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Patrick Parise presents ABSTRACTIONS

(Above: Under Water by Patrick Parise. Click on image to enlarge.)

ABSTRACTIONS, the fourth annual spring show of new works by artist Patrick Parise. The exhibit will open with a reception on March 19th and continue through March 30th, 2010, with an encore reception on Saturday, March 27th.

ARTIST'S OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, March 19th from 5:00 - 10:00 PM
ENCORE RECEPTION: Saturday, March 27th from 6:00 - 10:00 PM

SHOW CONTINUES THROUGH TUESDAY, MARCH 30th
Gallery Hours: Monday through Friday, 10 AM - 7 PM
Artist's Hours: Weekdays: 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM, Saturdays: 1:00 PM - 7:00 PM; Sundays: 1:00PM - 5:00 PM
and by appointment.


(Above: Riptide by Patrick Parise. Click on image to enlarge.)

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1952, Parise has lived in Columbia, South Carolina for over 30 years. Parise’s formal training began at Bethany College, a school of fine arts in Salina, Kansas, where he studied painting under Raymond Kaymeyer, and later at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he became interested in printmaking under the tutelage of the art department’s distinguished professor, Boyd Saunders. After finishing his studio art courses at the university, rather than pursuing graduate studies, Parise purchased a Charles Brandt press and opened his own studio where he makes original prints, paints, creates sculptures, and designs custom floors, in wood or stone.


(Above: Moving Through by Patrick Parise. Click on image to enlarge.)

Parise’s work includes the traditional landscape, as well as dramatic abstract images. Abstractions is a collection of vibrant acrylic paintings on masonite panels, culled from over 150 drawings created over the last three years. It is a stunning exhibition of color, and the viewer’s eye is drawn in by the movement of line and shape within each piece. Challenging himself to produce work that appeals to his own desire to stir the imagination, and also to create a different visual impact for each viewer, Parise moves from real to surreal, soft to bold, pensive to fanciful.

The hours for Gallery 80808 are 10am to 7pm, M-F. The artist will be at the Gallery from 4-7pm weekdays, 1-7pm on Sat., and 1-5pm on Sun, or by appointment.

For more information about the show and the work contact the gallery at 803-256-6134 or contact the artist at 803-790-2136 (studio) or 803-348-7086 (cell), or through his website at www.patrickparise.com


(Above: Crossroads by Patrick Parise. Click on image to enlarge.)

Review of Anna Redwine's and Laura Spong's exhibitions

Subtle Transitions Evident in Recent Works by Redwine and Spong

BY MARY BENTZ GILKERSON From the Free-Times.

The gestural mark is an element that is equally important to both Anna Redwine and Laura Spong. Both artists use mark-making to record the internal as well as external act of seeing. Solo exhibitions of their work, Anna Redwine: Frauenau and Laura Spong: Renovations, were recently on view as part of an if ART production at Gallery 80808. Though the show closed March 2, Redwine and Spong are active local artists whose works will surely be seen again in the not-too-distant future. Anna Redwine, Junkboat (2004) Redwine’s current work is spare, monochromatic and almost Zen-like in its economy of line and use of the negative to define the positive. Frauenau Paintings gives viewers insight into the development of the current body. Back in 2004, Redwine spent a week in Frauenau, Germany, at the international art workshop Bild-Werk where she worked with Czech painter Pavel Rouchka. The experience turned out to be pivotal in the development of her work. Bad weather forced her to work indoors on the only materials at hand, large sheets of gessoed paper and watercolor crayons. The end result is a body of 26 works on paper that are informed by memory and experience. The quick, lively marks sometimes form a recognizable image, sometimes not. The limitations of time and materials led her to explore the voids and empty spaces in a drawing as critical elements in a composition. Lily might have a descriptive title, but the piece is totally nonobjective. The composition is constructed of vertical bands of subtle color with a single band of intense red. Redwine uses color in the same sort of meditative, intentional way that she uses value in her current work. Cutting across these motionless bands is an organic stroke of white that activates the whole space. In this body of work she has begun to distill the marks that she uses to describe her subjects down to their fundamentals. A simple horizontal band of black at the top turns the white area below into the depths of a pond in Frog. The figure of the frog is barely more representational than the white mark in Lily. The shape could just as easily be read as simple oval and line. Several dry-brushed lines indicate the powerful movement of the creature through the water. This piece in particular segue into her current work. Laura Spong’s new work in Renovations has some subtle but substantial differences from her last show a year ago. There is a transition in the way that she structures the work, the color choices that she makes and the mark-making systems she uses. At The Banquet The Skull Grins (2009), one of the earlier pieces in the exhibit, is a dark piece both literally and figuratively. Although deep, intense blues and umbers swirl across the picture plane, the bottom of the composition is much more contained than in most of her previous work. In fact, the shape is contained enough to be read as a table filled with objects. In the upper right corner is a grinning mouth full of teeth, the skull of the title. In the historical tradition of vanitas or still-life painting, she has created strong reminders of the ephemeral nature of life, of the ever present cycle of abundance and endings. Spong says that events in her life affect her paintings and describes the impact of her house renovations as discombobulating. While the energy reflected in her work has certainly shifted, it seems anything but confused or disordered. By the beginning of this year, in pieces like Untitled, her palette changes to lighter, more intense colors. The marks in this painting are mostly centered on the form in the middle of the composition, as if the table from the previous piece lightened and rose. Warm, intense reds and yellows anchor the dark blue form against the surrounding light blues. Frauenau Paintings and Renovations give viewers a chance to compare the work of the two artists and their use of the mark. But the two shows also provide a window into the ways artists transition and change, sometimes making subtle and incremental shifts, and other times making sudden leaps.