ULA EINSTEIN
About: Ula Einstein is a Swiss born multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Arial;">www.galleryartist.com/ulaeinstein
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3 Artists explore Line, Gesture, Space
Artists Chong, Einstein and Grossman to Exhibit at College of Saint Elizabeth in the Therese A. Maloney Gallery through March 26, 2008
MORRISTOWN, N.J., February 4, 2008 The College of Saint Elizabeth (CSE), 2 Convent Road, Morristown, N.J., invites the public to its latest art exhibition currently open through March 26. The exhibit, entitled Line, Gesture, Space, features works by New York artists Ula Einstein and Naomi Grossman, and New Jersey artist Elaine Chong, assistant professor of Art at CSE.
As described by Dr. Butera, Director of the Gallery, and curator of the exhibition, the exhibition reveals the fascination all three artists have for using line to mark and define two- and three-dimensional space. Whereas drawing was once confined to informal studies and preparatory sketches for painting and sculpture, now its immediacy and intimacy often dominate 21st century aesthetic expression, she said.
According to Dr. Butera, each artist uses different media to work with line in their art.
Interested in recording daily life and translating it into abstract visual impulses and ideas, Elaine Chong creates collage drawings by mixing handmade paper, copper wire, encaustic wax, graphite and oil paint. She approaches her work through the sequencing of daily activities, which motivates her to draw and gesture both two- and three-dimensionally in equally spontaneous and calculated ways, Dr. Butera said.
Ula Einstein, is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is simultaneously being exhibited at the Garrison Art Center in Garrison, NY. Exploring tension and harmony between the formal and the familiar she is fascinated by unusual materials and processes. Her recurring experience that things are rarely as they seem influences how she works. Ms. Einstein's work combines rice paper, copper wire, balloons, human hair, tyvek, various fabrics traditionally used on interiors, and even torn- up pages from dictionaries and transforms them with techniques of cutting, wrapping, wiring, painting, burning and staining.
In addition to hanging mixed media paintings and a blade-cut paper piece, Ms. Einstein has also used the Colleges art gallery walls as a drawing/painting/sculpting surface for the installation of three site specific works that will never be seen the same away again. The work consists of numerous pieces created in her studio, develop into the large whole as she installs in the gallery. According to Dr. Butera, these configurations spontaneously evolved over time to explore two- and three-dimensional bursts of shadow, line and color and remain as a record of her, albeit informal, performance.
Choosing a painstaking process of drawing with wire, Ms. Grossman creates almost life-size, haunting figures and objects which delicately perch, crouch, fall and rest in space; however, the lines and the images are undercut at points by words, almost invisible, which curl in and around the wire to suggest meaning and metaphor of life's threats, situations, and salvations. Ms. Grossman explains that [her] work touches on issues of health and safety in the world of today, women's issues, control and power over our own lives and politics. Her three-dimensional gesture drawings in space mark life's passages and complications even as her abstract collage pieces remind of us the grace of line and color, remarks Dr. Butera.
To celebrate the exhibit, the College will host an artists' reception on Thursday, February 7 from 4:30 to 7 p.m. in the Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery at Annunciation Center on campus. Free and open to the public, refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Dr. Virginia Fabbri Butera, director of the Gallery and curator of the exhibition at (973) 290-4315 or e-mail at vbutera@cse.edu.
Visiting hours for the exhibit are Monday through Friday from 1 - 7 p.m.; and Saturday from 1 - 4 p.m. To schedule an appointment, contact Dr. Butera.
