Evan Lurie Gallery

PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW AT EVAN LURIE GALLERY

Carmel, IN July 17, 2010 – The Evan Lurie Gallery will host its first ever photography show on July 17, 2010 for three local photographers with three distinctly different backgrounds and styles. Featured photographers William Rasdell and Tom Casalini will be joined by long time practicing photographer Kevin Raber who will be debuting his work for the first time in the fine art realm.

Indianapolis native William Rasdell has traveled the world, camera in hand, capturing images using the traditional photographic process along with digital technology to produce pigment ink prints on a variety of substrates including aluminum, acrylic and wood veneers. With a great deal of his work coming from the African and Cuban experience, Rasdall has developed a fresh and unique vision of color and movement. Having begun his career doing more work as a documentarian photographer capturing cultural integration in the United States, Rasdell has be able to utilize the computer to give his work what he calls “fuller creative expression.” The result is a truly moving human experience that, combined with his unique style of showcasing each photo, draws the eye and the heart into each detail.

A name known nationally for his exceptional skills in portraiture, Indiana native Tom Casalini will likely shock those most familiar with his work in the July show at the Evan Lurie Gallery. Known primarily for his breathtaking black and white portraits that capture the essence of the human spirit, Casalini takes a break from his signature studio-style with his fine art portfolio saturated in color and texture. In a series that is compelling and rich, it is clear that Casalini is able to draw on his classic education from Indiana University and The New York Institute of Photography as well as his over thirty-five years of working experience since. In this series, some of which was shot on location in Tuscany, composition combines with digital enhancement to create single illustrative narratives for each image that exist almost in a dream-state.

Finally the show will round out with Kevin Raber – a man who has been affiliated with the art of photography for over thirty years yet has not shown publically since 1990. With a hands-on history of working with and studying under photography giants such as Ansel Adams, Raber’s work certainly reflects not only the caliber of his mentors but is also demonstrative of his technical abilities. Raber graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art in the mid-seventies and although he was not a born Hoosier he moved to Indiana from New York following events in September of 2001 where he worked full-time as a fire-fighter as a way to, in his words, “work out his adrenaline issues.” Raber opened his first studio in 1975 while studying at school and has had his finger on the shutter button ever since referring to his job in the fire protection field as a hobby allowing him time to pursue his passion for film. Raber also began representing and using the Phase One medium-format technology in 1999 and has spent the last 11 years teaching the techniques of the trade as his livelihood all the while quietly holding tight to a growing portfolio of work which has never before been publically seen represented in a gallery. As Vice President of Phase One North America, Raber has had access to some of the world’s finest digital equipment available today and the opportunity to utilize it world wide. While some of his work is enhanced, much of it exists as purely as it does in nature offering brilliant blues, electric yellows and soft romantic reds, which are beyond imagination.

The Evan Lurie Gallery is located at 30 West Main Street, Carmel, IN 46032 and doors will be open for the event from 5:00 – 9:00 pm. This event is free of charge and open to the general public.

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If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule and interview with Mr. Evan Lurie, please call Katherine Livengood at 317.844.8400 or email Katherine at Katherine@evanluriegallery.com

CONTRASTS AND COLLUSIONS AT THE EVAN LURIE GALLERY

Carmel, IN May 28, 2010 – On May 28, 2010 from 5 pm to 9 pm, The Evan Lurie Gallery will host “Contrasts and Collusions: A View into the Methodology of Black and White” – a show featuring two internationally accomplished artists who generate powerful imagery through various mediums of generally limited monochrome palettes. Artists Joseph Piccillo and Alex Guofeng Cao will bring to the Arts District of Carmel work that has dazzled the audiences of Miami’s Art Basel, amazed onlookers in venues like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and graced the walls of some of the world’s most prestigious corporate and private collections.

Perhaps best known for his work portraying horses, Joseph Piccillo’s art has been called magical and dazzling with a sheer technical mastery. Born in New York this native of the Empire State creates his art by working with charcoals, graphite and oils. Piccillo’s grand scale and detailed precision has captivated audiences worldwide for over thirty years and is no stranger to the Crossroads of America. His work, last seen featured in Indianapolis in 1984, returns over twenty years later with the strength of human potential characterized through animalistic and mechanical representation as his main focus. It is his ability to portray such strength through the delicate grace of detail that has put his work in such esteemed collections as that of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art also located in New York.

Another artist making waves in the art world is Alex Guofeng Cao. As one of the most popular artists of last years Art Basel in Miami, Cao brings to Carmel his own version of black and white methodology in a series that uses gradation in photography as the principle medium. Unlike Piccillo, Cao is not a native New Yorker but instead found his pursuit, passion and success on the streets of Manhattan after emigrating from China. Combined with the pop culture icons that have developed over time, Cao has created a style of photography that demands closer inspection by its very nature. At first glance one sees the immediate image of an iconic star such as Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Angelina Jolie or Andy Warhol. It is with a second, closer look that one can see that these stars are composed of a constellation of other icons in tiny repetitive images, each slightly different from its neighbors. Audrey Hepburn composed of thousands of tiny Marlene Dietrichs, Marilyn Monroe likewise composed of JFK images, Angelina Jolie made of Brad Pitt, etc. For the onlooker, there is a dialogue going on between the subjects, a dialogue the artist presents to his audience with a slight suggestion of controversy as he names his work almost as though they were boxing matches: Warhol Vs. Mao, Bruni Vs Sarkozy, James Dean Vs. Elvis. It is no surprise then that The Miami Herald boasted Cao as a must see during his 2009 Basel showing with the full understanding and conviction of what Art does at its best and what Cao achieves quite handedly – “inspiration, education, surprise, shocks and delights.”

The Evan Lurie Gallery is located at 30 West Main Street, Carmel, IN 46032 and doors will be open for the event from 5:00 – 9:00 pm. This event is free of charge and open to the general public.

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SPRING PREMIERE 2010 AT THE EVAN LURIE GALLERY

Carmel, IN April 17, 2010 – The Evan Lurie Gallery will open the first show of Spring 2010 with three artists making their debut in the Arts and Design District. Featured American artist Susan Hall will be joined by Russian born Alexey Terenin and fellow American abstract artist Charles Walker.

Born in Michigan and based out of Chicago, Il, Susan Hall’s work has been called calm, soft, feminine and reminiscent of 17^th Century Dutch painting. Printed overlays of detailed lace patterns atop oil painted figures combined with soft hues and large scale stature make Hall’s featured body of work come across as soothing as it is sophisticated. With a Bachelors of Arts from Connecticut College and a Master of Fine Arts, Painting and Printmaking from the University of Georgia, Hall has shown in exhibits nationwide.

Russian born Alexey Terenin spent his youth raised in Prague only to return to the city of his birth for his degree from the Moscow Architectural Academy in 1992. Immediately following his graduation his career in the arts began when he was invited to design a stage set for a ballet at the Moscow’s State Bolshoi Theater. Terenin never did become a practicing architect but instead incorporated the foundation of structure into his work as a painter living and working in Moscow, Russia. With a body of work he designs to reference the conditions of modern man it is strange then to find juxtaposed to this contemporary concept elements referencing the historic and gothic structures of Prague, Biblical lore and Russian literature.

Charles Walker takes a departure from the figurative work of the rest of the show with his bright linear abstracts in acrylic paint. Walker’s work and style has been called minimalist and organic with brilliants colors running working together in a way that comes close to suggesting a landscape. Looking for anything beyond the rich character of the paint and technique itself would be to go against the intention of the piece. Ask the artist and he believes in the raw ability of color and paint to be enough. “I don’t look to art to tell a story, to take up issues – whether social or political. All I look to art to do is to simply exist and in so existing to express something in the simplest and most direct manner possible.” Walker received his Bachelor of Arts from Wake Forest University in 1993 and his Master of Fine Arts in studio arts from the University of Georgia in 1997.

The Evan Lurie Gallery is located at 30 West Main Street, Carmel, IN 46032 and doors will be open for the event from 5:00 – 9:00 pm. This event is free of charge and open to the general public.

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THE EVAN LURIE GALLERY HOSTS:

VALENTINE'S DAY GALLERY WALK with Margit J. Füreder

CARMEL, IN – February 13, 2010 – The Evan Lurie Gallery will debut and feature Margit J. Füreder in a Valentine’s Day show opening event on February 13, 2010, which is being held in conjunction with the Carmel Arts and Design District Gallery Walk.

Füreder, an Austrian artist who still lives and works from her home in Austia, debuted stateside at the 2009 Art Basil Event in Miami, Florida. The Evan Lurie Gallery opening on the 13th of February will be her premiere solo show in America.

To create her powerful and narrative style Füreder uses the imagery rooted in television and film to capture and edit single moments of universally shared conditions regarding the human experience. Using soft notes, powerful expression, dramatic angles and cultural and social icons, Margit J. Füreder’s body of work achieves an intimate reflection between the viewer and the painting. With a process that includes a special kind of pressure technology, Füreder’s paintings are a kind of silent aesthetic, which are consciously overlapped with contents, letters, quotations or pieces of early abstract paintings.

The Evan Lurie Gallery is located at 30 West Main Street in Carmel, Indiana. Doors for the show will be open 5:00 – 10:00 pm and will be catered by The Melting Pot of Indianapolis. This event is free of charge and open to the general public.

THE EVAN LURIE GALLERY HOSTS:
WALTER KNABE: A SHIFT IN THE PARADIGM

Carmel, IN – October , 2009 – The Evan Lurie Gallery will introduce Walter Knabe’s latest fine arts exhibit with a show opening on Saturday, October 24, 2009. Of his new work, Knabe shared, “I have been working in larger formats in order to tell the kinds of stories I am feeling. In many ways, these stories are more intimate than they use to be, but an intimate scale is the opposite of what I have been trying to create in my paintings. I want my art to envelope you at a more human scale. In some ways, I believe this generates from the custom fine art interiors I have created through they years.”

Knabe believes his latest creations have some defacing as a political statement or a reaction to seeing more human hardship in the way the world is evolving. He expresses a concern that the destructive things going on are negating the present and the past and run the risk of negating the future.

He said, “I’ve been working to capture what I already feel is happening as well as express my discontent with the movement as a reaction. To me, these paintings are more succinct than my earlier work. Elements are interwoven in a new way to manifest themselves differently with greater meaning, and ultimately, I want people who experience them to leave remaining hopeful and motivated to protect the landscape of their own mythology.”

Knabe shares, “My personal journey with painting mythology has evolved from beginning with a landscape as a foundation that represents the earthly things seen and felt and colliding that image with the ethereal or spiritual world to create a whimsical fairy tale full of emotion.”

Knabe believes that capturing whimsy in his work doesn’t make the work less serious since it’s an important component of nurturing mankind. Knabe’s paintings have traditionally allowed the viewer to see the first layer all the way through to the last layer. The new work showcases an exploration of graffiti which begins to obscure that transparency.

Regarding his artistic vision, Knabe said, “My work is a reflection of my ongoing belief in the value of human life, and our unique ability to define our being through art. I am interested in infusing a sense of antiquity in my work which reminds us of the past and leads us to being grounded in the here and now, leading us to having a sense of posterity.

I believe my work combines images from antiquity along with the everyday, painterly contemporary elements, and a sense of mythology and fairy tale. I hope this myth world I bring to life through my fine art will help awaken people to their own mythology, and therefore to their life.”

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ABOUT WALTER KNABE:

A designer since the age of 14, Knabe obtained his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin and later painted “under” Andy Warhol before applying his techniques to limited edition print making and custom wallcoverings and fabrics.

For the past 20 years, the Walter Knabe Studios ,first located in New York New York, and now located in Indianapolis, Indiana has been a trusted resource for interior designers and high profile collectors around the globe who covet Knabe’s hand-crafted designs and artwork.

Among his many commissions are projects for Chanel, Harrods, Trump Plaza, Bloomingdales and The White House. Private collectors have included Andre Agassi, President and Mrs. George Bush, Bill Cosby, Richard Gere, Keith Haring, Michael Jordan, Spike Lee, Madonna, Neil Simon, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and Philippe Stark.

Knabe resides in Indianapolis with his wife and two daughters and finds that his relationship with his family continues to offer the foundation for creating sanctuary at home and wanting to bring peace to the world through his art.

The Evan Lurie Gallery to host “Memoirs From Suburbia”

Carmel, IN – September 19, 2009 – The Evan Lurie Gallery will introduce four new artists to Indianapolis in an exhibition entitled “Memoirs From Suburbia.” Peter Drake, Michael Fitts and Tom Haney will join Drew Simpson in a collection of work that explores a very distinct conceptual image of suburban interpretation. The show, which opens on Saturday, September 19, 2009 will hang for five weeks. It features work that embodies both the iconic imagery of American youth and the detailed elucidation of suburban pretense in the four styles that vary in direction but play well together in concept.

The lapse of time and the growth of technology have played their own role in the definition of suburbia. What began defined as an area of relatively low income in fourteenth century Europe, developed internationally as a term coined more for the outer lying areas of metropolitan expansion for the middle to upper class. Soon a culture was born from the American style “burbs” and standards of living became nationally emblematic. The nuclear family and its accessories had become symbols – symbols that have left themselves open to interpretation over time. Drake, Fitts, Haney and Simpson have all offered a unique vision of suburban imagery in this way and starting on September 19th, 2009 Indianapolis will have its first glimpse at these artist’s exceptional perspectives.

Born himself to the suburban landscape of Garden City, New York, Peter Drake has spent nearly 30 years developing a style that has recently incorporated the presence of toy soldiers from a collection assembled by his father over time. Drake’s work is part of collections and exhibitions including that of the The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Carnagie Art Museum in Oxnard, CA, The Islip Museum of Art in Islip, NY, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY. His work has also been discussed in publications like ARTnews, Creative Quarterly, Arts & Antiques, Luxe Magazine and The New York Times. Drake’s extensive resume of gallery representation spans the coasts, dips into the Midwest and is also represented throughout Europe. However, September will mark the first time his work has been seen via an official exhibition in the state of Indiana. Drake will also be giving a lecture on his work and technique at 3:30 pm before the show opens.

Washington DC native Michael Fitts is no stranger to the icons of suburbia either. Fitts presents the onlooker with simple images of life such as a spoon, an old telephone or a folded white dress shirt all painted with photorealistic quality in oil on scrap metal. Fitts’ work collaborates, as he says, with the imperfections of marked, distressed or scratched scrap metal to create art that points directly to the perception of the discarded and forgotten. “The unexpectedness of elevating the important of ephemeral objects to the status of art is what I find more interesting,” Fitts has said of his work. Michael Fitts will also be premiering to the state of Indiana through the “Memoirs From Suburbia” show at the Evan Lurie Gallery. Fitts will lecture on his work and technique at 2:00 pm before the show opens on September 19, 2009.

Tom Haney, a born buckeye who relocated to the southern area of Atlanta, Georgia, has a somewhat different approach to his artwork. The sole featured sculptor of the “Memoirs From Suburbia” exhibition has had a lifelong fascination with mechanics and has put it to use creating work such as props, models and miniatures for televisions commercials, still photographers and movies. Haney’s fine art work, much like the old cast iron toy banks of yesteryear, are far more functional in their workings than they might initially seem. An example of this insight to Haney’s world is a piece entitled “A Collection of Thoughts” which stands twenty six inches high and seems nearly autobiographical with the exception of costuming which dates the carved figure back at least one hundred years in style. Still, through the use of mechanics hidden from view, the hand-carved figure pounds with a tiny hammer on metal inside a small workshop fitted with dials, grinding mechanisms and other seemingly “found objects.” Haney has also been featured on PBS, in numerous publications and commissioned by clients across the country.

Drew Simpson, the official foreign voice on suburban representation hails from Canada and produces work on a typically much smaller scale but with equally graphic interpretations. A Victorian couch juxtaposed under its own flaming portrait is painted with such amazing detail it can be easily forgotten the miniature nature of the work. Measuring a simple 12 by 7 inches framed, the image still manages to evoke the simple analysis of life caught at a glimpse through Simpson’s eyes. The single exception to the miniature style in the exhibition measures four feet squared and is equally as detailed as Simpson’s smaller work painting the picture of nested “Screaming Eagle” soldiers circa World War II. Drew Simpson’s art has also been shown throughout Northern America and Europe.

The Evan Lurie Gallery is located at 30 West Main Street, Carmel, IN 46032 and doors will be open for the official event from 5:00 – 10:00 pm. Artist lectures will begin at 2:00 pm. The event and lectures are free of charge and open to the general public.

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