The Art Scene 07.14.16
Vivien Bittencourt at Ille Arts
“Captiva,” an exhibition of photographs taken by Vivien Bittencourt on Captiva and Sanibel Islands off the west coast of Florida, will open at Ille Arts in Amagansett tomorrow and continue through Aug. 3. A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.
Ms. Bittencourt, a filmmaker and photographer, much of whose recent work focuses on landscapes in such far-flung locations as Italy and Lebanon, spent the summer of 2015 on Captiva and Sanibel, where she turned her lens on their avian residents.
In an interview in The Brooklyn Rail, she said, “There is the delicacy of their bodies, the lightness of their movements, but then there are the pelicans! Their group movements are beautiful; they are like ballets, or streets in rush hour.”
Also at the gallery, Kate Mueth and the Neo-Political Cowgirls will perform “B(e)rd,” a 20-minute theater piece examining the relationship between birds and humans, from next Thursday through July 25, with shows each evening at 7:30 and 8:30. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at npcowgirls.org.
Group Show at Firestone
The Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton will open “Mirror/Mirror,” a group exhibition, on Saturday, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will run through Aug. 3.
Participating artists include Slater Bradley, Sebastian Errazuriz, Rogan Gregory, Sven Lukin, Ryan Metke, Josh Reames, Miriam Schapiro, Mimi Smith, Adam Parker Smith, Jen Stark, Letha Wilson, and Rob Wynne.
New at Fireplace Project
The Fireplace Project in Springs will present two solo exhibitions from tomorrow through Aug. 15, with a reception scheduled for Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
“Casual Water” will include works from Maia Ruth Lee’s “Steel Glyphs” series, which consists of wrought-iron wall sculpture fashioned from decorative elements that adorn fences and window bars.
Peter Sutherland’s show, “Santa Clara,” will feature wall and sculptural works on which the artist overlays and collages his own photographs, usually taken while traveling, to make associations with Pop and cult imagery.
Harriette Joffe at Lawrence
Lawrence Fine Art in East Hampton, which has devoted its summer exhibition program to artists in their 80s and 90s, will open “Harriette Joffe: Works on Paper” with a reception today from 6:30 to 9 p.m. The show will run through July 28.
The gallery will exhibit current work from her “River Song” series, abstract works in watercolor on translucent yupo paper, some of which faintly suggest the human form, as well as earlier work going back to the 1980s.
Ms. Joffe, who had a studio in Montauk from 1970 to 1990, is one of the last links to the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, numbering among her friends and colleagues Willem de Kooning, Philip Pavia, Ibram Lassaw, John Little, and Balcomb Greene.
The Last Baymen
“The Last Baymen of Amagansett,” an exhibition of photographs by Michael Ruggiero, is on view from today through Sept. 19 at Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor. A reception will be held Sunday from 4 to 6:30 p.m.
Mr. Ruggiero, who lives in Springs, has been photographing workers in different professions, among them slate quarriers and long-distance truckers, for 25 years. Last fall, while on the beach in Amagansett, he saw baymen gillnetting with their trucks and asked if he could photograph them.
They were hesitant at first, but after several meetings and conversations, he began the project, which he plans to continue for another year. His starkly beautiful black-and-white photographs are a document of a family and a way of life in danger of disappearing.
Lecture Series in Springs
The Lichtenstein Lecture Series, a program of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, will launch Sunday at 5 p.m. with “Franz Kline and the Performance of Identity,” a talk by Bradford Collins, a professor at the University of South Carolina.
Future speakers will be Phyllis Braff, Dan Rattiner, William C. Agee, Gail Levin, and Marion Wolberg Weiss. All lectures, which are free, will take place Sundays at 5 at the Fireplace Project, which is located at 851 Springs-Fireplace Road, across the street from the center.
Lisa Breslow at Markel
Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in Bridgehampton is presenting recent paintings and monotypes by Lisa Breslow from today through July 31, with a reception set for Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
Her recent cityscapes and still lifes reveal a heightened and varied color palette, looser brushwork, and bursts of color that juxtapose nature and architecture. Color contrasts rather than lines delineate forms, and as the artist pares down each subject to its essence, her works move closer toward abstraction.
Walter Robinson in Montauk
“Objects of Desire,” a show of paintings by Walter Robinson, is on view at Melet Mercantile Outpost in Montauk through July. The show includes works from the 1980s, chiefly of stenciled and painted images based on pulp book covers, and more recent paintings. An art critic as well as a painter, Mr. Robinson was the founding editor in chief of Artnet magazine.
Plein Air Paintings at Grenning
“Marc Dalessio Rediscovers Italy” will open at the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor on Saturday, with a reception from 6:30 to 8 p.m., and continue through Aug. 1. The exhibition’s title refers to the fact that the artist, who lived and studied in Italy for 20 years, recently returned there to see and paint with fresh eyes.
Mr. Dalessio believes in working from life as much as possible. He has painted the landscapes of Fiji, Myanmar, India, Morocco, and, in the United States, from Shelter Island to Big Sur.
The gallery also reports that Ben Fenske, who shows there regularly, has been selected to exhibit his portrait “Beatrice” at the National Portrait Gallery in London in the exhibition “BP Portrait Award 2016,” which is on view through Sept. 4.
All About Water
“Water,” an exhibition of photographs by four artists, will open Saturday at the Tulla Booth Gallery in Sag Harbor with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m., and remain on view through Aug. 22.
Daniel Jones is known for his stately color and black-and-white prints of eastern Long Island. Blair Seagram brings her preference for panoramic images to bear on the East End landscape. Herb Friedman’s photographs of the beaches of the French Riviera capture the area’s color and crowds. Stephen Wilkes’s “Day to Night” series ranges from the beaches of Israel to those of Santa Monica.
Pop Paintings
Collective by Jeff Lincoln, a new gallery in Southampton, is presenting its first exhibition, “Pop Art: ‘A Catalyst for Dreams,’ Abstraction and Figuration,” through July 27.
The show includes paintings by Paul Feeley and John Wesley, both of whom take Pop Art beyond the consumer culture favored by Andy Warhol. Feeley, who was the influential director of the Bennington College art department, painted simple geometric forms in a brightly colored, hard-edged style. Mr. Wesley employs a pastel palette; his figurative subjects range from the comic to the sexual.
Art in Agawam Park
More than 60 Long Island artists will exhibit their paintings, sculpture, photographs, and mixed-media works on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Southampton Artist Association’s “Art in the Park” exhibition in Agawam Park in Southampton.
Bonac Tonic Pop-Up
A two-day exhibition of artists from the Bonac Tonic Collective will pop up at Camp SoulGrow Studios in Montauk on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., with a reception set for Saturday from 6 to 8.