Press
Two Man Show (Literally) at Skylight Gallery
April 13, 2011
Skylight Gallery is a fascinating venue. It is on the second floor of an old building on the northern end of the gallery area of Chelsea. Downstairs is a detective agency. Yes, Virginia, there really are detective agencies. (Actually, before we found our current space, we looked high and low, north and south [of 34th Street] looking for office space. One of the spaces we looked at was in another detective agency. It actually had a knee high, swinging gate to get into the office area. They wanted to rent us their conference room. The guy who ran the agency was an ex-Commodore for the New York Yacht Club. But more about that another day.)
Back to the two man show which, by the way, was excellent.
Carla Goldberg, the gallery director and an artist herself, has developed a superior eye for other artists’ work. This time, she chose sculptors Gary Jacketti and Linus Coraggio.
Jacketti is a classically trained sculptor who studied in Rome and Florence and has degrees from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Kutztown University. He’s shown regularly in the US, Europe and Japan. Much of his sculpture work is commissioned bronze portraiture which requires careful creation of clay figures from which molds are made and the bronze poured.
He didn’t show sculptures; he showed mosaics and paintings.
The question, of course, is why? The answer is … boredom. Jacketti had been executing a triple bronze portrait in clay, a monochromatic medium. After doing that, he requires color, intense color, and more color still.
Mosaics are one of his favorite pastimes (not the correct word but a word must be chosen). Jacketti makes his own tiles from scratch. He take clay, forms large tiles, glazes them with enamel, bakes and cuts them to fit his concept. One highlight was his take-off on Andy Warhol’s ubiquitous portrait of Elizabeth Taylor. Up close, it’s a blur of color, step back and the mosaic’s likeness to Warhol’s portrait is astounding, given the medium.
Jacketti is delightful in not taking himself too seriously. This is also evident in his paintings, in which he’s pouring color and having a really good, creative time. Excellent abstract work with a couple of recognizable more realistic pieces thrown in.
Linus Coraggio is a BFA graduate from SUNY Purchase and has also studied at Skowhegen. He’s received many grants and awards and has been showing regularly since 1984.
He began building intricate sculptures as a child using toothpicks. His calling was obvious although he has since graduated from toothpicks and Elmer’s Glue.
Coraggio creates his sculptures from found objects. In fact, he claims to have an enormous collection of metal and other stuff, but mostly metal tools, barbed wire, screws, gears, wheels, rods, nails, bikes, chairs, wire and all sorts of bits and pieces which he welds into sculptures. Some are whimsical, some are semi-functional, some are purely abstract.
His smaller pieces resemble creatures and objects that we know, each made from like parts. There might be a dog made from screws or a chair made from pocket knife parts. He makes pieces that you think are antique toys, except that they’re not.
There are also the purely abstract pieces which include an elegant tower of circles made of metal rings or the friendly piece that resembles an owl made of bits and pieces. There’s also the fantastic wall attached sculpture I covet called Mirro Relief which is a stunning agglomeration of mirror, tray, wheel and whatnot. So take care and do not buy this piece!
But do go to Skylight Gallery and enjoy first class art by two artists at the top of their games. I;m a fan of both artists. The show is open through May 14.
Chelsea Gallery Exhibit Inspired by Private Investigator Neighbors
In a building shared with private detectives, a Chelsea gallery offers an artistic take on the investigative process.
By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHELSEA — Inside a building toward the desolate end of West 29th Street, the private detectives of Elite Investigations manage services including celebrity protection, explosives detection, and surveillance of wayward spouses.
Above it on the second floor, a new exhibition at the year-old Skylight Gallery is offering an artistic look at private investigation.
“PRIVATE i” features works by 20 artists who were given just three weeks to create a piece that examines the investigative process through painting, sculpture, photography, digital art or an interactive installation.
“This idea was that the artist could approach this in a film-noir, gum shoe sort of way, or as an investigation of themselves,” said Carla Goldberg, gallery director and one of the curators for the show from the Beacon Artist Union.
To that end, some participating artists offered intimate self-portraits. Others, like Ian Addison Hall, whose paintings suggest peering into a private construction site, and Justin Carty, who shows the visage of television detective Columbo, took a more literal route.
Another artist, upstate New York resident Susan Walsh, 50, approached it in a manner informed by her father’s career as a forensic photographer. The toy gun, key chains, and other found objects displayed in her series, “Residue of Gesture,” were all dug up in backyards around the Hudson Valley.
The first object, a light switch plate, was found by Walsh’s partner in her Beacon, N.Y., garden. She was about to throw it away when Walsh stopped her, explaining that she found beauty in the mystery of the object’s origins.
“They’re so rich in association, where they were found, how they were used,” Walsh said. ““I grew up with this sensibility of looking at things and wondering what their story was.”
PRIVATE i will run through Sept. 16 at the Skylight Gallery at 538 West 29th Street.
