Guild Hall museum launches its exhibition season early with a trio of shows that emphasize artists making work in The Hamptons. Opening on Saturday, February 24, 2018 are "Alice Hope," "Hiroyuki Hamada: Sculptures and Prints" and "The Artist Curated Collection: Toward Abstraction," an exhibition pulled from Guild Hall's art collection and curated by Bryan Hunt. The Hamptons artist-curated show is a first for Guild Hall and sets off a continuing series that may be held biennially, said Guild Hall Museum Director and Chief Curator Christina Mossaides Strassfield. A Guild Hall Members reception will be held on Sunday, February 25, 2018 from 2 to 4 p.m.
The new winter exhibition initiative is also designed to highlight mid-career artists working in The Hamptons who are widely exhibiting in the regional, national or international arenas, said Strassfield.
"Alice Hope"
Alice Hope's solo exhibition is part exhibition and part site-specific installation. Known for working with unusual materials to create dramatic art, Hope often incorporates binary code and repetition in her pieces. Series by Hope have incorporated neodymium and ferrite magnets, can tabs, ball chain, bed coils, steel plate and corroded nails. For Guild Hall, Hope is creating a site-specific work for the show made up of colorful ball chains. Intricate and labor-intensive, "Untitled" required over two days to create and install, said Strassfield.
Most recently, Alice Hope was selected as a "Women to Watch" by the National Museum for Women Artists in Washington, DC and included in their fifth exhibition "Heavy Metal - Women to Watch 2018" at the museum. Alice Hope's art has been presented in solo shows at the Queens Museum and Lewis Saul Building in Marfa, Texas, both in 2015.. Additional solo shows include Ricco Maresca Gallery in Chelsea, NY; The Armory Show; and as one of the first artists to be selected for the Parrish Road Show. Her site-specific work, "Under the Radar" at Camp Hero State Park, was presented in 2012 in Montauk, NY. She currently has work on view at the Southampton Arts Center in "A Radical Voice - 21 Women" curated by Janet Goleas. Click here to visit Alice Hope's website and see more of her art.
"Alice Hope" is presented at Guild Hall's Woodhouse Gallery. She will give a Gallery Talk on her work on Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 2 p.m. Admission is free and reservations encouraged by clicking here.
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"Untitled" by Alice Hope, 2017. Anodized used can tabs, ball chain, 36 x 36 x 60 inches. Photo by Jenny Gorman. Courtesy of Guild Hall.
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"Hiroyuki Hamada: Sculptures and Prints"
Hiroyuki Hamada's solo exhibition also is a combination of site-specific installation and exhibition. Hamada will unveil his latest sculpture of pigment resin which was slated for unveiling at Guild Hall, wrote Hamada in an email. Also on view are prints that examine the color depth quality and subtle tonalities of black and white, in contrast, made through the printing process of Piezography. Developed by Jon Cone of ConeEditions Press, the large format printing makes use of seven shades of carbon pigment black ink that are packed tightly and don't require gray to be part of the printing process. Piezography also allows for an organic and more accurate rendition of black and white tones, explained Hamada in an email.
"Hiroyuki Hamada's prints are lush drawings that use gradations of black," Strassfield said. "They are so poignant and are just beautiful."
Hamada has exhibited extensively including at O.K Harris, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, both in New York City, Roger Williams University, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, ILLE Arts (Amagansett, NY) and Southampton Arts Center (Southampton, NY) and others. A recipient of multiple grants and awards, he most recently was named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Sculpture in 2017 and 2009, received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1998 and others. Residencies include the MacDowell Colony, Edward F. Albee Foundation, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and others. To read more about his work, read "In Studio: A Haven by Hiroyuki Hamada" by clicking here. To visit his website, click www.hiroyukihamada.com.
"Hiroyuki Hamada: Sculptures and Prints" is installed in Guild Hall's Spiga Gallery. He will give a Gallery Talk on Saturday, March 10, 2018 at 2 p.m. Admission is free and reservations encouraged by clicking here.
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"B17-22" by Hiroyuki Hamada, 2017. Piezography, on archival cotton rag paper, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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"The Artist Curated Collection: Toward Abstraction" - Organized by Bryan Hunt
For the first edition of "The Artist Curated Collection," Guild Hall invited Bryan Hunt to comb through its newly digitized-in-process collection to select works that he found appealing. His selections leaned toward figuration and landscapes that mixed abstraction with realism and selected a range of artists from historic to contemporary. Featuring around 20 artworks, artists with work on view include Jackson Pollock, Grace Hartigan, Malcolm Morley, Michael Lekakis, Eric Fischl, April Gornik and others.
Hunt himself has art that's part of the collection, Strassfield said. Looking among the selections, viewers may gain insight into the creative process by examining the ways artist begin and retain representative qualities of the work's inspiration while freely allowing abstraction to play a major role, Strassfield said.
Bryan Hunt's art is included in multiple museum collections including those held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, all in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. He lives and works in Wainscott and New York City. Click here to visit his website and see his work.
"The Artist Curated Collection: Toward Abstraction" is presented in Guild Hall's Woodhouse Gallery. A Gallery Talk with Jess Frost, Guild Hall Associate Curator and Registrar of Permanent Collection, will be held on Sunday, March 18, 2018 at 2 p.m. Frost will discuss the inspiration for the exhibition series and provide insight into the art on view. Admission is free and registration encouraged by clicking here.
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"Untitled" by Willem de Kooning, c.1970-72. Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 55 ¾ x 36 ¼ inches. Gift of Ron Delsener. Courtesy of Guild Hall.
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BASIC FACTS: Three exhibitions open at Guild Hall: "Alice Hope," "Hiroyuki Hamada: Sculptures and Prints" and "The Artist Curated Collection: Toward Abstraction," an exhibition organized by artist Bryan Hunt. All three shows are on view February 24 to March 25, 2018. Gallery Talks will be held on March 10, 2018 at 2 p.m. with Hiroyuki Hamada; on March 18, 2018 at 2 p.m. with Jess Frost; and on March 24, 2018 at 2 p.m. with Alice Hope. A Guild Hall Members Reception will be held on Sunday, February 25, 2018 from 2 to 4 p.m. To become a member, click here.
Guild Hall is located at 158 Main Street, East Hampton, NY 11937. www.guildhall.org.
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