The Art Scene: 02.12.15
Pioneer at Watermill Center
The Watermill Center will present a special workshop introducing the work of Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990), a revolutionary Polish visual artist and theater director, on Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. An artistic pioneer and chief influence on Robert Wilson, Kantor gained international acclaim for defying theatrical convention in the 1960s and ’70s.
Bogdan Renczynski, a multi-disciplinary artist and actor trained by Kantor in Krakow, will lead the movement-based seminar. The class will begin with a screening of Kantor’s last production, “Today Is My Birthday,” followed by exercises examining text, action, and performance. Attendance will be limited to 40 participants. The center suggests a $15 donation. Reservations, which are required, can be made at watermillcenter.org.
New at RJD Gallery
“A Curious and Wonderful Bewilderment,” an exhibition of new works by Margo Selski, will be on view at the Richard J. Demato Gallery in Sag Harbor from Saturday through March 15.
Ms. Selski’s paintings draw on the styles of Flemish painting and 19th-century society portraiture. Though they appear mannered, they are in fact autobiographical, drawn from “my own Southern Gothic childhood in small-town, lower-middle-class Kentucky,” according to the artist.
Her technique produces a classical look, but by less-than-classical means. For example, the craquelure, or cracks in the surfaces of the paintings suggesting age, are in fact achieved by a complicated process devised by the artist.
Working Artists at Markel
“#working,” a group exhibition organized by Maeve D’Arcy, a New York artist, is on view at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts through Feb. 25. A reception will take place Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m.
The show includes work by 16 contemporary artists, three of whom, Scott Gibbons, Carly Haffner, and Grant Haffner, are from the East End.
The exhibition explores what it means to be a working artist in today’s art world. According to Ms. D’Arcy, “The title references the relevance of social media and branding oneself within the art world and suggests that the process of making work and presenting/showing it to an audience is a multifaceted task.”
The gallery is open Fridays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Perle Fine in New York
The Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea will hold an opening tonight from 6 to 8 of an exhibition of work by Perle Fine, an Abstract Expressionist painter who lived in Springs from 1954 until her death in 1988. The show will remain on view through March 14.
While in her teens, Fine moved from Boston to New York to take classes at the Art Students League. She subsequently studied with Hans Hofmann who, along with Piet Mondrian, influenced her work during the 1940s. She was a friend of Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, and Franz Kline, among others, and was one of the first female members of the Club.
It was Krasner who suggested she move to Springs, after which her work changed. On a visit to her Red Dirt Road studio, de Kooning observed that her abstract forms reflected the trees and landscape around her.
In addition to 22 paintings, the exhibition will include works on paper from the 1940s through the 1970s, and several paintings from the “Cool Series” of 1961-63, which reflected the rise of Color Field painting and a widespread move away from the angst of the 1950s.
Reception at Vered
Vered Gallery in East Hampton will hold a reception Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. to celebrate the opening of “Bert Stern: Marilyn in the Hamptons” and the closing of Haim Mizrahi’s “Hope in the Shield of David.” The Stern exhibition will include photographs from his 1962 sessions with Marilyn Monroe, including “Blue Eyes,” at 72 by 72 inches his largest photograph.