With all of the reports of violence, loss, and hatred this year, from within and without, we can't blame galleries for being elegiac in their presentations. This is true even at a time of year when we might want to celebrate despite it all.
Perhaps that is why Tripoli Gallery's "Thanksgiving Collective" will be resonant and welcome after the year-end bacchanalia of 2023, as we begin a divisive, dysfunctional, and potentially disastrous election year.
The exhibition, a 19-year tradition now, has the subtitle "The Side Door to Glory and Oblivion." It has a somber and contemplative tone as it features artwork that addresses existential angst and musings on death and other transitions.
Tripoli Patterson, the gallery owner and curator here, said the show was inspired by a quote from Ashley Bickerton, an artist he knew and showed who died from A.L.S. in 2022. He chose artists for the large group showing in the 2,400-square-foot exhibition space in Wainscott who "conceptually honor the passing from one realm to another, whether spiritual, emotional, physical, or psychological."
There are no concrete rules for how Mr. Patterson puts the show together every year. There are many gallery artists in this one, which indicates that he had some specific pieces in mind through previous encounters with them in the artists' studios.
Despite that, he said Katherine Bernhardt made her new "Chicken McNugget," in acrylic and spray-paint, in response to his curatorial statement. The subject looks like an even more wizened E.T., but the unmistakably golden arches set the action in a specific place. The painting emits a queasy feeling, and the possible cigarette butts around the subject's head suggest a linkage of junk food to other deadly health threats. The fiery palette seems to jump off the wall in the company of the somber tones around it.
Sally Egbert similarly works in high-keyed color arrangements, but here they are darker, less exuberant, even in their richness. Both feature floral subjects, and like others with still-life imagery in this show (Jerry Wilkerson's apples and pears, for example), they underscore the transient nature of things in their depiction of items plucked or otherwise removed from their life force. While still pretty, they are in fact dead, and imply that someday we will be too.
Miles Partington's animal stand-ins for humanity's quirks and follies are always a delight to behold, even when they are sad and brooding, like the dramatic eight-foot-long right whale sculpture that hangs high off the ceiling of the gallery. His painted raccoon reads a Redon monograph with the painter's black-and-white photographic portrait on the back cover and a characteristic Symbolist painting on the front that also features black-and-white contrasts similar to the beast's coloring. Apparently raccoons reading are kind of a thing, but the trippiness of the image emphasizing its Surrealist roots is satisfying enough on its own.
Mr. Partington's "Icarus" is frank in its composition and theme, and requires little translation. Similarly, Judith Hudson's "Footsie Stoned," in which a female figure appears to be going sole to sole with a skeleton, gets its message across with minimal fuss.
It's a generous exhibition, keeping the number of participants down in order to give each work its own moment. Mr. Patterson allows Lee Jaffe's "Impact" more than 10 linear feet of wall space, with nothing hanging above or below, even though the consecutive black-and-white photos from a 1971 performance with Vito Acconci are only four inches high. It is, however, a centerpiece of the exhibition, its conceptual nature something the curator wishes to hang his hat on, as he notes that the piece "speaks the most clearly to the uncertainty of time."
Other recurrent themes are the orb and the void. With ethereal and contemplative contributions by Mark Cora-Mooroom Bungaree, whose "Wind Dancers" are suitably spectral, and Bryan Hunt, whose urethane "Shell:lake" has an attractive concave aqua transparency that also suggests a trap or a portal. Esther Ruiz's "Well" is shallow enough in dimensions to be taken off the wall and used as a tray, but the paint, neon, and other elements allude to something deeper and unfathomable. Sue Carlson's orbs and moons glow white against deep azure night skies.
The abstract painters in the room, primarily Mary Heilmann and Connie Fox, offer black and subdued tonal canvases with ponderous titles like Ms. Heilmann's "Psychic Clouds" and Ms. Fox's "High Place." They appear to capture some essence between the physical world and other more spiritual realms. Lucy Winton, whose work is figural in nature, has a canvas that embraces classical mythological themes, and settings befitting immortals.
There are quite a few other artists, mostly singular in their themes and practices, but all are worth seeing in this context or contemplating on their own. The show is up until Feb. 26.
