Weinberger Fine Art’s exhibition, DRAWN & ETCHED, presents work from the Lasansky Studio and Miguel Rivera. Tomas Lasansky, Charlie Lasansky, and Adam Rake of the Lasansky Studio create work based on historical icons and figures. Art historian Joseph Czestochowski describes Tomas Lasansky as “...a humanist who has created eloquent, visual statements that are fresh, sensitive, pragmatic and romantic,” Lasansky’s work is balanced by Miguel Rivera’s layered abstract pieces which reference history, maps, viruses and colonialism.
DRAWN & ETCHED will be on view from May 3rd through June 30th.
The Lasansky studio consists of Tomas Lasansky, Charlie Lasansky, and Adam Rake The studio is guided by Tomas Lasansky, the youngest born into a distinguished family of artists. His powerful portraits of friends, family, and historical luminaries are included in US Embassies around the world. Since 1980, Lasansky's work has been shown in more than 120 exhibitions and is included in the permanent collections of over 50 museums. A catalogue raisonné spanning 3 decades, Tomas Lasansky: Icons and Muses, was published in 2010.
The recollection of events and structures that lead one’s daily life such as maps, the magic of belief in the forces of physics, and deep embedded images from baroque Mexican facades are present in Miguel Rivera's work. Layers of signifiers appear and disappear as if dormant memories that the artist reinvents through form and color processing his experience as outsider living in an adopted environment.
Rivera's work is a progression of manipulated photos and vector drawings, images are distilled from memories in Argentina, Mexico and the US, which are then edited by the destructive nature of laser energy. Patterns such as the Spanish colonial immigration, nautical routes, and viruses are also incorporated into his work. When finished the final piece serves as a historic record of Rivera's process of exploring, collecting, and creating a visual memory.
Robert Quackenbush, in late 2017, initiated a new series of textured paintings that focus on the portrayal of the struggle between time (nature) and decay; the challenge of resurrection, reclamation and rebirth, all manifested in texture and color. His daily practice of artmaking for this series comprises surface build-up and subsequent surface deconstruction/reduction. The build-up process consists of adding layers of paper, paint, printed images, found and repurposed objects, construction materials, and “melted” paper on stretched canvases and jute covered panels or stretched canvases. Once the composition has settled and is complete, the reduction process begins until finally, the surface is sealed.
The result is a new series titled “Unearthed Fragments.” A surprise of textures and colors not unlike the reveal of a fresh archeological dig with newly discovered treasures; messages from the past; ancient secrets; old smells; and, lost memories all ready for documenting, analysis, commentary and historical resolution.
