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B E T T C H E R
MIAMI, December 1, 2005.As Bettcher Gallery moves into a new decade of exhibitions, we introduce the Woodstock, New York based pair (a self-described artistic), Toc Fetch and Tricia Cline by announcing Exiles in Lower Utopia, the Miami exhibition debut. The exhibit will also include on the gallery's project level solo exhibition, Marc Dennis - New Paintings. Bettcher teams up for ArtBasel-Miami Beach once again with New York gallery, Ricco Maresca, as Fetch and Cline are simultaneously featured in -scope, at the Townhouse Hotel, by their New York dealer. Tricia Cline and Toc Fetch - Exiles of Lower Utopia and Marc Dennis - New Paintings opens at Bettcher Gallery - Miami on December 2, 2005 and a reception for the artists will be held from 7PM until 11PM.A collaborative event at 55th Street Station on the part of Bettcher Gallery, Kubic, Soyka Restaurant, Cafe Cafe, the evening will feature various food and wine tastings, music, and video projection with ceramic sculpture by artist, Sinisa Kukec. A trolley shuttle to and from Miami's Design District and Wynwood will be available to those attending until midnight.
Tricia Cline was born in California in 1956. She is self-taught and began sculpting at 27. She has been sculpting the female and animal form for over 20 years. Cline's small, highly detailed porcelain clay sculptures are complex metaphors describing our relationship to animals and to ourselves as Animals. The language of animals is the language of images. An image is not an idea with a defined meaning, it is itself an animal. An image is a vortex of complex feelings and concepts that present themselves in an intuitive instant (a vertical movement of inward deepening). This Woodstock, NY based sculptor is self-taught, which shows in her otherworldly narratives but not in her remarkable technique, which looks like that of a well-trained eccentric. Her pedestal-scale, unglazed porcelain sculpture features different versions of a young Everywoman in antique clothing with a totemic animal strapped to her back bird, a giant mouse, a fox who seems to be embarked on some kind of supernatural pilgrimage.- Ken Johnson, New York Times
Toc Fetch was born in Brooklyn New York in 1953. His father was an artist and a painter and Toc has been obsessed with making art since he was a very young child, initiating his studies and training in art in 1973 under the tutelage of a direct disciple of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, Himalayas. In this series of drawings, his eighth book about Lower Utopia, Toc is describing a life's experience through the lens of non-dualism as an allegorical dream in which the heroine, River Scout Finnagain, travels through a personal mythology of realizations to finally arrive at a place where her Gods wait. Her Gods are - for now - a Wolf and a Boy. Fetch and Cline are at the very beginning of a new breed of artist who are engaged in a seriously skilled narrative-dialogue about consciousness and have chosen to both work in the most elemental of materials the simple pencil and clay. "We are obsessed with articulating consciousness, in images, as the subtext of the Real."
Marc Dennis' masterful technique and subject matter come together to create an exhibition of small to large hyper-realistic oil paintings of intimate, seductive, and often perverse interpretations of the interactions of animals, flowers, plants and other natural forces. With a light-handed use of narrative and metaphor, his style of realism in its lucid objectivity results in a type of familiar but unexpected beauty. The contexts exhibited within his paintings hint at contemporary dilemmas of everyday life, suggesting that the natural world - as a metaphor for human behavior - is filled with contradictions and complexities, but also moments of reflection and instances of wonder. The artist states, "I believe a viewer always brings something fresh and personal to a work of art. My job as an artist is to hint at something outside the picture; to prod and poke at the notions of beauty and seduction, to tug and chew at the unseen and unmeasured membrane that separates intellect from intuition, and fact from fiction, sometimes coming away with a raw piece. My art is successful when I leave my images open for a simultaneous emotional and intellectual spark." In a previous exhibition catalog, Andrea Inselmann, Curator of Painting and Drawing at the Johnson Museum at Cornell University, wrote "In his decidedly postmodern paintings, Dennis seduces the viewer to look closely by using familiar and inviting genres like still-life and portraiture to ensnare the viewer who subsequently could not resist the rich layers of emerging meaning." Of previous exhibitions, Art Papers wrote, "Using the style of seventeenth-century Baroque artists, Dennis' often surreal contexts are disorienting and forceful." The Forward wrote "His paintings offer the technical prowess and skill of old masters such as Velasquez and Caravaggio"; and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote "Seductiveness, as opposed to beauty, is at risk in Dennis’ revisionist atmosphere." Dennis' works have been displayed in various private and public collections including The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; The Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; The San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; The Nueberger Museum, SUNY, Purchase, NY; The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR; The Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; The Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; and The Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY. Tricia Cline and Toc Fetch - Exiles of Lower Utopia and Marc Dennis - New Paintings remains on exhibit and open to the public through January 18, 2006. Visitors will also be delighted by Bettcher's recently established division, FLIP which offers a wide variety of luxurious books and publications from the print houses of Te Neues and affiliates of Distributed Art Publishers. Bettcher Gallery and FLIP are located in the center of the Fine Arts District of the Biscayne Corridor and within the heart of Soyka's 55th Street Stations enclave of shops and restaurants at Biscayne Boulevard and 55 Street.Gallery hours are Tuesday: 11:00-5:00 PM, Wednesday through Saturday 12:00-10:00 PM, or by appointment by calling (305)758-7556. Bettcher Gallery is committed to facilitating, nurturing, and advocating the achievement and evolution of emerging, mid-career, and established contemporary artists in all media. The gallery embraces the artist who challenges conventional expectation in concept or design while maintaining emphasis and excellence in formality, technical expertise, craftsmanship, and originality. Digital images available upon request.
55TH STREET STATION 5582 NORTHEAST FOURTH COURT MIAMI, FLORIDA 33137 305.801.1047 |
