I'll have a run down of my favorites on this thread shortly, but I wanted to encourage you to attend the party the Henry is holding in their honor tonight from 5 to 9.

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Jim Demetre

It is such a strange thing to spend a few minutes each with a room full of artists whose work you have never seen before and whose history is so brief. How can one be expected to make any judgment about their work or predict anyone's future as an artist?

I think I'll spend some time talking about the works that made the biggest impression when I initially walked through the gallery a week before the meet-and-greet press preview.

I was immediately drawn to Kristine Veith's series of inflated sewn-cloth human figures, which trembled under the pressure of forced air before briefly tumbling sideways and knocking into one another. Their facelessness, isolation, and apparent discomfort suggest complex, troubled human relationships. Is this a dysfunctional family? A group of workers thrown together, toiling in a sick office? Whoever they may be, they are fueled by and subjected to the same energy source and thus inextricably linked.

In the same gallery, I was approached by a shiny, textured mound of indeterminate brown matter several feet high. Curiously, a pair of sorrowful eyes appeared on its surface gazing at me in way that seemed to anticipate my horror. Upon closer inspection, I discovered what appeared to be peas and carrots in its moist crevasses. This was Michael Simi's work, Beef Stew. It might come across in my description as rather comic, but the piece has real psychological depth. While it may have played upon the dark issues of body image and eating disorders, it was really more about our profound need and deep-seated fear of revealing our inner selves to others.

Wandering into another gallery I saw the strangest thing -- a paper table-top covered in sepia-toned concentric brown rings that were emitting strange, barely audible sounds. Upon closer inspection, I found myself watching small woolly masses of iron filings propelled by invisible motorized magnets leaving trails of sooty brown-red circles. They would morph and mutate into a variety of lively, animated shapes, often breaking apart and reconstituting themselves when meeting on the next lap. This was the work of Nola Avienne. While mesmerized by the small protean forms before me, I was overcome by the mystery of their significance. After learning of the artist's own backstory, which involves a serious bodily injury and lengthy sensory recovery, the piece took on a more profound sense of gravity. The breakdown, mobilization, and regeneration of these minute particles suddenly became correlative to our own physical movement and cognitive processes.

After seeing several of her works in a group show at Soil last Thursday, it is clear that she has a well-defined sensibility and a real mastery of her unorthodox material.

(I'll have more on this thread later...)

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Jim Demetre

In the same gallery I saw a large, elaborate and sensual work by Julia Freeman, appropriately titled Weight. She has used heavy, bundled mounds of clothing to leave a wall-sized canvas impression in subtle melancholy shades of gray, purple, and blue. An accumulation of spent forms that once held physical presences, it suggests both the burden of our past and our inevitable separation from it. The work is effective because its allure -- like that of our own personal memories -- comes close to obscuring its real significance.

(again, more to come...)

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Jim Demetre

Celeste Cooning's massive off-white carved-paper wall-relief is a thing of beauty, suggesting natural abundance while never quite resolving into floral shapes and patterns.

And then there is Benjamin Eckman's lyrical, brightly-colored folk-art-inspired painting on wood blocks. It is a strange mix of Basquiat and John Cheever.

Hurry up and see it!

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Jim Demetre

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Jim Demetre