The Art Scene: 04.11.12
Rolph Scarlett’s Geometrics
Beginning next Thursday, Lawrence Fine Art in East Hampton will present a retrospective of the work of the American modernist painter Rolph Scarlett through May.
Scarlett was a geometric abstractionist who shared affinities with Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Joseph Stella. His varied stylistic career explored Cubism, Biomorphism, Abstract Expressionism, and Surrealism. According to the gallery, the artist worked with Jackson Pollock and also produced drip paintings.
Freilicher at Tibor de Nagy
“Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets” will open at the Tibor de Nagy gallery in New York City on Saturday. It will include Ms. Freilicher’s signature works, often views out her windows in the city and Water Mill, the latter with Mecox Bay in the distance.
The exhibition coincides with National Poetry Month and will highlight her relationships with the poets she befriended in the post-World War II years in New York.
Just as there was a New York School of painters, a similar group of poets, including her friends John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler, became known as the New York School of writers. According to the gallery, Ms. Freilicher was in many ways a catalytic and consequential presence, although her work was not directly collaborative with them. She served more as a muse, prompting O’Hara to go so far as to write a series of “Jane poems” that used her name in the titles.
The show will explore this relationship in depth. Works on view will include her drawings of poets, many exhibited for the first time, in addition to letters, films, book covers, and photographs. The exhibition will be on view through June 14.
Seeing Semmel Double
Joan Semmel, whose recent work is on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through June, will also have work shown at Alexander Gray Associates in New York City beginning Wednesday and running through May 25.
The show will include recent paintings and mixed-media collages from the late 1970s and early 1980s to “provide insight into her experimental representation of the female body.” The works “investigate color and flesh in explorative, intimate compositions,” according to the gallery. A theme of veiling is apparent in the works, as is Ms. Semmel’s early training in abstraction.
Through these works she continues to examine “the voyeuristic culture of depicting women, redefining the role of the passive female nude in art history through radical explorations of the aging process.”
Spring Show at Xavier
Salon Xavier will have a spring art exhibition to benefit Hurricane Sandy relief efforts and the Sag Harbor Food Pantry, with a reception on Saturday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Artists included in the group show are Adriana Barone, Lane Berkwit, Marcia Ciriello, Rick Gold, Maryann Lucas, Kenna MacKay, Lindsay Morris, Jill Musnicki, Jonathan Nash Glynn, Dalton Portella, Ann Stewart, and Kevin Teare.
Markwith at Ille Arts
Ille Arts will present a solo show of Alex Markwith’s recent work at its Amagansett gallery beginning Saturday with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m.
Mr. Markwith, who works in Montauk, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a bachelor’s degree in painting in 2011 and has been showing ever since. He uses found materials to make work that is often three-dimensional but still designed to hang on a wall. His manipulations include cutting up material and gluing it to a support and adding paint or other materials.
Grigoriadis’s “Strokescapes”
Accola Griefen Gallery in New York City has “Mary Grigoriadis: Strokescapes 1970s-1980s” on view beginning today. A reception will be held tonight from 6 to 8.
Ms. Grigoriadis, who lives in East Hampton, was a founding figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement. She layers her paint thickly to create a deep and glowing surface of brushstrokes with her own Byzantine, Islamic, and Native American-inspired icons. The exhibition will remain on view through May 18.