connections to stained
glass, portraits, or landscapes. To Fonda, they are full of the effort
required to make something effortless.
In this new body of work, Fonda relies on color and form alone to
reach out of his comfort zone and into a space where successes and
failures coexist. The finished works reveal his process and his never-
ending search.
Howard Fonda received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago. His first solo show, “…with love,” was at Mixed Greens,
New York City. Since then, he has shown widely with solo shows at
ebersmoore, Chicago, IL; Light & Sie Gallery, Dallas, TX; Hyde Park
Art , Chicago, IL; Harwood Art in Albuquerque, NM;
and Duchess, Chicago, IL. In 2009, his solo exhibition at Chicago’s
Roots and Culture received a review in ArtForum. Other exhibition
venues include The South Bend Art Museum, South Bend, IN; the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Raid Projects, Los
Angeles, CA; Bodybuilder and Sportsman, Chicago, IL; and Barbara
Davis Gallery, Houston, TX.
He was also a founding member and co-director of The Pond, a
curatorial triumvirate that organized exhibitions in a storefront in
Chicago’s Westtown from 2002-2004. Before moving to Scottsdale,
Arizona, Howard was an instructor in the Painting and Drawing
Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
ANITA THACHER
Mixed Greens is pleased to present an installation by Anita Thacher.
Her project, Leeway, will illuminate the gallery’s windows and offer a
bright change of perspective on 26th Street as we enter the winter
months.
Thacher is known for her work in a variety of mediums including
film, public art, installation, painting, sculpture, photography, and
printmaking. The importance of materiality and the conceptual
nature of each medium provide fertile ground for each new body of
work.
With Leeway, she continues her exploration of materiality, site-
specificity, and perceptual transformation. The installation—
composed of Duratrans, mini LED lights and colored gels—plays
with the geometry of the three windows to reveal juxtapositions
between architectural lines, organic marks evocative of a landscape,
and areas of bright light and shadow. The exact placement of these
elements creates a moment of pure illusionistic space, transforming
the two-dimensional into the three-dimensional.
Thacher’s multi-disciplinary practice is straightforwardly defined. In
her words: I “draw” with a variety of mediums–light, string, tape,
film, installation, paper shreds, ceramics, iron, and paint as well as
pencil and more. In Leeway, the drawn images are crisp and clear,
mixing a cartoon-like hard edge with a looser evidence of the artist’s
hand. The design of the installation, is itself, a kind of “drawing,”
urging passersby into its vibrant space.
TEXT COURTESY OF:
Mixed Greens Gallery
531 W.26th St.
New York, NY
EMAIL: info@mixedgreens.com
PHONE: 212-331-8888
FAX: 212 343 2134
TOLL FREE: 866 647 3367
WEBSITE: http://www.mixedgreens.com
HOURS: Mon-Fri 10-6 Sat 11-6
VIDEO BY:
O’Delle Abney, Artist / Agent
NYC GALLERY OPENINGS.COM
info@nycgalleryopenings.com