The Art Scene - 05.12.11

Steve Haweeli at Outeast

    Steve Haweeli’s paintings are on view in a solo show, “Excavations,” at the Outeast Gallery in Montauk.

    The dominant themes of the 20 works on display are saltwater seascapes and crosses. The artist, who is self-taught and known to the East End and much of Long Island as the president of WordHampton Public Relations, uses layers of oil paint, oil stick, charcoal, and acrylic paint in his canvases. Highly symbolic, they are inspired by Mr. Haweeli’s varied history of occupations, including gravedigger, linguist, actor, seminarian, barman, wordsmith, and entrepreneur.

    The show is on view through May 24.

Salomon Contemporary

Shows Alice Aycock

    James Salomon will have two exhibits through June at his West Chelsea gallery beginning tomorrow.

    The exhibit “E.V. Day: Butterfly” will be accompanied by “Alice Aycock: Twist of Fate.” Ms. Aycock, who lives in Noyac, will show her new wall sculpture of the same title and drawings from her series “Sum Over Particle Histories.” “Twist of Fate” alludes to the lives one does not lead in order to follow a particular path and what would happen if one went back in time to choose a different route. These journeys may be represented with ribbons of movement — gears and blades or other signs and symbols of movement — or those compositional components could be meaningless, according to the gallery.

    The exhibit opens tomorrow with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. It will be on view through June 25.

“Faces” and “Places”

At Southampton Historical

    The Southampton Historical Museum will show two new exhibits beginning Tuesday. “Famous Faces” are portraits by Zita Davisson of celebrities such as Diana, Princess of Wales, Princess Grace of Monaco and her children, Liza Minnelli, Jeremy Irons, Gloria Vanderbilt, Nancy Reagan, and Muhammad Ali. In “Phenomenal Places,” Gary Lawrance will present architectural models of houses he designed in Southampton and on Long Island.

    The exhibit will be on view through Sept. 3.

Fischl’s “America: Now and Here” Opens in Kansas City

    Kansas City, Mo., is now home to the first presentation of the multimedia art event called “America: Now and Here,” which includes artwork, poetry, theater, dance, music, film, and discussions about the project and its themes.

    The mission of Eric Fischl, who developed the idea a decade ago, is to take the various regions and attitudes that make up the 3.8 million square miles and some 300 million people of the United States and bring them together around the idea of art. Inspired by Sept. 11 and its aftermath, the North Haven artist and a team of organizers have amassed a group of 150 visual artists, poets, playwrights, musicians, and filmmakers to make works specifically about America in the last 10 years.

    “The idea for the show is to have the works created mounted onto trailers specifically designed to convoy to different regions of the country, both major cities and outlying towns, to the local university and military bases,” he told The Star last year.

    For the past few years he has been trying to raise money to realize that vision, but has fallen short, so he will instead take the shows to existing spaces in three cities and their outlying areas over the next year. After the Kansas City presentation closes at the end the month, the show will travel to Detroit and Chicago. In 2012 the organizers expect the project to be mounted on trucks that will interlock at the sites to provide a venue in each city the show visits. The project also engages the creative community in each city, calling for works by local artists, poets, and playwrights and involving actors, musicians, and other performers and speakers.

    The show opened last week and will continue through May 28.

Jesus Matheus Visits Solar

    Jesus Matheus, a Venezuelan artist who now lives in Boston, will show his work beginning on Saturday at the Solar Gallery in East Hampton.

    Mr. Matheus works in paint, sculpture, and drawing. He uses an “abstract language concentrated on geometric form, often in very saturated color or reduced to a palette of black and white or hues of brown,” according to the gallery. The exhibit will be on view through June 20. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Munk and Panero at Firestone

    Loren Munk, an artist known for his Cubist-inspired paintings, and James Panero, the managing editor of The New Criterion, will discuss Mr. Munk’s artwork at the Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton on Saturday from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

    Mr. Munk, who is also known as James Kalm for his role as a writer and curator, combines urban imagery with historic research in his work. His most recent subject has been art itself.

    In addition to his editorial duties, Mr. Panero serves as his magazine’s art gallery critic. His writings on art and culture have appeared in New York magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes, among other publications. He wrote about Mr. Munk in February.

Pace Gallery Shows

De Kooning and Chamberlain

    The Pace Gallery is devoting shows to Willem de Kooning, who lived and worked in Springs, and John Chamberlain of Shelter Island in two of its sites in New York City.

    “Willem de Kooning: The Figure: Movement and Gesture” at 32 East 57th Street is the first show the gallery has mounted in its new role as exclusive representative of the artist’s estate. It features work from the late 1960s to late 1970s and has a catalog with an essay by Richard Shiff, an art historian. Some of the work is from private collections and rarely seen — paintings, sculpture, and drawings. The show is on view through July 29.

    The John Chamberlain exhibit, which includes sculptures from 1982 to 2008, will be on view at the gallery’s 545 West 22nd Street location through June 11. Mr. Chamberlain studied at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the 1950s and is known for his 1960s films as well as his sculpture in steel and foam. He has also used photography and painting as mediums.

Zacks and Castan

At Montauk Library

    Fran Castan and Lewis Zacks will celebrate their collaborative effort “Venice: City that Paints Itself” on Saturday at the Montauk Library.

    The festivities will begin with Ms. Castan reading poetry from the book at 2:30 p.m., followed by a reception and opening of an exhibit of Mr. Zacks’s artwork from the book. 

    The couple were inspired to write the book by an extended stay in the city, where Ms. Castan said she could imagine Robert Browning writing his poetry at his palazzo, and where Mr. Zacks said he was inspired to follow in Claude Monet’s and John Singer Sargent’s footsteps in painting the Santa Maria della Salute church.

    The event has been rescheduled from a previously announced time in the library newsletter.