A look at artist collectives in Amagansett and Southampton

Given the number of artists on the East End, even allowing for the plethora of exhibition spaces in these climes, it seems only natural that artist-run co-op galleries and collectives have become appreciably more visible and significant components of the local arts scene. At venues such as the Crazy Monkey Gallery in Amagansett or Southampton’s Artist Collective on Hampton Road, artists are offered needed exhibition opportunities in spaces that provide an important sense of identity for artists working toward shared aesthetic goals.

Beyond this natural progression, it’s always entertaining when artists take on the trappings and priorities of art dealers, as the concept resembles nothing so much as an instance of the inmates taking over the asylum. Further, those whose creative process is cloaked in solitude are often hesitant to join any kind of group or guild, and often seem to illustrate Groucho Marx’s sentiment that “I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.”

The Artist Collective in Southampton, the newest co-op gallery to emerge, is currently featuring a rather large group show that is singularly interesting because, despite the number of paintings and sculptures featured (about 60), the installation allows for a surprising measure of continuity and interaction between the works.

Featuring a broad range of approaches, from whimsical pop art to pure abstraction to bucolic landscapes, the physical arrangement of the pieces belies their obvious stylistic variety and the viewer finds an unexpected visual flow despite superficial differences.

Of particular interest is Michael Knigin’s “Georgica Waves” (pigmented ink on canvas), which is simultaneously highly dramatic and yet also deceptively meditative in the artist’s use of light and space. Dominated in the foreground by crashing waves and a spiraling cloud formation that seem more hallucinogenic than actual, the composition is soothed by the use of negative space emphasizing the distant sky and horizon.

Both Joe Strand and Eileen Hickey Hulme, by contrast, channel more pop art impulses in their juxtaposition of imagery and wildly expressive uses of color. In Mr. Strand’s “Gull Wing Mercedes,” for example, images of planes, motorcycles, and trains are collaged into a cacophony of color and movement. Ms. Hickey Hulme’s “#1 with a Bullet” (print on velum) is more restrained yet nonetheless striking in its evocation of both Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

Also of interest in the exhibition is Karyn Mannix’s “KK,” Michael McDowell’s “Bobby’s Pool” (oil on canvas), Joe Eschenberg’s “Ocean,” Maria Pessino’s “Restraint, Restriction, and Relief,” and Lew Zach’s “Lunch.”

The exhibition at the Artist Collective in Southampton continues through January 3.

Meanwhile, the space at the Crazy Monkey Gallery in Amagansett is divided between an exhibit of small works by various members of the collective and a solo exhibition of sculptures by Setha Low titled “Water Creatures.”

Ms. Low’s works are particularly interesting in their evocation of aspects and concepts presumably drawn from the artist’s other life as a noted anthropologist. Suggesting aesthetic principles that seem to derive from disparate cultures, the works are elegant in their simplicity, yet manage, in distinctly understated ways, to conjure challenging contrasts in both color and form.

The ceramic diptych “Indigenous,” for example, uses a melodic and refined contrast in positive and negative space along with a restrained use of color that calls to mind ancient fossils with a touch of Miro. The piece gains impact as well from its physical configuration, which imparts a powerful floating sensation, as if it were hovering in front of the wall rather than merely hanging on it.

This is also an effect achieved in “Fossil Fish,” which wraps large ceramic shards in metal mesh, using the shadow of the work to give it a mysterious atmosphere of weightlessness while also providing a rigid geometric grid through which the calligraphic renderings on the surface take on enigmatically primitive narrative overtones.

Of particular note in the accompanying group show are new pieces by Jim Hayden that are an interesting departure from his previous works in their more unbridled explosion of energy. Also, Andrea McCafferty’s photographs effectively provide contrasts in patterns and tone while also being highly evocative of art magazine nudes from the early 1960s.

Also of interest are Claire Schoenheimer’s “Double Exposure,” Stephanie Reit’s “Vanishing Point 2,” Jana Hayden’s “Botanical II,” Ellen Tucker’s Allegro,” and Daniel Schoenheimer’s “Misty Sunset I.”

The two exhibitions at the Crazy Monkey Gallery continue through December 27.