PAST EXHIBITS
Fall/Winter 2007 Exhibitions
September 20 to December 30, 2007
Second Floor Galleries
SunKoo Yuh: Along the Way
First Floor Galleries
Tim McFarlane: Stratum
Satellite Gallery
The Rittenhouse Hotel, 210 W. Rittenhouse Square, 3rd Floor
Catherine Gontarek: Falling Upstairs
Public Opening for all Exhibitions: Thursday, September 20, 2007 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Second Floor Galleries
SunKoo Yuh: Along the Way
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Family Union, 2007,
Glazed porcelain,
27 x 18 x 16 inches.
Courtesy of Nancy Margolis
Gallery,
New York, NY.
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The Philadelphia Art Alliance fall exhibition, Along the
Way will include monumental and small scale porcelain
sculptures in combination with drawings and sketches by the
internationally recognized artist SunKoo Yuh.. A 44-page
catalogue will accompany the exhibition with essays by
internationally recognized curator Helen W. Drutt English and
noted ceramic artists and educators Wayne Higby and Tony
Marsh.
Regardless of scale, Yuh most often begins with a conscious
thematic concept. Family life, friends, and daily events
intermingle with added symbolic elements such as animals and
birds, which are derived from his Korean background. By combining
cultures, Yuh’s work achieves a sense of universality
through the multiple possibilities of meaning suggested by the
iconographic juxtapositions in the final work.
Yuh’s use of glazes, which are vital to the impact of
his sculptures, also reflect the spontaneous nature of his
working procedure. Acting as an overlay, glazes are applied both
to create a specific impact to a certain parts of the sculptural
form and is at times applied without regard to the structure,
co-mingling color over multiple figures or objects. As Tony Marsh
has noted about Yuh’s use of glazes, this level of
experimentation comes from Yuh’s extensive understanding of
high fire glazes after testing thousands of them over his career.
Marsh states “he certainly has an empirical understanding
of glaze chemistry that reinforces a strong intuitive approach to
working with ceramic color.” It is in Yuh’s expertise
and application of glazes that that his sculptures achieve the
emotional intensity and vibrancy evidenced in the final work.
A first generation Korean-American, Yuh received a BFA degree
from Hong Ik University in Seoul, Korea, and an M.F.A. degree
from New York State College of Ceramics in Alfred, NY. He has
taught at The Korea University of Art, Seoul, Korea, Western
Illinois University, Macomb, IL, and is now associate professor
of ceramics at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA. Yuh has
also served as a visiting artist at Kent State University, the
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and at California State
University in Long Beach.
SunKoo Yuh’s career began with his first solo
exhibitions at Helen Drutt Gallery Philadelphia, who has
supported and promoted the artist throughout his career. More
recent solo exhibitions include: Microcosms in Memory: Recent
Work by SunKoo Yuh, Parkland College Gallery, Champaign, IL;
Korea International Art Fair Solo Exhibition, Tho Art,
Seoul Korea; Recent Ceramic Sculpture, Len G. Everett
Gallery, Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL; Mundane
Expressions, Visual Arts Gallery, University of Illinois at
Springfield, IL; Mundane Life, Western Illinois University
Arts Gallery, Macomb, IL; and SOFA 2000,
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One More Chance, 2006,
Glazed porcelain, 29 x 28 x 2 inches.
Courtesy of Nancy Margolis Gallery,
New York, NY.
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Navy Pier,
Chicago, IL. Major group exhibitions include: SOFA New York,
Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY; Archie Bray
International 2006, Archie Bray Foundation Gallery, Helena,
MT; A Tale to Tell, John Michael Kohler Arts Center,
Sheboygan, WI; Excess, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA;
World Contemporary Ceramics: Trans-Ceramic Art, Icheon
World Ceramic Center, Ocheon, Korea; Asian American
Ceramics, Kentucky Museum of Arts and Design, Louisville, KY;
Craft 5, Maga Museum, Yongin, Korea; Poetics of Clay:
An International Perspective (traveled to Philadelphia Art
Alliance, Philadelphia, PA, the Museum of Arts and Design,
Helsinki, Finland, and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft,
Houston, TX); Regeneration, Los Angeles Folk and Craft
Museum, CA; Life from Clay, San Jose Institute of
Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; Rendezvous 99, Museum of
Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE; Cloth and Clay, Pacific Asia
Museum, Pasadena, CA.
In August of 2001, the internationally respected sculptor
returned to his homeland as an invited artist at the World
Ceramic Exposition 2001 Korea (WOCEK). The invitation was based
on his bronze medal award in the WOCEK international competition.
He also received an excellence prize at the Seoul Contemporary
Ceramic Competition in 2000. In 2002 Yuh was awarded the grand
prize at the 2nd World Ceramic Biennale International
as well as the Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize,
Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA. His work has
featured in the collections of the Renwick Gallery, Washington,
DC; Icheon World Ceramic Center, Icheon, Korea; International
Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred University, Alfred, NY;
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Oakland Museum of
Art, Oakland, CA; Pacific Asian Museum, Pasadena, CA; Houston
Center for Contemporary Art, Houston, TX and the Long Beach
Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA, among many others.
First floor Gallery A
Tim McFarlane: Stratum
The work of Tim McFarlane is a testament to continuing significance
of abstract painting today. Complex and aesthetically elegant in the
use of pattern and color, both the small and large scale canvases present
the viewer with a glimpse into the artist’s working process.
Building layer upon layer, the final work reveals a consistent attempt
at negation and affirmation of impulses. This inclination to create
and then recreate resonates throughout his work, enhanced by a sophisticated
use of color and by using a technique where one wet application of
paint is immediately reworked by another layer. This development over
time creates a depth within the surface, providing an archive of the
working process used to achieve the final form.
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Plume, 2007,
Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 inches
Courtesy of Bridgette Mayer
Gallery, Philadelphia
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McFarlane states, “My paintings reflect my interest in the ambiguities
and chaos inherent in the overlapping actions and thoughts occurring
at any given moment. Like images and words flitting in and out of focus
before forming a cohesive thought, I seek to capture some iota of that
random formation through the use of multiple layers of paint. These
layers feed off of each other, coalescing at some points and receding
in others, potentially forming a whole and possibly breaking apart
and dissolving.”
McFarlane received a B.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University,
Philadelphia PA, and has been a visiting artist and lecturer at the
University of Arts in 2003 and 2005. Solo exhibitions include:When
is Now, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2007; Logical
Progression, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2005; Inverted
Dislocation, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2004; Fleisher
Challenge, Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia, PA ,2001; Subliminal
Shift, DaVinci Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA, 2000; and Gallerie
Tugarraf, Philadelphia, PA 1996. Recent selected group exhibitions
include: Luxe Calme et Volupté, Marcia Wood Gallery,
Atlanta, GA, 2007; Color My World, Bridgette Mayer Gallery
- New Hope, New Hope PA, 2006; Order(ed), Gallery Siano, Philadelphia
PA, 2006; Sum of All Parts, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia
PA, 2005; AAF Contemporary Art Fair, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, New York
NY, 2005; Engaging The Structural, Broadway Gallery, New York,
NY, 2005; Bridgette Mayer Gallery Group Show, Tierney Communications,
Philadelphia, PA, 2005; Art Of The State, State Museum of
Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA, 2004; Dear Fleisher, Fleisher Art Memorial,
Philadelphia, PA, 2004; Bridgette Mayer Gallery Group Show, Tierney
Communications, Philadelphia, PA, 2004; Hard Pressed, DaVinci
Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA, 2003; Painting Invitational, Cheltenham
Center for the Arts, Cheltenham, PA, 2003; Drawing As Drawing, Drawing
in Painting, Olmsted Gallery, Penn State Harrisburg, Middletown, PA,
2003; Gallery Group Exhibition: Survey of New Works, Bridgette
Mayer Gallery, 2002/03; Summer Group Exhibition, Bridgette
Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2002; and Mid-Atlantic Artists, Open
Studios Press Gallery, Boston, MA, 2002. McFarlane was a Second Round
Finalist for the Pew Fellowships in the Arts in 2000; received the
Liquitex Excellence in Art-University Award from Temple University
in 1993; and a Temple University Department of Art and Art Education
Award for Excellence in 1993. McFarlane lives and works in Philadelphia
and is represented by Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA.
Satellite Gallery
The Rittenhouse Hotel, 210 W. Rittenhouse Square, 3rd Floor
Catherine Gontarek: Falling Upstairs
The paintings and collages of Catherine Gontarek contain a formal
vocabulary of reductive architectonic forms, evoking elements of space,
time, and lived experience. Yet within these compositions, the works
achieve an unfamiliar or uncanny sensibility, somehow suggesting some
ghostly, latent aspect of a familiar environment. The juxtaposition
of illumination and obscurity, along with the skillful manipulations
of surface and depth, creates an internal logic in each painting that
seems to be only partially revealed to the viewer.
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Untitled collage, 2006,
mixed media
on paper, 5.25 x 5 inches,
Courtesy of the artist.
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Gontarek states “My work is based on the objects, rooms and urban exteriors
I see every day. I use both reduction and embellishment of man-made
and natural elements to redefine the relationships of background to
foreground, positive space to negative, impermanence to regeneration.”
Gontarek received a B.F.A from Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI, and is the Art Director for the Philadelphia Gazette.
Solo exhibitions
include: Night and Day for Night, University City Arts League,
2004 and a Solo exhibition at the City Book Shop, 1994. Group exhibitions
include February Exhibit, Gallery Siano, Philadelphia, PA,
2007; Exhibit 1, Inliquid at Painted Bride Series, 2005; and Four
Visions in Collage, Kelly Writers House, 2002.
Archived Exhibits
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