New Exhibit, “Parrish Perspectives: New Works in Context”

[caption id="attachment_62025" align="alignnone" width="800"] Alicia Longwell, the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, at The Parrish Art Museum.[/caption]

The Parrish Art Museum’s new exhibition, “Parrish Perspectives: New Works in Context,” showcases more than 70 works from the more than 300 acquisitions added to the Museum’s collection since the opening of the Water Mill building in 2012.

The exhibition, on view from March 12 through April 23, features paintings, sculpture and works on paper dating from 1925 to 2016 by established collection artists as well artists new to the collection. On Friday, March 24 at 6 p.m., Alicia Longwell, the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, will discuss the exhibition’s artists and themes in the program, “The Curator’s View.”

“‘Parrish Perspectives: New Works in Context’ reflects the curatorial decision-making involved in the process of building a collection, and demonstrates the Museum’s commitment to bringing together works that enhance the appreciation of art and the artist’s practice,” Ms. Longwell said. “It also reveals the generosity of the many donors who understand the value of making great art available to the community.”

“Parrish Perspectives” is a series of concentrated exhibitions that offers the museum opportunities to respond spontaneously and directly to unique ways of thinking about art, artists, and the creative process. The current iteration reveals the depth and breadth of new acquisitions to the Museum within the context of its ever-growing collection of over 3,000 works dating from 1833 to today. “New Works in Context” is organized into four themes.

“Representing Abstraction,” reveals the ways in which artists explore how the physical and philosophical universe is perceived. Several artists find the source of abstraction in nature, as in Sheila Isham’s “Cosmic Flight,” where abstract forms reference the spiritual power of birds on the wing. The use of photographs as an abstraction of the three-dimensional world is a starting point for paintings by Howard Kanovitz, Malcolm Morley, and Bob Knox, who creates what he calls “non-fiction painting.”

“Humor and Irony,” conveys dry wit, absurdity, dark humor and the dichotomy that can exist in a single work. John Wesley’s “Panoply,” takes a penetrating look at WWI through the graphic clarity of silkscreen prints and the wry humor of the images themselves, with titles such as “Priscilla the Hun” and “Shoot Him, Cecil.”

“Face to Face,” reveals the artists’ interpretation of portraits, from Till Freiwald’s realistic, monumentally scaled watercolors of faces to Joe Zucker’s use of meaningful personal icons such as a martini glass and a cat to create character portraits in “The Ravenswood Series.” Photographic portraits of children on the brink of adolescence by Tina Barney, Adam Bartos and Lindsay Morris point out shared human experiences rather than differences.

“Horizon Lines” entertains a subject that has long occupied the creative imagination of artists working in all media. Whether as a quick study of the sea and the sky, a detailed imagining of the intersection of man and nature or a long engagement with the notion of photographic documentation freezing a moment in time. “In Near Midnight,” Jane Wilson concerns herself with what is above the horizon line, air that is alive with possibilities resulting from unpredictable coastal weather patterns.

The Parrish Art Museum is located at 279 Montauk Highway in Water Mill. For more information, please call (631) 283-2118 or visit parrishart.org.