Black History at RJD
In celebration of Black History Month, RJD Gallery in Bridgehampton will open “A Time and Place: Layers of Black History” with a reception on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. Featuring works by four artists, the show will run through March 16.
Jules Arthur’s mixed-media portraits of African-Americans incorporate wood panels, fabric, brass hardware, gold leaf, and vintage objects that relate to each figure, among them tailor shears, a trumpet, and a coffee grinder.
Stefanie Jackson’s paintings address critical events in African-American history, including the Atlanta Race Riots and Hurricane Katrina. Her densely populated canvases reflect the influence of surrealism and African-American literature.
Dean Mitchell’s art derives primarily from African-American culture. A New York Times review called Mr. Mitchell “a virtual modern-day Vermeer of ordinary black people given dignity through the eloquence of his concentration and touch.”
A Jamaican artist who studied at the New York Academy of Art, Phillip Thomas engages issues such as gender, race, class, and colonialism. His paintings reflect his view of Jamaican culture and challenge some of the stereotypical presumptions about the country.
Robert Giard, a photographer who lived in Amagansett from 1974 until his death in 2002, is perhaps best known for “Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers,” published by MIT Press in 1997. Among his subjects were Edward Albee, Adrienne Rich, Allen Ginsberg, and Michael Cunningham.
The Leslie-Lohman Museum in SoHo is showing “Uncanny Effects: Robert Giard’s Currents of Connection,” an exhibition organized by Ariel Goldberg and Noam Parness that highlights the expansiveness of his photographic practice, from nudes to still-lifes to landscapes, as well as portraits of activists and artists.
According to Jonathan Silin, Mr. Giard’s life partner, “The curators have done lots of archival research about our life on the East End . . . especially the early days of the East End Gay Organization.” The show will continue through April 19.
“Artists of the Ross School: A Faculty Exhibition” will open at MM Fine Art in Southampton with a reception on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. and remain on view through March 15. The show will include work by Jennifer Cross, Daniel Donovan, Chris Engel, Lutha Leahy-Miller, Alexis Martino, Jon Mulhern, David Slater, Ned Smyth, and Sherry Williams.
An exhibition of new paintings by April Gornik will open Thursday at the Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and run through March 28. Ms. Gornik’s luminous landscapes transcend the conventions of the genre, being inspired as much by memory and imagination as by reality.
As Phyllis Tuchman, an art historian and curator, has observed, “The places she depicts seem far away, physically as well as metaphorically. Whether she has visited these wondrous settings . . . or only seen them in her mind’s eye doesn’t matter in the end. With color and canvas, she has transformed remote sites into haunting images.”
