Russ Havard

Phases

Represented by George Billis Gallery, NY & LA -- From Russ Havard's artist statement, "The process of endless building and reconfiguring transcends the mere physical and encompasses ...

Represented by George Billis Gallery, NY & LA -- My latest series opening at the George Billis Gallery, titled “Modern Society,” continues my exploration into midcentury architecture and design found in New York City, but focuses on the cultural centers and glamorous institutions that signaled its strength – and enchantment – in the 1950s and 60s. Covering such bewitching landmarks as Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim, and 5th Avenue stalwart Bergdorf Goodman, this series delves into how high design from this groundbreaking Modern period shaped metropolitan society and reinforced New York as a cultural capital. When viewed individually, each painting showcases an aspect of booming avant garde design, be it the Metropolitan Opera’s Sputnik Chandeliers, the high fashion displayed...

In "Holes and Slices", Peña creates a silhouette of house and fills it with bubbly curved shapes and contrasts them with sharpe-edged shapes that contain gradients and muted tones of aqueous colors such as teal and light blue. He balances these colors with muted tones of pink and violet. The viewer can create a house that is yet to be built in between the gaps here. In "Holes and Slices", Peña remarks on a house and landscape that has yet to be built. The aquatic nature seems to hint at the possibility of a house and landscape under water. The painting is created with watercolor and acrylic paint on paper. In the foreground we see Sintra board or flattened PVC that has been CNC routed. In the "soil" beneath the house are small bubble-like cut outs where the viewer can see through to the pattern created with watercolor and acrylic paint. Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment and national psyche. The realization that both the idealistic pursuit of happiness and the relevance of painting in a technologically driven world informs his practice. With each composition the labor begins with digital composites of a fragmented American landscape in peril —where tension lies in the contrasts between past and present, analog and digital, representation and abstraction, and stability and instability. In his most recent series the American home (stability) and fragmented and shifting landscape (instability) are veiled by a digitally produced mat. Traditionally a mat is, by definition, a flat, thin piece of paper based material included within the picture frame and serves as additional decoration when framing artwork. He activates this commonly overlooked material by using a non-traditional material, Sintra (flattened sheet of PVC), that has a negative digitally drawn image cut-out. This cut-out might, at first glance, look hand cut however, a more astute viewer would realize the precision is mechanical. The mat has been transformed from inactive decoration to digitally produced veil that represents the technologically anxious precision we surround ourselves with. Nick Peña...

Mixed media abstracted landscape composition on handmade paper of a town on the edge of a lake, in monochromatic orange tones with white accents, by Grace Eichholz (American, b. 1927...