The Art Scene: 03.27.14

Calls for Entries

    A sure sign of spring is Guild Hall’s annual artist members’ exhibition, which will take place from May 3 through June 7. Artists wishing to participate in the 76th iteration of the show have been asked to submit their registration cards by April 18.

    This year’s exhibition judge will be Robert Storr, professor of painting and dean of the school of art at Yale University and consulting curator of modern and contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum. Michelle Klein, assistant curator at Guild Hall, has organized the show, and Christina Strassfield, museum director and chief curator, will oversee the installation.

    Registration materials and additional information are available at guildhall. org.

    Not to be outdone, the Water Mill Museum has announced May 5 as the registration deadline for its 22nd annual members’ show, which will open on May 22 and remain on view through June 16. Full details may be found at watermillmuseum.org.

“Sammy’s Beach” in Chelsea

    An exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Connie Fox, inspired by  Sammy’s Beach in East Hampton, is now on view through April 19 at Danese/Corey Gallery in Chelsea. Ms. Fox first visited the beach with her friend Elaine de Kooning 30 years ago and still begins each day there.

    “The most significant thing I did at Sammy’s was just to be there,” she has said. “I walked, sat, looked. Most importantly, I swam.” She also took photographs, which provided the point of departure for the paintings. While resolutely abstract, the paintings nonetheless reflect the colors, movement, and light of the landscape.

    Ms. Fox first came to the East End in 1979. Shortly thereafter she met William King, the sculptor, and they have lived together in East Hampton ever since. Her work is in the collections of museums throughout the United States.

New Bartos Photographs

    Adam Bartos, a photographer who lives in East Hampton and New York, will have a solo exhibition of new work at Gitterman Gallery in Manhattan from Wednesday through May 31, with an opening reception Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Mr. Bartos turns his camera on people and places that seem ordinary, overlooked, and in some cases the worse for wear, among them the obsolete Russian space program, the aging modernist architecture of the United Nations building, and unexceptional landscapes and buildings on Long Island.

    The new photographs were taken at local speedways in rural New York, Florida, and New Mexico, where driver-owned stock cars race on quarter-mile dirt tracks and corporate sponsorship and prize money are minimal. Mr. Bartos infuses the no-frills technology of that high-speed world with a stately calm and a tinge of melancholy. His work is in the collections of major museums, among them the Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Gornik to D.C.

    April is shaping up as a busy month for April Gornik. She will travel from her house on North Haven to Washington, D.C., on April 1 to deliver the second annual James Dicke Contemporary Artist Lecture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She will discuss her dramatic landscapes, including “Virga,” which was recently added to the museum’s collection. A reception will follow the lecture.

    A solo exhibition of Ms. Gornik’s large paintings and drawings will be held at the Danese/Corey Gallery from April 24 through May 31. To top off the month, a new book, “April Gornik: Drawings,” will be published by FigureGround Press, featuring essays by Steve Martin and Archie Rand as well as an interview with Ms. Gornik. The book will be available at the exhibition opening.

Mizrahi at Ashawagh

    “Retrospectively Yours,” an exhibition of paintings by Haim Mizrahi, will be held at Ashawagh Hall in Springs Saturday and Sunday, with a reception Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m.

    Mr. Mizrahi, a poet and musician as well as a painter, immigrated to the United States from Israel in 1983. He has cited as his mentors the late Siv Cedering, an artist and writer; Kenwood Denard, a musician, and Allen Planz, a poet.

    A reading by local poets will take place Sunday afternoon at 3:30.