William Conger

at  Zolla/Lieberman Gallery

Siren

The beauty (the red figures) and the voices(blue ribbons) are pulling you in.The temptations are impossible to resist. You are trying to escape (yellow triangles) but the desire prevails. And then suddenly you get stabbed by a long thin blade. You fall as a sinking ship - slowly but surely.

Howard Hersh

at Addington Gallery

Marquee

The Artist reaches deep inside her soul. She gets out of the darkness the bright flames of feelings. The Artist tries to put those onto a material plane - the flats of canvas or paper. Sometimes she succeeds, sometimes she needs to do better next time.

Jean Xceron

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Composition #220, 1934-45

The society(the blue cloud in the upper part) generates ideas(small rectangles on the right part of the blue cloud). Some ideas start growing and create movements (long rectangles). The movements are trying to put rails and move the society - to change it (set of grey lines, black lines). Some individuals are at the head of the charge(the black and blue circles on the orange rectangle), some of them are sacrificed - ran over (the black bordered circles under the black rails). Some are on the sideways, just watching how the world is changing before their eyes(the pink circle on the brown background).

Tony Smith

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Untitled, 1934

A morning after a party. It's a beautiful sunny day(the blue figure at the top middle), but you don't feel well. The illness is called hangover. You don't remember much of the party, it is in the thick fog(the white background). On your bed(the white background figure in the center) a naked girl(the brown figure in the center) is lying that you can swear you never saw before. On the table (the dark brown figures on the sides) there are bottles, leftovers, broken glass. Everything is splitting into pieces, sharp parts, with many sharp corners and edges. And they all are spinning around you. Even the table is cracked in two and has multiple corners, though yesterday it was one big solid circle.

Esphyr Slobodkina

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Sails, 1955

The left part(two rectangles) is how you imagine an adventure. The wind practically is tearing off the sails. You are full of hope, energy and speed. The shining polished ship is clipping the distance with astonishing velocity. The right part(the 3 small rectangles) is how it happens in real life. You are advancing in small, well calculated steps. You are working very hard to do a routine work over and over again. Only when you overcome all of those and all of pains then you get to the summit. But it is not an adventure, it is a victory over yourself. This is summit of your spirit.

Judith Rothschild

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Interior View, 1945

First you had a vision how to setup your room. You thought out the design. But with time the stuff started to pile up. You add a thing here, a framed picture there. As a time goes, you create a sentimental bond with your things. Then, one day you realize that the stuff bosses you around and demands more and more clutter. You can't resist, though it is more and more difficult to live like that.

Carl Holty

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Untitled, 1943

Self-made man (or woman). He builds himself out of emptiness(the lower part) by hope and faith in himself (blue figures). His main tools are hard work (dark grey figures) and persistence( light grey figures). The glue is purposefulness (black lines). He is selfish (red figures), and sometimes greedy (orange figures). He is open to new things. The whole structure is fluid as a banner in the wind.

Burgoyne Diller

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Untitled (Second Theme), 1955

The window lets you to look outside, and it lets outside to see you. When it is dark outside and bright inside, the window can be used as a mirror to see your own reflection (yellow lines). The problem is that the image that outside world sees is so different (white lines) from your reflection.

John Ferren

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Composition, 1936

Without the bad, there would be no good. Some people, when bad things happen to them, break and lose miserably(the figure in the lower left corner).When the bad strikes (the black line on the upper left side of the figure), they break - everything goes down. They try to change the situation by doing the same thing(the upper right side of the figure with blue ribbons to the sides). More of the same leads to another crises and demise. But some people use the bad situation to reinvent themselves(the big figure in the upper right corner).   The unfortunate situation makes them focus on the most important stuff(the upper part of the figure). They learn from the their mistakes(the lower right part and the lower middle of the figure). The focus and the learning lead to drastically new situation( the white ribbon and the blue bulb).

José de Rivera

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Untitled (Black and Red Lines on Gray), 1981

Do not act on impulse. The feelings can suggest a shortest route to take(red lines). But it could be a disaster. Think logically before you move (black lines). Logic together with feelings build a much stronger and balanced structure. Certainly feelings can take you places, but you would not have a bigger number of exists and detours as when you use your logic.

Judith Belzer

at Valerie Carberry Gallery

Order of Things #5, 2010

Everything is changing. Family events, people and historical moments are flowing around us like a stream getting around a stone. All things are moving, but the stone is constant, resisting any change, any move. But the stone is changing. It just has a different time table. If you want to the stone changing, use the stone's time scale.

Marco Casentini

at Roy Boyd Gallery

Waiting Time, 2011

You are waiting. You feel trapped in a square.There is nothing to do in the square. You are pacing around. Then you make an effort and you escape, only to find yourself in another square. It makes you angry. With each new square you become angrier (more red colored). At the end when your anger boils over (the upper right rectangle), you become frustrated and desperate (the black rectangle).  It takes you back to the square one. Ten minutes have passed.

Paul Kelpe

Paul Kelpe at Valerie Carberry Gallery(Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)

Untitled (#166)

This is a woman. She is very aware of her surroundings. She has an external image to maintain (light gray figure in the background around the main construction in the middle). At first glance beyond the visible representation, you can see a simple sphere and a cone. But if you dig deeper, you will see delicate mechanics with lots of gears, moving parts and springs. The springs (the two spirals in the center) sometimes are working in opposing directions. Thus they produce a line in the external image that changes directions rapidly, a conflicting and doubting behavior( middle right). Our woman has high standards that she use to measure herself(a yellow line in the top center). The line is near her lily head. The latter is heavily influenced by a yellowish spot that grows from the yellow sphere from down below.

Arthur Dove

Arthur Dove at Valerie Carberry Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach)

Canandaigua Outlet, Oaks Corners

You are the woods. It's dark night. It's scary. The dark brown spots at the bottom could be bears or just bushes. But you got a flame, a small flame (a brown spot with white border in left bottom ). It leads you to the big warm fire. It is behind those oak trees. The tree tops are lightened up with blue hope.