May 27 - June 23, 2021
Visual Rhythms: Jonathan Bauch & Greg Joseph Brown
Sparkle…: Dora Frost & Nancy Staub Laughlin
On the Wall: Doggie Parade: Vija Doks
Carter Burden Gallery presents three new online exclusive exhibitions: Visual Rhythms featuring steel sculpture by Jonathan Bauch and mixed media paintings by Greg Joseph Brown; Sparkle… featuring collages by Dora Frost and pastel still life drawings by Nancy Staub Laughlin, and On the Wall: Doggie Parade featuring an installation of large-scale drawings by Vija Doks. The exhibition runs from May 27 through June 23, 2021 at 548 West 28th Street in New York City.
Jonathan Bauch
Sculptor Jonathan Bauch presents wall and freestanding steel sculptures that explore the challenges that humanity faces, both internal and external. In Visual Rhythms Bauch’s steel abstractions of buildings are skillfully constructed to question the city planners and the real estate industry as to why it seems that people of lesser means are being pushed to the margins of New York City. He asks the question, “Where is this gentrification leading?” In taming the steel, the industrial quality of the medium is tempered by the indelible mark of the human hand, resulting in sculptures that seem to defy their material with their lacy and ethereal qualities.
Jonathan Bauch, born 1940, is a New York City native, who began his artistic career as an abstract painter, graduating from Parsons School of Design and later studying at New York University and the School of Visual Arts. Following the need for more interaction and movement in his work, his artistic focus evolved from painting to sculpture in the late 1960s. In addition to exhibiting in both solo and group exhibitions in New York City and New England, Bauch has been the recipient of grants from the Joan Mitchell, and Adolph and Esther Gottlieb foundations, and has taught welding steel sculpture at the Educational Alliance. In February 2014 he curated and exhibited in Omens of Climate Change, at the Westbeth Gallery. Jonathan Bauch continues to create work and reside in New York City.
Greg Joseph Brown
In Visual Rhythms Greg brown presents mixed media pieces from the series Pod Paintings, where he explores spontaneous but minimal line compositions with bulbous shapes defining their ends. Interacting, almost dancing with each other, the paintings are meant to be awkward but expressive. In contrast to hard-edge minimalism, with exacting design, the clumsy artist’s hand evident in these paintings exudes a playful personality. However, with specific use of color, shape, and composition they are serious design. Pushing the language of minimal design further, Brown adds torn tissue paper, paint drips, and hybrid cartoony mechanical elements to the organic whole. These works are meant to be animated and joyful.
Greg Brown, born in Reno, Nevada, received a BA with a focus on animation and film editing from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema, earned a BFA from Pasadena Art Center, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Working as a scenic artist and set painter at ABC-TV studios in Hollywood, he painted sets and backdrops for sitcoms and award shows, like the Grammys, American Music Awards, and Muppet Specials. Brown has shown in exhibitions in California and New York, including shows at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); Flow Ace Gallery, Santa Monica; and Paula Allen Gallery. He volunteered at the Los Angeles Braille Center and began collaging tactile and sensual material into his painting. In 1993 he moved to Brooklyn where he showed at White Columns, and helped establish a video and digital media lab at Skowhegan. In 2020 Greg Brown had a solo show That Warm Fuzzy Feeling . . . at The Yard - Flatiron South, as well as curated and exhibited in the Spring Break Art Show. In the Spring of 2021 he has a solo show at the Shelter Gallery in Lower Manhattan.
Vija Doks
Vija Doks presents a thirty-foot painting on paper entitled Doggie Parade which was created throughout the past year. This work was inspired by the artists daily walks through the city where she would encounter dogs on the sidewalks. With the owner’s permission, Doks would photograph them and then return to her studio where she would render them on black gessoed paper, creating a procession of dogs that emerge in luminous white, creating a striking contrast between subject and background. Doks states, “I took my inspiration from the streets, where dogs form their own parade, from the quirky to the majestic. The pandemic has only amplified their place in the landscape. This parade ushers in rebirth and the opening of the city.”
New York-based artist Vija Doks was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany of Latvian parents. She grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan and received a BA from Western Michigan University. Relocating to New York City in 1976, she received a MS in Library Science from Columbia University and worked as a Law Librarian until her retirement in 2016. Doks pursued her art career starting in the 1990s, by taking courses at the School of Visual Arts where she studied under Nancy Chunn, Georgia Marsh and Judith Linhares. Her works showcase the diversity and beauty of animal life, and emphasize their fragile position in our present man-made environment. Her exhibitions include a solo show at the Brooklyn Parsonage Latvian Center, NYU's Small Works Shows curated by Ronald Feldman and Richard Witter, Exit Art, CurateNYC, Hudson Guild among others. Her painting Red Ibis was featured in the 2012 movie, The Oranges. In addition, Vija has published Letts Eat: A Latvian Cartoon Cookbook and her writing has been published in Paragraph and Law Lines.
Dora Frost
In Sparkle… Dora Frost presents several colorful dynamic collages inspired by literary imagery and nineteenth and twentieth-century romanticism. Frost takes much of her subject matter from Marcel Proust to Freddie Mercury and infuses it with her own twist producing a fanciful and magical world. When speaking about her passion for art-making, Frost states that it is "an inquiry into the nature of reality". Her works is based in recurring interests in "illustration of the written word or of interior kingdoms" and "painting and drawing from life."
Dora Frost was born in Manhattan, New York in 1951 and studied at the Parsons School of Design from 1969 to 1973. For the last three decades, Frost has created paintings, collages, and installations, born of literary imagery and nineteenth and twentieth century romanticism. Dora Frost has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions and can be found in the collections of major collectors of the twentieth century. Her recent solo exhibitions include "Men of The Twentieth Century" at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach, FL, "X Contemporary Art Fair, Pamela Willoughby" at Art Miami Basel, FL, and "Peonies" at Gallery 20/20 in New York, NY.
Nancy Staub Laughlin
Nancy Staub Laughlin presents pastel still life assemblages in the exhibition Sparkle… The work is dynamic and layered, and juxtaposes photographs and pastel drawings of jewels, beads, sequins, flowers, and landscapes. With these elements tiered on multiple fields, they envelope the viewer, playing with the balance of nature versus glitter. Laughlin states, "I am still fascinated with immersing the viewer into my glowing, dazzling world of color, light, dimension and beauty. All my assemblages have the ability to keep you in these perfect worlds."
Nancy Staub Laughlin is an accomplished pastel artist and photographer, who has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Moore College of Art, in Philadelphia, PA. Nancy Staub Laughlin has exhibited at Newhouse Gallery and Noho Gallery in New York City and has been recognized and honored in New Jersey where she had a one-person exhibition at the New Jersey State Museum along with being included in the permanent collection. She has most recently exhibited at Noyes Museum, New Jersey, Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters in New Brunswick and at the View Center for Arts & Culture in Old Forge, New York. Her work has been written about and reviewed in the New York Times, City Arts, Gallery/Studio Magazine, Star Ledger, and Trenton Times, among others.
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