Concurrent solos by KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN and ASTRID KOHLER presented by Morton Fine Art & *a pop-up project at Gallery B

 

KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

Echoing Green

April 3 – April 27, 2019

 

ASTRID KOHLER

Conflux

April 3 – April 27, 2019

 

Opening Reception

Friday, April 5th from 6-8pm

 

EXHIBITION LOCATION

Morton Fine Art at Gallery B

7700 Wisconsin Ave, Ste E

Bethesda, MD 20814

 

HOURS

Wednesday – Saturday 12pm – 6pm

 

 

KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN, Leaves into Birds, 2019, 60″x36″, acrylic and sumi ink on stretched paper over canvas

 

 

About Echoing Green

My work’s abstractions arise from the subjects I portray: ecological and geological cycles, processes of chemical corrosion and natural efflorescence. With roots in traditions of Chinese landscape painting, my monumentally sized paintings and installations evolve a fantastic, abstract vision of the natural world. My latest work confronts the challenge: the resuscitation of landscape painting in a world where “landscape” is represented and defined through an ever-widening field of digital, graphic, and visual forms. How can a painting capture flux, abundance, waste, fertility, and the collision and collusion of diverse forms? How can it respond to the pressure we place on our era’s fragile ecosystem? My paintings explore both questions by sustaining tension between what is artificial and what is natural, between what is chemical and what is biological, between organic and inorganic. The paper on which I paint is not only a recognition of a tradition of Chinese painting; it is also a medium of vulnerability and expansiveness, susceptible to crease and tear as well as to collage and collation. My own role in the creation of the paintings strikes a balance between the purposive and the protective. I trust to process, chance, and change, but I encourage, direct, and facilitate all of these. In my most recent work, I hope to live in the tradition of landscape painting, experiencing it for what it has always been: an occasion for radical experimentation and confrontation with the world, in the broadest sense of the term, that sustains us.

-KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN, 2019

 

 

 

About KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann received her BA from Brown University and MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant to Taiwan, the AIR Gallery and Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Fellowships in New York, NY, and the Individual Artist Grant, Arts and Humanities Grant, Mayor’s Award and Hamiltonian Fellowship in Washington, DC. She has attended residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Blue Sky Dayton, Vermont Studio Center, Salzburg Kunstlerhauss, Triangle Workshop, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Bemis Center for the Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Facebook, and the Jaipur, India Carbon 12 Residency. Some of the venues where Mann has shown her work include the Walters Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Rawls Museum, the US consulate in Dubai, UAE, and the US embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon. Mann is currently an instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC.

 

 

Available artwork by KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

 

 

 

 

ASTRID KOHLER, fucking Vogelkonig 2, 2018, 4.75″x4.75″, watercolor and acrylic on paper

 

 

 

About ASTRID KOHLER and Conflux

 

German painter ASTRID KOHLER combines old and new in her latest series Conflux. Artwork includes 19th century German portraits which have been over-painted with Kohler’s imaginative and playful images of perched birds and jumping baby ducks. Antique pastoral backgrounds have been layered with contemporary additions of leafy shoots of bamboo, and outlines of stylized, gold clouds.

 

Her still life paintings, some of which are layered with epoxy, are visually accentuated with dramatic pops of color, unexpected narrative elements and oftentimes contain animated wildlife. Her ten piece series “fucking Vogelkonig” features delicate birds masterly painted with a three-haired brush and then crowned with neon orange headdresses which juxtapose the artist’s incredible technical ability as a realist painter with fluid, gestural lines and attitude.

 

Kohler seeks new ways of arranging space and blending old and new to create tension for her creative inspiration. Conflux marks her first solo exhibition in the U.S. She is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC.

 

Available artwork by ASTRID KOHLER

 

 

About Morton Fine Art 

 

Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that anyone can become an art collector or enthusiast, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice.

 

Want to view artwork in DC? Come by our permanent gallery space:

 

Morton Fine Art

52 O St NW #302

Washington, DC 20001

Hours: Wed – Sat 12pm-5pm and Sun-Tues by appointment

(202) 628-2787

mortonfineart@gmail.com

http://www.mortonfineart.com

 

 

About *a pop-up project

 

Redefining the traditional gallery model, Morton Fine Art (MFA) replaces a single gallery space with two locations: MFA’s permanent fine art gallery space and *a pop-up project, a temporary mobile art gallery of curated group shows. Morton Fine Art established it’s trademark, *a pop-up project, in 2010.

New Arrivals by KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

Private Domain, 52″x53″, acrylic and sumi ink on stretched paper

 

Nursery II, 60″x36″, acrylic and sumi ink on stretched paper

 

The Fall, 45″x85″, acrylic and sumi ink on stretched paper

 

Blue Black Water, 60″x90″, acrylic and ink on canvas

 

About KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN:

“My work’s abstractions arise from the subjects I portray: ecological and geological cycles, processes of chemical corrosion and natural efflorescence. With roots in traditions of Chinese landscape painting, my monumentally sized paintings and installations evolve a fantastic, abstract vision of the natural world.

The paper on which I paint is not only a recognition of a tradition of Chinese painting; it is also a medium of vulnerability and expansiveness, susceptible to crease and tear as well as to collage and collation.

In my most recent work, I hope to live in the tradition of landscape painting, experiencing it for what it has always been: an occasion for radical experimentation and confrontation with the world, in the broadest sense of the term that sustains us.” – KATHERINE MANN, 2017

Click HERE to view available artwork by KATHRINE TZU-LAN MANN.

New Works by ANDREI PETROV

Based in New York City, ANDREI PETROV explores memory in his organic abstract paintings. His paintings probe the distortion, incompleteness and rare moments of clarity in the shadows of memory. Each piece portrays the intrinsic struggle and selective inclusion or exclusion of details in the process of recollection. At times, sharpness occurs in the rear of the picture plane while the out of focus, obscured areas, exist in a larger scale toward the foreground and make reference to the inscrutable nature of long and short term memory.

ANDREI PETROV, Exodus, 2017, 25″x40″, oil on canvas

ANDREI PETROV, Untitled 1, 20″x30″, oil on canvas

Click HERE to see more available works by ANDREI PETROV

OSI AUDU in ArtDaily

Exhibition of recent drawings by Osi Audu opens at Skoto Gallery

Self-Portrait No 1, 2016, graphite and pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 56 x 72 ins. Courtesy Skoto Gallery. 8

NEW YORK, NY.- Skoto Gallery presents New Portraits: Self in the Global Age, an exhibition of recent drawings by Osi Audu. Born in Nigeria, the artist was educated in that country and the United States. For over two decades now, he has maintained a strong professional presence in Korea, Japan, Great Britain, United States, Italy, Germany, Austria and Africa through highly acclaimed exhibitions of his paintings. His work is in several private and public collections including The British Museum; The Horniman Museum, London; Schmidt Bank, Bayreuth, Germany; The Iwalewa House, Germany, The Wellcome Trust Collection, London, The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC and Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey. His work was included in the recently concluded 2015 Venice Biennale, in the collateral event exhibition – Frontiers Re-imagined at the Palazzo Grimani Museum in Venice. This is his third solo exhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, January 14th, 6-8pm. The artist will be present. Of Selfies and Shadow play: Osi Audu’s Self-Portrait Osi Audu has the astute ability to break down complex ideas into simplified, visually appealing compositions. He has developed a unique vocabulary that emphasizes geometry, volume, tactility, and quality of the tromp l’oeil, in a career that spans nearly thirty years. Though on flat surface, his work appears three-dimensional. Solid black forms dominate the center of the picture plane. Some cast reverent shadows that taper to the edges of the paper or canvas. With voluminous architectural shapes composed of different parts but bound seamlessly by slick white lines in the new Self-Portrait series, Audu stretches the boundaries of abstraction, teasing the imagination. There is clarity of form that immediately casts a spell on the viewer. Yet Audu’s work does not give in to pedestrian interpretation. One must first acquaint oneself with the philosophy that informs his creative disposition in order to have a more meaningful encounter with the body of work. Though minimalist abstraction is a principal motivation, it is not abstraction for mere sake nor is the dualism (solids and shadows, black and grey) that is apparent in his oeuvre a mere visual device or creative flair. Both are conceptual armatures that help to advance an artistic position and the culturally-derived epistemology that grounds his work. Audu’s aesthetics draws specifically upon the Yoruba ontology of dual consciousness centered on the human head. The head (ori) is a bifurcated ensemble that best represents the intertwining of spirit and matter, mind and body. Orí inú (invisible or inner head) is the locus of consciousness, an a priori that gives substance to being. Orí òde (outer or tangible head), the physical manifestation of consciousness, is a vehicle of perception, identity, and interaction with reality. It is this dialogic imagining of beingness, of the human self, that Audu translates on white paper and canvas, using black pastel, graphite, primary colors, wool, among other media. His use of black monochrome holds pertinent symbolic value. It ramifies the cultural vicissitudes of blackness as well as outlines Audu’s position of engagement in an art world that is burdened by a historical legacy of excluding or de-legitimizing black artists who claim the arcane language of abstraction. In previous solo exhibitions at Skoto Gallery such as Osi Audu: Ile Ori/Ori Ile (House of the Head/Head of the House) in 2006, the head is addressed as a metaphor of collective consciousness. Audu explores the head as a cognitive altar that dictates the cycle of life and human responses to existential conditions. Conversely, the current exhibition titled New Portraits: Self in the Global Age focuses on the autonomous self, shifting emphasis from collective consciousness to the singular being as unit of sensation. It comprises of eighteen works from the ongoing Self-Portrait series. They push Audu’s fastidious formalism, complex forms, and geometric abstraction further albeit in a different direction. Conceptually, one might speak of them as selfies, those totems that feed the narcissist cult of the individual, very symptomatic of our contemporary world. Yet we are admonished not to think of the works as portraits in a physiognomic sense. Instead, they are reflections on the ways in which the individual negotiates his/her being in the world. Following Maurice Merleau-Ponty, they are the artist’s attempts to distill perception, by relating and piecing together the spectacles of his own world in relation to the world at large. It is the interior-self that forms the basis of rootedness; the source of identity and personhood. As such, Audu casts his gaze inward, to his Orí inú, the seat of consciousness where memories also reside; reconciling it with his Orí òde, the vessel that bears out his past and present experiences, of growing up and studying in Nigeria, living in the United Kingdom, and current domicile in New York. Altogether, the works capture Audu’s attempt to find himself in a teleological world that is mediated by relations. Ultimately, what lies at the core of this new body of work is a phenomenological awareness of being part of a globalized reality, marked by changing conditions, cultural exchanges on a planetary scale, and a network of disjunctive and constitutive references. Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi Artist, Art Historian, and Curator of African Art Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

ANDREI PETROV’s “BC/AD” opens at Morton Fine Art Friday 3/27/15

B.C. / A. D.

Nature-based Abstract Oil Paintings by ANDREI PETROV

Friday, March 27th – April 16th, 2015

OPENING DAY RECEPTION 

Friday, March 27th, 6pm-8pm

Artist will be in attendance.

About ANDREI PETROV:

In his exhibition “B.C./A.D”, NYC-based artist ANDREI PETROV roots his latest series of paintings in memories of a journey to Europe made nearly 2 decades ago. He emphasizes the importance and immediacy of naked observation which resonated through his senses first-hand and created a strong memory of place.  He challenges viewers to recall ways of seeing which favor the live experience rather than an instant snapshot, juxtaposing a time 20 years ago which was “before cellphones” and the distraction caused by “another digital set of eyes”.

“The production of a painting begins with a pencil or ink drawing on paper which I extrapolate from and edit as I work the canvas. First with pencil or charcoal and then with color washes done with acrylic or ink, I map the raw canvas and allow it to be ingrained with the materials. Once satisfied with the composition and balance, the surface is sealed with a clear acrylic so as to allow the use of oil based pigments. Handmade tools are used to drag, apply, scrape and blend the paint across the canvas plane. Sandpaper and rags also propel the evolution of the work. The addition and subtraction of paint are meant to act as a metaphor for the intentions and motives for which the paintings are based.” – Andrei Petrov

Contact Morton Fine Art for artwork availability. http://www.mortonfineart.com, (202) 628-2787, mortonfineart@gmail.com

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NATALIE CHEUNG’s “Facsimile” opens Friday, March 27, 2015

Facsimile 

Alternative Process Photographs by NATALIE CHEUNG

Friday, March 27th – April 16th, 2015

OPENING DAY RECEPTION 

Friday, March 27th, 6pm-8pm

Artist will be in attendance.

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EXHIBITION LOCATION

Morton Fine Art (MFA)

1781 Florida Ave NW (at 18th & U Sts)

Washington, DC 20009

HOURS

Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm

Sunday 12pm-5pm

About NATALIE CHEUNG:

 

NATALIE CHEUNG‘s “Facsimile” series investigates recurring forms and images throughout nature and art history. Her alternative process photos, known as chemigrams, are formed by utilizing traditional darkroom materials to obtain a chemical reaction between the silver gelatin paper, chemistry and light. These captured patterns mimic the pattern and order found in nature.

Born in Falls Church, Virginia, NATALIE CHEUNG received her MFA in Photography from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and her BFA in Photography from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Art Houston and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. CHEUNG has taught at George Washington University as well as the Corcoran College of Art + Design and Temple University, Tyler School of Art.

ANDREI PETROV reviewed in the Washington Post

In the Galleries: ‘Syria: Sacred Spaces. Ancient Prayers,’ ‘Sedition of Sound,’ ‘Pure’

By Mark Jenkins, Published: April 18

 

Andrei Petrov, Redemption Song, 48″x30″, oil on canvas

 

Andrei Petrov

Like the mid-20th-century abstract expressionists, Andrei Petrov attempts a pictorial equivalent of music. But where the usual preference was jazz, Petrov’s “Sedition of Sound” was inspired by Delta blues and 1960s protest songs. The New York painter writes that his show, at Morton Fine Art, reflects “the shifting moods and sentiments captured in those recordings.”

The colors and textures in Petrov’s paintings shift, although usually over a steady visual beat. Typically, his pictures emphasize a vertical pattern, something like a wood’s grain. Over that matrix, the artist adds splatters, rough circles, contrapuntal gestures and areas that simulate tears in the canvas. These may represent another of Petrov’s themes, “the distortion, incompleteness and rare moments of clarity in the shadows of memory.”

The artist employs both addition and subtraction. He builds up layers of oil paint over pencil and charcoal drawings, and ink and acrylic washes, yet later rubs and scrapes pigment from the surface. Most of his pictures feature a wide array of hot hues, often in gushes or glimmers than suggest lava or sunlight. Some of the show’s most striking compositions are more limited in color, whether to black, white or gray or the blue, white and orange of the vast “Theoretical Geography.” Whatever it represents, subtraction serves Petrov well.

Sedition of Sound: New Paintings by Andrei Petrov On view through April 22 at Morton Fine Art, 1781 Florida Ave. NW; 202-628-2787; www.mortonfineart.com.

Andrei Petrov, Piece of My Heart, 24″x47″, oil on canvas