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Reverie, the recent group painting show at Broadway Gallery in New York, was a sumptuous event exploring new directions in abstraction. The works on view were a compelling mix of technical approaches, all of them speaking to dreamlike and liminal states. Boasting an international roster of accomplished artists, the show included the work of Bonnie Brown, Emilia Dubicki, Loes de Haan, Richard Hoey, Brighart, Jeanie Lee, Maria Parmo, and Tomashi Jackson.
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Simone Cappa
Richard Hoey, Three Existences. Courtesy of the Artist.
Reverie, the recent group painting show at Broadway Gallery in New York, was a sumptuous event exploring new directions in abstraction. The works on view were a compelling mix of technical approaches, all of them speaking to dreamlike and liminal states. Boasting an international roster of accomplished artists, the show included the work of Bonnie Brown, Emilia Dubicki, Loes de Haan, Richard Hoey, Brighart, Jeanie Lee, Maria Parmo, and Tomashi Jackson.
Each artist approaches the notion of “reverie” through his or her own innovative mode. In her colorful Abstract Expressionist canvases, Emilia Dubicki aims to capture the mood, nature, and ephemerality of place, while simultaneously transcending these very qualities, capturing something even more ineffable. Jeanie Lee’s approach to “reverie” is through her poetic contemplation of beauty—in her case, using the elegance of flowers as a form to abstract. Her subtley-layered abstractions done in Korean pigments, colored gessoes, and pastels are transient and light, capturing a sense of eternal grace, elegance, and purity. The same kind of delicate layering is also evident in the work of both Brighart and Richard Hoey, each to a different effect. Brighart’s diaphanous abstractions evoke the immateriality of poetic space through their finely textured and hazey surfaces, achieving a sense of peace and positivity. Executed in metal leaf, earth pigments, plaster, and waxes, Hoey’s metallic compositions “connect us to our primitive past” through their primal, earthy, unpretentious, and even spiritual qualities.
Bonnie Brown and Maria Parmo both work within the idiom of geometric abstraction. “My intention is to create a luminous composition made up of the consonance of several colors to form a possible space for the spirit,” explains Brown. “The paintings are lyrical evocations of time and place, combining inner and outer worlds in a rich fabric of color and spatial manipulations.” Similarly, Parmo’s geometric patterning of squares and circles aim at creating a dynamic tension between the conscious and unconscious elements of her work. Loes de Haan’s figurative abstractions employ bright color and Surrealist imagery, amplifying the notion of dreamlike states. Tomashi Jackson’s figurative work of graphite on cheesecloth hanging from the ceiling floated above the gallery like a cloud. Reverie transports us from the conscious to the unconscious, the earthly to the celestial, inviting us to transcend our daily experiences.
