| Experiencing life feels like inhaling fresh air. It’s not like you take a book, read a chapter, and you’ve gained this or that. |  |
Logan Riley
The realm of invention exists in the seconds between thought, conception, and execution. It is a place where ideas come into realization, a place where artists go and play, and a place where nine artists showing at the Broadway Gallery NYC in SoHo are drawing back the curtains and giving us a sneak peak with paint, photography, collage, and all kinds of different materials.
Beatrice Burel, Gonzalo Ferrer, Fredrik Flink, Francois Geffray, Stefania Mainardi, Nazim Mehmet, Petra Nimtz, Catherine de Saugy, and Marija-Tanaskovic Papadopoulos have brought the revelation of creativity to the walls in Ream of Invention, curated by Christina Zhang. These nine explore those explosive moments at the beginning of artistic creation. Each artist brings a different vision to the same moments—visions born in the same space, but infinitely different.
The combination of materials—whether it be dealing with images, sounds, or all forms of matter—is enough to spark creativity, to birth an image or idea that quickly fleshes out into form. With her epic diptych, French artist Beatrice Burel contemplates an arena of swirling, vibrant colors that transcend the boundaries of the canvas—forming a painterly surface into the viewer’s own reality. The abstract works which explore shape, form, and color surface that sucks the viewer into an abject cosmos. They appear as stunning anthropomorphic objects on the wall that allude to both internal environments and to flesh itself. Functioning as fine-art hybrids, her impressive works exist in a state of dynamic tension by evoking contradictory responses: they are structured, yet amorphous; repulsive, yet alluring; familiar—yet surreal. As such, they suggest something of a cross between Frank Auerbach’s intense canvases and Cecily Brown’s highly sophisticated, yet equally as graphic paintings.
Combining rhythms and notes of music, world experiences and the world of finance with his painting is Gonzalo Ferrer from Argentina. Bringing together the free-flowing world of art and the strict world of finances, his paintings combust with a kinetic energy held together by passion for art and a love for music.
Studying the individual’s place in relation to the world, and how the world comes together are Fredrik Flink and Francois Geffray. In his painting Understand Each Other, Flink explores the current conflict between cultures, especially that of the U.S. and the Middle East. The juxtaposition between the overt West and the hidden East is apparent in the scantily clothed, Christian symbol-clad, obviously American woman domineering the painting with hidden Middle Eastern women looking out from the black on the fringe. The viewer’s eye is brought down to the bottom where the artist pleads with us to understand each other. With his faceless portraits, Geffray explores not just the individual, but the individual’s place. By abstracting the face and turning the individual into the average person, he explores their relation to their surroundings and surrounding people. Geffray dissects groups into collections of individuals and how they adapt, a constant shifting of the self to fit in and become—adoption and adaption.
Working in a multitude of materials, Belgrade-born, Chicago-based Marija-Tanaskovic Papadopoulos presents a dynamic message for those who look upon her artwork. Her ongoing series of carefully produced vistas of scenic landscapes and ocean tides caressing sandy shores, show evidence of both a Zen-like sensibility and knowledge of mythological narrative. The paintings themselves, almost obsessive in their unyielding preoccupation with the color, landscape, and ambiguous magical spaces, produce a powerful sense of the passage of time through a series of slow-motion freeze frames. Papadopoulos allows the viewer to be transported to an effervescent point of departure where one is drawn into nature’s basic elements: land and sea. Her poetic palette—of vibrant fuchsia, stormy grays, salty aquamarines—also speaks to her thematic preoccupation. Through her simple yet decidedly sophisticated canvases, she succeeds in apprehending a sense of spirituality, which she says reflects “not only our impressions…but the deepest wishes, which are following every human being.” By simplifying her artwork, especially her sculpture, Marija-Tanaskovic is able to connect with her viewer. She is able to express her message in ways more powerful than words so that everyone will be able to understand, because to her, the essence of art is all about the “powerful message that is received” by those who look upon it.
Turkish artist Nazim Mehmet brings his Eluard-influenced images to the canvas to give us a peek into a hidden world of symbols, silence, and mystery. At first glance everything is in place (though it might be hovering), but when looking closer one notices that it is not a representation of this world they are seeing; it is a surrealistic mirror—objects are not just objects, individuals not just individuals. It is a world where creativity is born with every breath, with every angle of a piece of fruit, or every turned page of a painted book. From Parma, Stefania Mainardi brings her unique mix of design and classical art, perfectly meshing past and present, antiquity with graphics. Behind the reminiscent images of classical Roman and Greek sculptures lies the mind of an architect that seamlessly merges background and foreground, design and the humanistic, giving the viewer a pleasing experience as they gaze upon sculpture-like images and perfectly designed backgrounds.
Swiss artist Catherine de Saugy mixes techniques in a unique way—on Plexiglass. Giving her paintings a new kind of depth, her use of paints and digital manipulations break down the limits of canvas, and infinitely broadens her horizons and scope. No longer limited by space and dimension, Catherine de Saugy is able to freely express and explore her creativity, using the unique juxtaposition of material and technique to draw in the viewer into a “light kingdom” that no one else has achieved.
Germany-born Canadian Petra Nimtz’s spontaneous works add a sense of flux to the exhibition. With each lapping of a brush stroke, each washing of the paint, and each change of direction, the colors and shapes of the natural environment are altered, and as a result an ephemeral moods is brilliantly created. Ultimately, it is a sense of equilibrium that Nimtz seeks to express, and she equates this sense of inner peace and quiet balance to the attainment of a divine state. “The essential foundation of my work is that it originates in improvisation and accident,” Nimtz says, and it is in this statement that the viewer finds the perfect summation of the realm of invention. What matters most to her as an artist is the process in which she creates and the worlds she goes through in which to bring about a finished piece of art. Following her instincts and letting her hands do what is right instead of what she thinks might be right, Petra Nimtz creates art that balances color and form with high-energy emotions that penetrate to the core of the her audience.
The realm of invention is a space that all artists must enter in order to bring their message to the rest of the world. The nine that displayed their art in the show live in that realm—all creating and exploring the process of creation in unique and sometimes juxtaposed ways, but all coming together like puzzle pieces. Different materials, subjects, and visions all belonging to the same idea—that of the process, that of the act—make the act almost, maybe even more, important than the finished product itself.
