NEW YORK, NY.- Mizuma & Kips announced the opening of “A Daze of Roses” curated by Robert Curcio, curcioprojects, considers a rosy outlook for the year ahead after an uncertain past year of gloom. The dozen plus one, emerging and mid-career artists address themes relating to an experience, a meaning, or a form of a rose - a flower, a color, an optimistic feeling, a turn of phrase of Gertrude Stein's quote or a blushing cheek.
A sense of time when everything will come up roses is captured in the face of Gregory de la Haba’s homeless smiling Gabriel who came to the East Village, NYC, on March 16th just as the city was closing, hoping to hug the Statue of Liberty. Hidden faces within a painted veil of roses and flowers, Claudine Anrather connects to the subtle life of a rose, its fragrance, its delicate beauty, and fast decay are all experiences shared for but a moment. Judy Mannarino’s ceramic embellishments of mixed roses and flowers simultaneously obfuscate and beautify the faces beneath the paintings and sculptures. Bobbie Moline-Kramer’s portrait “EC, Pink Girl,” tells the life of a girl born into a strict Evangelical family who was presented as a cliché of feminine traits all pretty in pink and the woman who is happy and at peace with herself today is estranged from her family because she is a lesbian.
John Grande, Augustus Goertz and Michael Netter play off Gertrude Stein’s quote “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” which is just a beautiful way of saying things are what they are. That the fine-looking mirage of a rose can befuddle our senses and logic making it seem more than what it is. The raw wood assembled panels of Grande’s piece is the support to the beautifully painted roses. Goertz’s trompe l’oeil techniques trick the viewer into seeing more than meets the eye. Netter using stencils deconstructs a rose to its basic lines and bright warm colors, focuses more on the thorns and canes rather than a bud in his paintings and artwear. Artwear being Netter’s unique canvas paintings stitched onto denim jacket of roses – art is art is a rose is a rose.
Bewildered by transcendent moments of life and art as one searches for their inner self in Sajal Sarkar’s roseate colored “Third Eye” or join with Edward M. Giordano Jr’s pensive male and female figures contemplating all of it, regardless of what “it “is, while red faced.
Claire McConaughy’s bucolic painted landscapes are constructed from photographs and studies in the studio to create the ideal image of a glorious summer day with luxurious roses swaying in a gentle breeze. Flaunting its artificiality, Julia Blume’s trellised sculpture topped with fake hand-painted roses - you can almost inhale the sweet fragrance. Paul Brainard’s confluence of a roseate landscape clashes into a psychological space.
Frodo Mikkelsen’s paintings of skulls with black roses reminds us of a year of death and loss. However, black roses can signify a break with the daze of the past year to a clear-headed confidence and enthusiasm for the future.
