Figureworks Inc. 
168 North 6th Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11211
718-486-7021
hours: Friday, Saturday, Sunday 1-6pm
or by appointment

2008 - 2010 CALENDAR

WEEKLY
LIFE DRAWING SESSIONS
Life drawing from experienced models
Short poses
Saturday from 10AM - 1PM
each session - 3 hours for $9.00

January 11, 2008 - February 17, 2008
Jorge Alvarez
(1953 - 2007)
A Retrospective

Jorge Alvarez was an accomplished artist and respected professor. Born in Medellin, Colombia in 1953, he moved with his family to New York City as a teenager. He received his Bachelor's of Fine Art in Painting and Drawing from the School of Visual Arts, NYC in 1976 and his Master's of Fine Art in Painting from the New York Academy of Art, NYC in 1995. He went on to become the Studio Manager of Evergreene Painting Studios from 1996 - 1999 executing large scale wall, ceiling, and alter pieces for numerous hotels, churches, and residences throughout the country.

In 2002, Jorge became a full time professor of painting and mural studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design. With his students, he created numerous murals around the Savannah area. In acknowledgement of Jorge's outstanding work, the college purchased three of his major oils for their permanent collection in 2006.

Jorge was a dedicated studio artist throughout his career. His commissioned portrait work was in constant demand and he was regularly preparing for solo and group exhibitions, including this last year at Figureworks and at the Red Gallery in Savannah, GA.

Jorge was a friend, artist, colleague and mentor to many and is greatly missed.

February 22, 2008 - April 6, 2008
Michael Massen
Jacquelyn Schiffman

Michael Massen exhibited his bronze sculptures at Figureworks in 2002. Recently completing his MFA in Painting at the New York Academy of Art, he is now showcasing his latest oils on canvas entitled "Quiet Paintings". With this formal training and established sculptural sensibility, each canvas presents a draped figure in an isolated state reflective of his three-dimensional works. Within each piece, richly layered grounds showcase his mastery of this medium.

Jacquelyn Schiffman has completed a new series of wall hangings and free-floating encaustic figures on spun-web polyester, the notable translucent industrial fabric she showcased in her former exhibition at Figureworks in 2003. These compositions grew out of  this series as they had begun to reach beyond their two-dimensional format. The images are based on portions of this previous work, reassembled into a combination of painting and wall relief sculpture. These fanciful images are reminiscent of cartoon characters, costumed dancers and stage performers of the 1920's.

April 11 - June 1, 2008
McWillie Chambers
painting from the male form

Ingrid Capozzoli Flinn
painting from the female form

Figureworks is pleased to welcome McWillie Chambers and Ingrid Capozzoli Flinn for their first formal exhibitions in the gallery. Many of you are familiar with their works from the Figureworks "Back Room" collection. Both these established NYC based artists are exploring gender related issues. Chambers focuses on the male form in narrative settings and Capozzoli Flinn isolates the female form in stark studio settings. In common, both sensitively personalize their subjects through body language, composition and attentive brushwork.

This series by McWillie Chambers showcase men at the beach or pool-side. Painted from photographs collected over time, he affirms the uninhibited pleasure of men lounging, conversing and frolicking in a sun drenched atmosphere. Loosely painted with a vibrant palette, this cheerful series reflect the joyous days of summer. Chambers was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1951. He received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute in 1973 and then moved to New York City to pursue his career. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions including Tricia Collins Grand Salon (1995/1997), Barbara Levy Gallery (1998,2002), Fischbach Gallery (2002), and John Davis Gallery (2007). 

Ingrid Cappozzoli Flinn 's paintings handle light in a different way. Working directly from models in her naturally lit studio, she articulates the subtle contours of the female form. Poses are often symmetrical, yet the gradient light to shadow provides a richly challenged composition that evokes thoughtful introspection into each subject. Capozzoli Flinn grew up in an Italian and Polish Catholic family in the suburbs of Detroit in the 1960's. She moved to NYC five years ago and has been working passionately and privately on this particular series, rarely exhibiting them until now.

June 6 - August 31, 2008
Bob Stanley
1932 - 1997

Figureworks is pleased to present the erotic work of pop-artist Bob Stanley from a series he executed in the late 1960's. This exhibition includes Bianchini Gallery's complete 1966 silkscreen portfolio. Original ink drawings for this series are also generously included through the Stanley estate http://estateofbobstanley.org/

Mr. Stanley defined his work from this period by limiting each piece to two punched-up colors, such as purple and red or orange and green. Solid blocks of color expose each figure while the opposing color supports details or the grounds in which they are placed. By cleverly using this technique to abstract his subjects, the sexually explicit nature of the work is much more inviting than confrontational. Bold in color and graphic in nature, this work clearly defines the sexual liberation of the 1960's.

Published in the New York Times shortly after his death on November 21, 1997, Roberta Smith commemorated the life of this artist:

Mr. Stanley was born in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1932. After attending Columbia University for two years, he received a bachelor's degree in English literature in 1953 from Oglethorpe College in Atlanta and studied art at the High Museum of Art there. Back in New York, he first worked in collage. In the early 1960's, he began to base his paintings on images clipped from newspapers and magazines, following the example of Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, who would become his brother-in-law.

Enlarged and often rendered in two equally saturated colors (red and green, for example), Mr. Stanley's images could border on the abstract or be powerfully explicit. His preferred subjects, including rock stars, sporting events and pornography, always seemed to grate against the pretenses of high art. In the late 1960's Mr. Stanley started using his own photographs, basing paintings on images of tree branches or the ground, and also using pictures of life-drawing models at the School of Visual Arts, where he was a faculty member for 16 years.

Mr. Stanley had his first solo show at Paul Bianchini in 1965 and thereafter exhibited regularly in New York City and Europe. His most recent exhibition, held last month at the Mitchell Algus Gallery in Manhattan, completed its run the day he died. His work is represented in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan; the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

September 5 - October 19 , 2008
Joachim Marx
Samasati

Figureworks is pleased to open the fall season with new paintings by Joachim Marx. Marx believes that there are still timeless human themes that ask for a contemporary image. He paints floating, falling or suspended figures in an undefined space. These are figures that are thrown into the painting just as human beings are thrown into existence, trying to comprehend their being here, trying to remember their true nature.

Still, with this seemingly haphazard approach, the formal aspects are clear: the grounds, the material qualities of the paints and their application, surfaces, textures. Often the surfaces don't seem painted. It seems they somehow happened. They suggest a space and in this space Marx places his figures. With this continuity of thought on our existence, Marx figures do not readily reveal themselves. Their union with the space beautifully compliments each composition. The technique inspires the subject matter and the subject matter inspires the technique. And it is repetition that reveals an observing and meditative approach to painting.

Joachim Marx, born 1960 in Germany, received his MFA in 1991 from the New York Academy of Art. He has exhibited in numerous shows in commercial galleries, public spaces and museums in the US as well as in Germany. German public television featured him in a 30 minute documentary called "Marx and the Culture of Contradiction" in 1993. He lives in New York City.

October 24 - December 21, 2008
Mary Westring
Barbara Zanelli
NYC Subway Series
etchings and monoprints

Figureworks is pleased to welcome back Mary Westring and Barbara Zanelli with an exhibition showcasing commuters on the New York City Subway.

Mary's approach to this familiar subject is isolated to commuter hands gripping the support poles. We passengers all find ourselves staring blankly at the poles between stops and rarely reflect on the many hands that are gripping the poles with us. Mary has taken the time to execute this fleeting moment in finely detailed and beautifully rendered etchings.

Barbara draws constantly and gets great inspiration by sketching in crowded trains. She fills many sketch books from the energy and bustle of people coming and going. This is her second series of monoprints created from these sketches. Long and narrow in format, they scan a portion of a subway car and capture that energy with quick lines and a direct gritty approach.

JANUARY 9 - MARCH 8, 2009
New York Academy of Art
2nd Biennial Alumni Association Exhibition

F. Douglas Blanchard • Claudia Butz • Dean Dalfonzo • Matthew Greenway • Caitlin Hurd • Lisa Lebofsky • Aldo Lira • Alyssa Monks • Maggie Rose • Stephen Shaheen • Daehyuk Sim • Ros Winner Sterling

Figureworks, through juried selection with the New York Academy of Art Alumni Association, is pleased to present this second biennial exhibition. Twelve accomplished alumni were selected. Graduates range from 1993 through 2006. Work includes mixed media collage by Ros Winner Sterling, drawings by Caitlin Hurd,  oils by F. Douglas Blanchard, Claudia Butz, Matthew Greenway, Lisa Lebofsky, Aldo Lira, Alyssa Monks, Maggie Rose, Daehyuk Sim,  watercolors by Dean Dalfonzo  and sculpture by Stephen Shaheen.

Each artist present strong, diverse, and accomplished work. Collectively, the beauty of this figure-based work supports the merits of the Academy and strengthens the mission of this gallery. 

Located in the heart of TriBeCa, the New York Academy of Art, a not-for-profit educational and cultural institution, is dedicated to the advancement of figurative painting, sculpture and drawing. The only graduate school in the United States devoted exclusively to the study of the human figure, the Academy fosters values and skills intrinsic to the creation of significant contemporary art. With this focus, Figureworks is honored to support and host exhibits with their alumni.

March 13 - April 5, 2009
WPA/Federal Arts Project Artists
Gerrit Hondius (1891 Holland - 1970 USA)
Benjamin Kopman (1887 Russia - 1965 USA)

Figureworks is pleased to honor WPA artists Gerrit Hondius and Benjamin Kopman with a selection of rarely viewed paintings.

Born in Kampen, Holland in 1891, Gerrit Hondius studied at the Royal Academy in The Hague. He left for New York in 1915 where he studied with Max Weber and Andrew Dasburg at the Art Students League. Hondius was also greatly influenced by the French Expressionist painter and printmaker Georges Rouault. He worked for the Federal Arts Project and his primary subjects were ballerinas, circus scenes, landscapes, still lifes, and masked figures.

Hondius had over fifty one-man exhibitions in Europe and the United States. His work was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1924-26, 1932 and 1934; the 1939 World's Fair; Museum of Modern Art; Rockefeller Center; and Graham Gallery, in the 1950s. His work was exhibited posthumously in New York City WPA Art in 1977 at the Parson's School of Design, New York City.

Hondius' work may be seen in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Art, California; Whitney Museum of American Art; Newark Museum of Art, New Jersey; Reading Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Norfolk Museum of Art, Virginia; and Provincial Museum, Kampden, Holland. His papers, sketchbooks, photographs, letters and clippings are in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Jewish-American artist, Benjamin Kopman was born in Vitebsk, Russia in 1887 and came to the U.S. in 1903 where he studied at the National Academy of Design. He was a painter, illustrator, and sculptor and exhibited widely including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Art Institute of Chicago, Pennsylvania Academy, Corcoran Gallery, and the Salons of America. He was an active member of the WPA. His illustration work included the novels "Crime and Punishment" in 1944 and "Frankenstein" in 1948.

His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Boston Museum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Kopman became a well-known "American Scene" artist.

Source for these biographies: T P LaRose, Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"

APRIL 10 - MAY 3, 2009

Promethean Images
The human figure in fired glass-on-metal
Curated by Howard Eisman

Ruth Altman/Geraldine Berg/Arlene Egelberg/Howard Eisman/Alejandro Flores Horta/Leni Fuhrman/June Jasen/John Killmaster/Maritza Morillas/Stell Shevis/Judy Stone/Katherine Wood

Figureworks is pleased to host a fired glass exhibition by renowned artists from the United States and Mexico. This exhibit is curated by noted enameler, Howard Eisman.

Each of these twelve artists bring to this exhibit their own unique method for executing fused glass on metal. Diverse works range from Ruth Altman, who incorporates vivid enameling into her stained glass panels, to Maritza Morillas, who enamels personalized images onto utilitarian objects. This is seen in her piece pictured above entitled Señora Mia (Our Lady). Morillas has enameled an iron jar and encased it in a hand painted acrylic and gilded shrine. Unusual large scale enamels include works by Howard Eisman and Alejandro Flores Horta, who has created two free standing sculptures measuring well over two feet high. Balancing the exhibit are many intimate pedestal and wall works such as those created by Stell Shevis, who just celebrated a 70 year retrospect of her work in Camden, Maine.

As enameling lends itself to color and light, this exhibition is perfectly positioned to welcome spring into New York City.

MAY 8 - JUNE 7, 2009
A.J. NADEL
STEPHEN LOMONACO

JUNE 12 - JULY26, 2009
ADOLF DEHN (1895 - 1968)

Figureworks is pleased to showcase Adolph Dehn's provocative and sensual watercolors, ink sketches and lithographs from his worldly travels covering forty years (1920 – 1960). Included in this exhibition are works done in Karlsbad, Venice, New York City, Paris, Haiti, and Afghanistan.

Dehn Biography

Irving Penn, Adolf Dehn, photograph, 1947

Dehn was born in 1895 in Waterville, Minnesota. Dehn began creating artwork at the age of six and by the time of his death had created nearly 650 images.

After high school he went to the Minneapolis School of Art, known today as the (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) where he met Wanda Gág. Later he and Gag were two of only a dozen students in the country to earn a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York. After graduation, he was drafted to serve in World War I, but he was a conscientious objector. Dehn was imprisoned for two years for refusing to serve in the military.

After the war was over, he went to Europe. In Paris and Vienna he belonged to a group of intellectuals and artists, including E.E. Cummings. A number of the caricatures he drew depicting the Roaring 20s, burlesque, opera houses, and the café scene appeared in such magazines as Vanity Fair. His favorite medium was lithography, and he alternated between spoofing high society and creating beautiful landscapes. It was in Paris that Dehn met his first wife, Mura Ziperovitch, a dancer who had left the Soviet Union.

In 1929 he returned to the United States with his wife. As the Great Depression had taken hold of the country, they were desperately poor, and their financial difficulties contributed to their ultimate divorce. In the 1930s, his work began to appear in magazines such as the New Yorker and Vogue. During his period as a lithographer, his striking images of New York City, including Central Park, captured the essence of the Roaring 20s and the 1930s Depression era.

He earned a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1939, which allowed him to travel to the western United States and to Mexico. After the Second World War he turned to watercolor and his scenes of farms and farmlands in rural America are well respected. Several trips back to Minnesota inspired many of these landscapes and farm scenes.

Dehn participated in and helped develop the American Artists Group, and it was at this group’s gallery that he met his second wife, Virginia Engleman. They worked side by side as artists for the rest of his life. In the 40s Dehn began to sell more lithographs and to teach other American artists lithography techniques. As he became more widely recognized and financially successful, he was able to travel extensively. As well as visiting and painting Key West, and the southwestern region of the United States, he went to Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Afghanistan and other areas of the world. The wide range of subject matter found in his prints, drawings, and paintings reflects his travels.

In 1961 Dehn was admitted to the National Academy of Design. He died in 1968. Adolf Dehn is remembered as a prolific artist of great range. His works are held in over 100 museums (including the Smithsonian). Astonishingly, over twenty-five museums hold extensive collections of Dehn's output (between twenty-five to as many as 250 individual works). Dehn died on May 19, 1968.

Biography provided by:
Arthur F. Jones and Steve Arbury. Adolf Dehn. Radford University Foundation Press, 2003.
Jocelyn Pang Lumsdaine and Thomas O'Sullivan. The Prints of Adolf Dehn. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987

September 4 - November 1, 2009
Rusel Parish
Cult of Michael Jackson

Rusel Parish, a Brooklyn-based artist, explores the obsession with Michael Jackson in an installation exhibited at Figureworks in September/October 2009 entitled Cult of Michael Jackson.

This exhibition presented the life of Michael Jackson from childhood to present and had been a focus for Parish over the last three years. Continuing societies endless fascination with MJ, this work does not judge the addiction but tries to understand its complexities. Presented in a chapel-like format, the work brought together pop expressionism with religious iconography and was a study of how media and cultural obsession met in a powerful way, multiplying images and ideas globally.

This exhibition was not created nor altered around Jackson's recent death but had been scheduled earlier that year to coincide with Jackson's fall world tour. With this shocking turn of events, the exhibition presented a range of emotions from celebration to sadness.

Parish’s work covers a variety of media, but the core are mixed media paintings that are built in layers of wax and resin, with broad slashing strokes of paint behind, in-between and below these transparent and semi transparent layers. This gives a haunting 3-d painted and sculptural effect only fitting for the reinventions of Michael Jackson, especially as the series covers the many altered stages of his life.

Also on display in the “vestibule” was an array of altered MJ merchandise, with both his vintage 1984 and 1995 dolls brought back to life. The dolls dubbed Wax MJ and Chocolate MJ come in a variety of colored wax and dark, milk or white chocolate candy. All the various figures are uniquely packaged and presented nude or in his iconic costumes. A full line of Parish inspired candles, stickers, shirts and magnets expose the vast array of merchandising associated with the cult figure.

Press Coverage: FOX61 - New York Post - Time Out NY - Huffington Post - Brooklyn Eagle - Brooklyn Papers - The L Magazine - The Village Voice - NBC New York - New York Blips - Art Cat - Anorak - New York Art Beat - New York Times - Animal New York - Bigger Than Beyonce - Free Williamsburg - Viral Stash - New York Times - Examiner - MSNBC

November 6 - December 20, 2009
Original Tote Bag Traveling Exhibition
The Future Figure
curated by K. Saito

This exhibition arrives from Japan where it has been on display this summer and features over 100 original tote bags made by artists from around the world, including many Figureworks artists. The tote, a humdrum daily use item, is given new life through the vision of these exceptional artists. Ecological friendliness meets bold artistic vision: the tote reborn.

Countries represented:Canada, China, Czech Republic, Ghana, Haiti, Japan, Russia, Spain, USA, Venezuela

January 8 - February 21, 2010
Meridith McNeal
In the Footsteps of the Starry Messenger

Figureworks is pleased to present In The Footsteps of the Starry Messenger by artist Meridith McNeal. The exhibition includes over 40 nib pen and ink drawings painted in watercolor, ranging from 7 inches to 7 feet, and is inspired by a seminal scientific event that changed the course of history. Some background:

In January 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei observed three very bright objects close to Jupiter. After several nights, he noticed that the pattern changed and a fourth bright object became visible.  Galileo explained there were four satellites which revolved about Jupiter and Jupiter and its satellites revolved around the sun. To Galileo, it followed that the sun must be the center of the universe.  In March 1610, he published the results of his observations in his book, The Starry Messenger.  On the evening of April 14, 1611, Galileo demonstrated his theory to the influential philosophers and mathematicians of the Jesuit Collegio Romano, letting them see with their own eyes through his telescope the reality of the four moons of Jupiter.  They were also able to read an inscription on a building three miles away. While in Rome he was also made a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the first formal scientific society founded by Prince Federico Cesi.

McNeal explains the connection of her exhibition to Galileo: “While in residence at The American Academy in Rome in spring 2009, I was working in a studio on the actual site where Galileo first set up his telescope for his colleagues at the Jesuit Collegio Romano, which was followed by a formal banquet to celebrate the occasion.  This fascinating historical link became the springboard for my exhibition, In The Footsteps of the Starry Messenger.  The work is about the people who have been in that particular space and what they have done there.  I chose to draw shoes to represent the people themselves. For source material, I stopped people on the street in Rome to photograph their shoes, made sketches in museums, and looked at shoe images in Roman advertising.  Also on view are images relating to Accademia dei Lincei,  and to my own idea of a banquet: my Roman food and my kitchen at the Academy.”

February 26 - April 4, 2010
Susan Newmark
CUT & COLOR: THE JANES
Mixed Media Collages and Artists Books

Barbarous Rituals, Mixed Media Collage Book, 8" x 9" x 1", 2009

CUT & COLOR is a series of mixed media collages and artists books based on the persona of Jane Russell, one of the first “bad girl” movie stars whose sensual omnipotent persona was a harbinger of today’s cult of celebrity. Jane’s image is appropriated from a vintage coloring/paper doll book made for little girls in combination with icons from current fashion, film, tattoo and skin magazines. An early Barbie, she works, plays, travels, sails, dresses well and socializes -- is always alluring and always in total control. But, while Jane’s gaze conveys confidence and an assertive slightly illicit engagement with the world, in Susan's work she is simultaneously struggling and unraveling, losing body parts, morphing and fragmenting or disappearing entirely into herself. It is these very human states of uncertainty, fear, anxiety and obsessive thinking that interests Susan in exploring the disparate clash of public message and personal reality. Her working process of cutting, tearing, layering, sanding and layering again with drawing and color parallels her fascination with simultaneous levels of meaning as she explores her own emotional identity and reflects upon the many contradictions of being female. This additive process with its cumulative layering of drawing, images and color creates a dense web of vision that incorporates intent, accident and improvisation. Her unique artists books are created by altering the structures of cardboard children’s books with collage and embellished glitzy spines, a reference to the encrusted jewels that adorned medieval manuscripts. These pieces become “semi-precious” containers for the reader to reflect not only on Jane’s individual body parts, but on directives that might help in our voyage through life.

This is the artist’s second solo exhibition at Figureworks Gallery. Her work has been seen in one person shows at the Brooklyn Public Library/Grand Army Plaza and the galleries of John Jay College, Long Island University and St. John’s University. She will be having a solo exhibition of artists books in 2011 at the Garrison Art Center. Ms. Newmark has been included in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, Parrish Museum, Islip Museum, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Brooklyn College, Rotunda Gallery and The Center for Book Arts. She has had residencies at the Lower East Side Printshop and the Women’s Studio Workshop and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Bio Medical Library/University of Southern California and Lower East Side Printshop. She was guest curator for Rare Editions:The Book As Art at Lehman Art Gallery and coordinates Dialogues for the Visual Arts, a conversation series with artists and arts professionals at Tribeca Performing Arts Center. She is a board member of The Center for Book Arts and on the advisory committee of Kentler International Drawing Space. Ms. Newmark was the Deputy Director for the Visual Arts and Arts-in-Education at Henry Street.

April 9 - June 6, 2010

10 YEARS OF FIGUREWORKS

Reception - April 9th from 6-9PM

Arlene Morris, "Untitled", oil on wooden box, 16" x 16" x 4"

Figureworks · 168 North 6th St. · Brooklyn, NY 11211 · 718-486-7021