October 8. 2023 to November 11. 2023
Press Release International Waters, 9/24/2023
With the group show ‘International Waters’ the Wall Gallery Brooklyn brings together artists from Germany and the United States. Curated by Scott Pfaffman, the show will feature the German artists from the show ‘Atlantic’ at the Wall Gallery in 2021, Petra Flierl, Martin Colden, Gregor Wiest, Hagen Klennert and Frank Lambertz and the American artists Bill Nogosek, Richard Dennis, Anna Patalona, Chris Costen and Chad Abbley.
In any case, nationality does not matter since we are in the bigger pool of art.
Tap water, salt water, holy water, we hope you will enjoy the show.
International Waters
From:
October 8. 2023 to November 11. 2023
At:
The Wall Gallery Brooklyn
41 Seabring Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Thewallgallerybrooklyn.net
Tel: 917 974 6933
The Opening Reception will be on:
Saturday, October 7. 2023 from 6pm to 9pm
The gallery will be open as part of Red Hook Open Studios on:
Saturday, October 7. 2023 from 1pm to 6pm, and on:
Sunday, October 8. 2023 from 1pm to 6pm
International Waters
October 7-November 11, 2023
The Wall Gallery
41 Seabring Street
Brooklyn, NY
thewallgallerybrooklyn.com
The work of five American artists, mainly New Yorkers and five German artists, mainly Berliners is the
subject of the exhibition titled International Waters which opened recently as part of the Red Hook
Open Studios program in The Wall Gallery. The Wall Gallery is an artist-run space which specializes in
exchanges between Brooklyn New York and Berlin Germany. International Waters is the fifth exhibition
since the gallery opened in spring of 2021. Each of the ten artists chosen for this trip have two works on
display grouped in 10 pairs with an artist from the USA and from Germany hung closely together. Chad
Abbey’s intense geometry lands next to Petra Flier’s block print, struggling for a meaningful
relationship; the two works settle on shared shapes of dense black forms. Bill Nogosek’s fluxus inspired
drawing on a magazine page, manipulated through innumerable edits and re-edits finds Frank
Lambertz’s surreal figures in a strange ritual, similarities overwhelmed by the uniqueness of each
Author’s focus. Next we find Richard Dennis’ new painting from his Snowman series which posits an
intense painterly field, an icy witness facing a storm laden sky and facing Martin Colden’s small and
powerful calligraphic, a portent of an abstract meaning as brittle as Dennis's comic narrative. Anna
Patalano’s vigorous black and white drawing is hung like an animal hide next to Gregor Wiest’s ink
drawing, which is also black and white. The two works aspire to almost parallel figurations but collide
nevertheless as if pages torn from separate texts. Dennis’ second contribution is another episode of his
snowman’s apocalypse and hangs next to the masterful serenity of a Hagen Klennert’s landscape. The
shared subtleties seem to knit the sequence of horizons into an oblique cinematic narrative. In the next
couplet we find a drawing from Chris Costan’s Red Hook Intervention series which presents a deeply
modeled monochrome sea atop a handwritten message, as though taken from a castaway bottle. Next
to her is Petra Flierl’s sensational response through a hand colored print, a cluster of figures seemingly
washed ashore after a long voyage. On the back wall Anna Pataloano’s second contribution,
unprecedented in its effect, wildly launches a contrasting vortex upon the calm foreboding of Klennert’s
second offering, a pensive landscape populated by wonderful and subtle marks. This pairing is the
centerpiece of the exhibition and constitutes the most challenging. Motives expressed by color and scale
collide and struggle to find a reluctant compromise or at least a willingness to stay aboard. In the next
berth, Nogosek takes another turn at mapping the uncharted sea of meaning next to Martin Colden’s
second offering. This pairing provides the astrolabe for International Waters. These two deeply
committed late career artists, whose marks cannot help but convey the conviction and discipline of a
lifetime artistic voyage, are designated co-captains of this international experiment. In the next chapter
of our logbook we find the beautiful spoiled sister of Chad Abbley’s broken color grid next to Gregor
Wiest’s depiction of a lost naked seaman, who curses the shore where he has landed. Between the
two a myriad of choices represents the fragile trickery of this show’s curation. Pairs are not pairs, pipes
are not pipes. As a conclusion to these stormy couplings Chris Costan drops another message from the
deep with her pigmented pool, it is a message made more urgent by its repetition. And confirming her
urgency one finds Frank Lambertz’s small masterpiece populated with creatures from the depths of a
splendid and tragically lost imagination. But it is dreams like these that attempt to describe the voyage
to which we are all conscripted and the artists of this exhibition provide charts of those otherwise
uncharted seas.
Roger Bell
Brooklyn, NY
Note:
International Waters is open by appointment and,
The gallery will have a closing reception on Friday November 11. at 41 Seabring Street. Come help
celebrate this passage.
