Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce "Inside/Outside: New Paintings by Sydney Licht and Stephen Pentak" at the Bridgehampton Gallery.

The exhibition will be presented from August 3 to August 23, 2012.

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Sydney Licht paints the store boxes and bags that are the leftovers of our consumer culture. She dramatizes them, and with a careful juxtaposition, creates a theatrical architecture out of the ordinary.

This monumentality contrasts not only with the surprising small scale of the paintings but also with the rich creaminess of the paint surfaces. Licht loves the sensuality of paint, the contrast of a stringent surface with a buttery one, unexpected color combinations and compositions, tipped and unbalanced.

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"Piles #2" by Sydney Licht, 2012. Oil on linen, 16 x 16 inches.

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For Licht, the abstraction of the painted surface is an integral part of the actual subject matter and the pleasure she takes in painting is contagious.

"Whether wildly fluorescent or quietly monochromatic, the color functions as a reflection of the world around me. Decorative patterns depicted on the boxes and tablecloths add to the visual mix," says Licht.

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"Squeezer" by Sydney Licht, 2012. Oil on linen, 10 x 10 inches.

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The artist lives and works in New York and has exhibited in galleries around the country.  She recently completed a Yaddo residency and was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome.

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"Still Life with Bundles" by Sydney Licht, 2011. Oil on linen, 12 x 12 inches.

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Stephen Pentak depicts an internal landscape retrieved from the memory of experienced places. These paintings are variations on iconic themes: a bend in a river, a point of land, an island, and always a broad expanse of reflective water. These provide diffuse, generalized middle ground and background planes against which a few sparse trees play out a foreground rhythm.

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"IV.III" by Stephen Pentak, 2012. Oil on MDF panel, 24 x 60 inches.

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This landscape structure offers an entry point. Meanwhile, the surface confronts the viewer with the marks made by the tools that created the scene: house painters' brushes, drywall tools, and scrapers. In this way the painting is revealed to be a construction.

A Chinese saying describes the experience: 'First you see the hills in the painting, then you see the painting in the hills.'

Pentak has exhibited in galleries throughout the country and lives in upstate New York.

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"V.IV" by Stephen Pentak, 2012. Oil on MDF panel, 24 x 24 inches.

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"III.V" by Stephen Pentak, 2012. Oil on MDF panel, 24 x 24 inches.

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Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is located at 2418 Montauk Hwy, Bridgehampton, NY. 631.613.6386  http://markelfinearts.com

"Inside/Outside: New Paintings by Sydney Licht and Stephen Pentak" will be exhibited at the Bridgehampton gallery from Aug 3 to 23, 2012.

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Copyright 2012 Pat Rogers and Hamptons Art Hub. All right reserved.

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