Werner Sun
De / Construct, Re / Construct
The Corners Gallery, Ithaca, New York
In today's news there is a Royal Wedding and gun violence in our schools. How to make sense of all of this? To focus, I return to the potential of art and share what stimulates me and gives me hope. On a sunny day off, my wife and I ride up into Cayuga Heights, above the shores of Lake Cayuga in Ithaca, New York and go and find the Corners Gallery to see the current show. The exhibition is called: "De / Construct, Re / Construct and it features three artists whose artwork neatly dovetails into a strong and coherent statement about forms, textures, and restrained color. On the walls of the gallery are examples of visual art that not only would look great in our home, but also begin to stretch the boundary of what art is about.
Rebecca Aloisio, collage, 2017
The three artists in this contemporary show are: Rebecca Aloisio, Werner Sun, and Rosalyn Richards.
Rebecca recently studied printmaking with me at Rochester Institute of Technology. I was looking forward to seeing what she has accomplished with her new printmaking skills. She adds to this a strong concept of working with gradations of colors and abstraction and her compositions often against white backgrounds imply movement that can remind one of cubism in art by Ferdinand Leger.
I have written about Rebecca's art before on this blog, and so it was interesting to see where she is taking her work.
Rebecca Aloisio " Laser Ridge"
Rebecca Aloisio
De / Construct, Re / Construct
I have seen how Rebecca can make a print and cut it up to find new expression through collage. She demonstrates the title of this show in her process. The artist's methods of making the work become part of the art, even though it is difficult to predict how her work will proceed. Compare this to Werner Sun and his installation called: " A Random Walk ". " A Random Walk " appears much more deliberate than something randomly discovered.
Werner Sun, " A Random Walk ", cut and folded papers
Werner Sun's art reminds me of the revelation I found when Buckminster Fuller came to visit our School of Art at The Cooper Union, when I was getting my Bachelors Degree in the last century.
Fuller's geodesic domes had amazing impact on architecture, and now this concept seems to be having a new life in the artwork that Werner Sun has produced for this installation. Mr. Sun has been taking two dimensional imagery and with some cutting and folding has begun to create an art that reflects an awareness of physical structures that create the foundations of what we can see in reality.
Werner Sun at the Corners Gallery
There is a path that opens up for the visual artist to explore, and we are talking about territory that would have been hard for the average person to contemplate without the aid of the personal computer. We can start to appreciate the various forms - the geometric mesh of experience that we can see in many examples in Werner Sun's installation. His constructions hang from the ceiling and project off the wall, and they are tactile and rigorous in their application and appeal.
Rosalyn Richards, "Geometry and Light"
Rosalyn Richards also stakes out new territory in paintings and prints that give the viewer an analytical approach to what and how we see. Facets of crystals reflecting lights, and bubble forms provide some of the content for paintings that have an intimate close-up quality, and we marvel at the patience that these paintings require of the artist - to fulfill her vision.
Rosalyn Richards
I found myself thinking about the generations of artists starting with Kandinsky who work with abstraction and their efforts to dig into the meaning and structure of what we see - and this has been essential for contemporary art. These explorations will continue, and there is much more new territory to explore. We were happy to explore part of this new land with these three artists. The show runs thru May 25th at the Corners Gallery on Hanshaw Road. Go There..
