The Brush/Lens P R O J E C T 2017

brush-lens-postcard

The Brush/Lens P R O J E C T
Exhibition at Salena Gallery
September 5 – October 20, 2017
Reception: Thursday September 7th 6 – 8 pm
LIU Brooklyn
1 University Plaza
Brooklyn, NY 11201-5372

The Brush/Lens Project , a creative collaboration on many levels, is having its New York-metro area debut at the Salena Gallery of the LIU Brooklyn campus.

This spacious gallery on the first floor of the Library Learning Center has a wall of glass that integrates the bustling campus courtyard with the gallery interior that will feature 42 paired works of Holly Gordon’s photographic art with Ward Hooper’s paintings.

At the start of this collaboration Hooper introduced Gordon to the rugged and diverse North Shore Long Island terrain that was inspirational to his paintings. Gordon responded to these locations with a transformative body of work that went beyond the place and gave Hooper a renewed sense of purpose and vitality. A special friendship has evolved.

Gordon’s creative influence inspires Hooper to paint anew. Their interdependence, so akin to that of Arthur Dove and Helen Torr, early American abstract artists, is serendipitous….especially when added to the unwitting discovery that many of the locations they visited were the same as that Dove and Torr, who lived and worked on the North Shore of Long Island 75 years ago.

This Brush/Lens collaboration extends beyond the Long Island landscape into the new face of contemporary photography. The American artist, Pinkham Ryder compared new movements in art to the inchworm who dangles in mid-air searching for footing…for a platform on which to establish itself…and that is precisely where Gordon and Hooper are today.

Technology is rapidly changing photography, as we know it and the painting-photography relationship of Hooper and Gordon is confluential, not adversarial. Dove and Torr’s individual creative output was interdependent and while Gordon and Hooper influence each other by the nature of their relationship, their work is their own.

Exhibited works in this exhibition range in size from approximately 40×30 to 30×20 and while they share a common location, similarities and difference provide opportunity for insight into the creative process as well as pushing the boundaries of photography…as we think we know it.

This is a museum-quality scalable traveling exhibition of more than forty paired pieces created to date.

Inquiries to host this exhibition and/or accompanying gallery talk are welcomed. A book is in progress.