Renato Viganego and Bo Petran

A look Toward the 21st Century –

the Renaissance to abstraction to mandalas

March 7 – 28, 2020
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 7, 6-9 pm
Third Thursday Celebration: March 19, 6-9 pm
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 2-6 pm
or by appointment.
617-913-1871

 

Group show featuring artwork exploring the topic of the downgrading of the masculine role in our evolving society.

January 16 through February 22
Opening Reception: January 16, 6-9 pm
Closing Reception: February 20, 6-9 pm
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 2-6 pm
or by appointment.

December 7, 2019 through December 28, 2019
Opening Reception: December 7, 12-3 pm
Third Thursday Reception: December 19, 6-9 pm
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 2-6 pm
or by appointment.

Atlantic Works Gallery is proud to present its upcoming exhibition, “Get Well Soon,” opening on Saturday, December 7 from 12 to 3 p.m. ET. Please join the artists, Krystle Vermes and Kristen Freitas, for light refreshments and artist talks.

The monthly “Third Thursday” celebration will be held on Thursday, December 19, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. Join the artists and the Atlantic Works Gallery community to mingle and discuss the art.

“Get Well Soon” is an exploration into the state of mental health as it stands today, as well as what it’s like to live with mental illness, from the point of view of those who have experienced it first-hand. This exhibition takes a deep dive into how mental health is reflected in our culture and how it impacts our daily lives.

“My work is intentionally direct, intimate and sometimes uncomfortable,” says artist Kristen Freitas. “I tend to push boundaries and play with unconventional ideas and social norms; recently focusing on topics such as self-harm, suicide and body image and positivity. I want people to look at my work and open their minds to a new perspective and start a dialogue, with themselves and with the people around them.”

“As a C-PTSD survivor living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, it is a goal of mine to raise awareness of the prevalence of mental illness in our society today,” says artist Krystle Vermes. “I hope that through my work, I can shed light on what it means to live with a chronic illness and thrive in a world that is still full of stigma.”

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Krystle Vermes has been painting and drawing for more than 20 years. She enjoys working with acrylic and multimedia materials. Her work has been featured in publications including ArtAscent magazine, where she received the Distinguished Artist title. Explore her work at krystlevermes.com.

Printmaking, abstract painting and video are the vehicles in which Kristen Freitas shares her thoughts and ideas with her audience. In this show in particular, she is also revisiting her love of installation. Freitas believes that immersing and surrounding yourself in a body of work containing ideas and concepts that trigger your mind is an amazing feeling.

November 7, 2019 through November 23 2019
Opening Reception: November 5, 6-9pm
Third Thursday Reception: November 21, 6-9pm
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 2-6pm
or by appointment.

What happens when deserving mid-career artists decide that they want to hit the big time—the REALLY big time….as in the art world’s most prestigious biennial exhibits? For over a decade now the answer lies with the artist collaborative known as The Biennial Project. Formed by Eric Hess, Anna Salmeron and our friends, the “Project’s” objective is to develop a collective body of work that will ultimately be featured in as many biennial exhibitions as possible—especially the really cool ones.

Once again The Biennial Project is letting you in on a few of our latest endeavors in the form of a brand new show at Atlantic Works Gallery. We are calling it In Bed with The Biennial Project because so many fantastic artists from all over the world have been sweet enough, and well smart enough, to work with us, thereby getting ‘in bed with us’. We also derived the title from a piece we saw in Havana, Cuba by notorious artist and close friend Nonardo Perea entitled ‘In Bed with Nonardo’.

When you come visit the gallery you will be greeted by us actually in a real bed. Please join us in the sack. You can watch Teen Mom with us and even eat on the mattress with us.

Also at the show we will be having affordable botox by The Boston Beauty Nurse, Rachel Moloney RN, BSN who happens to be our cosmetic professional as well as that of a lot of other legendary artists. I mean you can’t find fame in the art world with out looking your very best. Your art work isn’t going sell itself!! Bring your checkbook (or Venmo app)!!

Acclaimed photographer Paul Weiner has agreed to do a limited number of artist portrait sessions using his seductive flashlight technique during the reception. We will have a stylist on call to help you into the most fabulous yellow attire supplied by us. The flashlight photos he took of us in Venice, during the opening week of The Venice Biennale, will be on display as well.

The Biennial Project will also be trumpeting snip bits of some of our performance art over the past few years which will include videos of the Biennial Project Marching through The Venice Biennale in out full yellow clad glory with a petition to demand our spot in the next Biennale and our windshield washing campaign we held to ‘welcome’ the ICA to our long time neighborhood of East Boston. We will also be displaying the work we did when we participated in The 00bienal de la habana in Havana Cuba last year.

These and more art will be on exhibition at Atlantic Works Gallery by The Biennial Project for a chunk of November. Come out to the reception for fun, botox, food, photography and to ride our coattails to fame and fortune in the art world or maybe the under worlds.

 

October 5, 2019 through October 26 2019
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 5, 6-9pm
Third Thursday Reception: October 17, 6-9pm
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 2-6 pm,
or by appointment.

In Paris Stories & Sicily: It’s Complicated …, the artists are exploring their origins and how they influence who we are through stories and various places. From physical locations to the world of the invisible and beliefs, we are who we are through our experiences and stories we have heard, created or followed. In their two-person exhibition, Sandrine Colson and Diane Modica, each tell stories about places close to their heart and beliefs by taking you through a journey of imagination or reality depending on the tale being represented under their brush.

For Sandrine, her journey as a painter began from childhood influenced by her grandmother’s artistic guidance and continued through various studies, her world travels, native Provence in France and current Boston residence.  In her Paris Stories, a series of unique and original pieces of mixed media work each tell a different story about the “city of light.” Each piece – represents unique events, memories, words, and accounts of fictional or real people, past events or emotional journeys related to Paris. Each invites the viewer to let his or her imagination decides where the story goes, somewhat guided by the composition created.

For Modica, this exhibit reflects her continuing search for the connection to her family roots in Sicily. A Boston native, both sets of her grandparents emigrated from Mineo, Sicily to the U.S. in the early 1900’s. While one raised its family in Boston and the other in Portland, Maine, the two sides always remained in contact with one another.

As in previous shows, Modica mines the complex and rich history and heritage of her Sicilian roots. Sicily, a strategically located  island at the boot of Italy , survived centuries of invaders including Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians and Spanish all of whom left their mark on the island and its people. Using colorful mixed media including painting, collage, stitching, textiles and written text, she finds a visceral and visual bond of the past with the present.

 

Solo exhibition of paintings on folded paper by X Bonnie Woods

Map Fragments

Sept 1-29, 2019

Opening Reception: Sunday, Sept. 8, 4-7pm
Third Thursday party and artist’s talk: Sept. 19, 6-9pm
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 2-6 pm, or by
appointment. (781-426-5827)

X Bonnie Woods is an artist based in Boston and Berlin, Germany. Her works challenge traditional ideas about artistic materials and boundaries. She has exhibited her paintings and photos widely in the U.S. and Europe. The paintings are often map-like, and sometimes include hidden elements of language.

The newest series includes “Map Fragments,” her glimpse into the piecemeal and fragmentary way that contemporary Americans have come to view the world.

Woods paints on folded printmaking paper with Sumi, a dense black Asian ink. Large-scale works done outdoors often incorporate rain or snow. Relief printing and ink washes dominate. Her playful use of water tension, gravity, and the random effects of weather are important parts of the process.

 

Once again it’s time for the Atlantic Works Gallery Annual “Friends” Show. This summer we’ll be there for you with work by some old and some new friends, July 18 – August 24.

Please join artists and friends for light refreshments and good conversation on a midsummer’s evening.

Opening Reception: July 18, 6-9pm
Closing Reception: August 15, 6-9pm
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 2-6 pm, or by appointment.

For more information, see contact@atlanticworks.org
Telephone 617-530-0488 or, during gallery hours, 857-302-8363.

 

Opening reception: June 8, 6-9pm
Third Thursday Celebration and
Artists’ Talk: June 20, 6-9pm

The assigning of celestial bodies a reference to human experience was one of the hallmarks of our evolution. The earliest of us saw their entire worlds captured in the patterns arranged by the stars. There was nothing of chance in these configurations. To the early peoples, they were deliberately placed. It was an affirmation of sentience, the stirrings of the belief in higher powers; gods, beings other than themselves that had the power over wind, rain, darkness, light, life and death.

Both Marjorie Kaye and George Shaw compose configurations, addressing the relationship between energetic fields. Juxtaposition of color describes a certain vibration present in both artists’ works. For Marjorie Kaye this is brought about by cutting apart the shapes in infinity. For George Shaw, the subtlety of a minimal series of shapes touched by textural components lassoes and quiets the sound of the surface.

In Marjorie Kaye’s paintings there are obvious relationships between the points present in each shape. The eye follows miniature color fields, detailed dissection of larger planes. There are vortexes present within each separate shape, layering and spreading over the surface. These points channel energy, color acting as a propellant. The panels are shaped, encouraging repositories of color to interact between one end of the surface to another. Some of these works are done in multiple shaped panels. In “Dragon’s Path”, there are 21 small panels connected by their centers. Lines of continuity are contained and passed along from shape to shape. In another piece, 3 individual shaped panels are connected by biomorphic shapes containing additional forms, broken up into seemingly living entities swimming within the confines of the appointed energy field.

SHOWN: Marjorie Kaye, “Sorceress Picks Up a Conch Shell on the Beach on a Starry Night to Listen to the Ocean. If the Ocean is Right There,
Why Does She Need the Shell?”, Gouache/Acrylic Medium on Shaped Plywood, 33”X36”, 2019

George Shaw’s work is built upon his belief that the heavens and stars are incomprehensible to us. His work is constructed; within the building up of the surface are infinite planes of saturation. He believes that the vast heavens make us feel insignificant. His work strives to find a place, organizing the components of the pieces as the stars, into meaningful things or constellations. He seeks to make the heavens approachable and a way to guide himself through his earthly journeys.

SHOWN: George Shaw, “Becoming”, Mixed Media, 53.25”X13”X6”, 2019

Both Kaye and Shaw work within spatial relationships, assigning individual components as influencers of the whole. Energy fields are inescapable, providing a delicate balance in Shaw’s constructions, and a set of indelicate explosions in Kaye’s paintings. The opposing energies create a unity of tension in the conjunction of works.

Carmen Sasso: YOU KNOW IT’S COMING
Dan Hofstadter: NEW PAINTINGS

May 4-25, 2019
Opening Reception: Saturday May 4, from 6-9 pm
Third Thursday Reception: May 16, from 6-9 pm
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays during exhibitions, from 2-6 pm

Carmen Sasso and Dan Hofstadter join forces to present works that deal visually with dream, mood, and reverie.

Dan enlists a full palette of color in this show. Years ago, when giving art classes to Swedish school children, he noticed their eager response to the act of direct painting combined with simple techniques like collage, monotype, and stenciling. Similarly, in his own work, he seeks to sense the direction of a painting and ride its currents of half-conscious feeling. Though not literally collages, his paintings draw heavily on the aesthetic of collage, which has been greatly developed in Japanese design.

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For this exhibit, Carmen’s motifs are fundamental. Basic perspective, geometry, and the study of a 19th century master painter are rendered in black, white, and grey, using graphite, chalk, or paint. Human travails such as navigating a tumultuous sea or coping with a turbulent mind are dominant themes. A Jungian desire to recreate dream snippets and symbols is combined with constellations and reverence to appease the artist.

Join both on May 4 or on May 16 at the Gallery, when they will lead an open discussion on art-making.

For information or private appointment contact 857-302-8363 during gallery hours or write Dan at DHworks5012@gmail.com.

CLUTTER and There’s no reason to think…
April 6 – 27, 2019

Melissa Shook has long been beset by clutter. Every time she turns around, she’s misplaced what she was working on Since she’s always involved with three to four projects at once, this is a clever tactic devised long ago to trick her unconscious into assuming that she’s not doing anything at all. Unfortunately, the ability to produce that much chaos extends to all aspects of her life, but that’s the way it goes.

In this exhibition, Clutter, she displays archival color prints taken of various areas in her apartment. On each, she’s written the names and sometimes the significance of the objects – piles of paper, cameras and cases, books, dozens of pens for writing on self-portraits, pill bottles, clothes and shoes, pots and pans, you name it. The underlying theme seems to be – “if you are almost eighty and haven’t been able to solve this problem with a lot of therapy, enjoy it.” www.melissashook.com

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Walter Kopec

Walter Kopec has a lifelong love of language and is an inveterate collector of words, phrases, and sentences comprised completely of the letters of the alphabet that can be divided symmetrically (ie. A,B,C,D,E,H…).   There’s no reason to think… features conceptual works in which he breaks letters into parts and reassembles them to create new words and phrases.  The simple reorganization of letters can give a completely different meaning to expressions and concepts.  He invites the viewer to notice what’s left out of a message — or what’s implied. Through his word-based art, Kopec asks the viewer to think about the potential double meanings and innuendo conveyed through carefully parsed language, and to recognize that people often do not mean what they say —and, in fact, can sometimes mean the opposite.  In addition to his word-based art, Kopec will be showing recent abstract paintings and sculpture.
www.walterkopec.com

The AWG invites you to join them on Saturday, April 6th for the Opening Reception from 6-9pm

and/or East Boston’s Third Thursday Reception on Thursday, April 18th from 6-9pm at the Gallery. 

 Gallery Hours:  Fridays & Saturdays 2-6 PM or by appointment