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On view November 17 - December 22, 2007 in addition
to December 28 and 29th.
and by appointment through the end of the year.
Opening
Reception: November 17, 6- 8 PM
ALMOST PARADISE
DANIEL HEIDKAMP
JO JACKSON
ERIKA SOMOGYI
CRISTINA TORO
CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE EXHIBITION
Daniel Heidkamp, Sunset
at the End of the Industrial Age, 2007, Oil on Canvas, 83 x 85
inches
LaMontagne Gallery is pleased to present
"ALMOST PARADISE," a four-person exhibition
featuring artists,
Daniel Heidkamp, Jo Jackson, Erika Somogyi and Cristina Toro.
These four artists have created imaginative worlds through varied
approaches to painting. The works are based on personal biographies
and wide-ranging symbolism of epic proportion. Provocative large-scale
paintings vibrate and build tension viewed from a difficult distance
through individual viewers' interpretation of the recognizable elements
alongside the fantastical.
Daniel Heidkamp's (Wakefield, MA and NYC) creates dense surfaces
in his oil paintings depicting varied awkward human interactions.
Most explicitly, the subjects of Heidkamp's paintings are humans reveling
in their own humanity. The artist was influenced by the paintings
of Giambastista Tiepolo, the short fiction of George Saunders and
televised golf. Daniel Heidkamp graduated from the School of Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston and recently exhibited with the Front Room Gallery
(OH).
Jo Jackson (Portland, OR) is well known for her repetitive
symbolic paintings of skulls, animals and human fornicating. Her paintings
shown at the LaMontagne Gallery are part of a larger body of work,
Victory Over
the Sun. These are direct representations of Yves Klein's "living
brushes" and evoke the tragedy linked to Klein's death. Jackson
developed a mythical language of the of unanswered questions surrounding
this mystery retold through skeleton keys, pocket watches, melting
glaciers and playing cards. Jackson recently had a solo exhibition
at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago and in Beautiful Losers: Contemporary
Art and Street Culture at the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art,
Cincinnati, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,
San Francisco and the Orange County Museum of Art. Jo Jackson has
also exhibited at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco.
Erika Somogyi (NY) paints sun-drenched watercolors
laced with 1970's nostalgia. Somogyi creates these narratives through
utopian dreamlike landscapes of light cascading through silhouettes
of trees and figures.
In these recent works, Somoygi experiments with different sculptural
elements and mirrored abstractions.
Erika Somogyi has recently exhibited at Jack Hanley, San Francisco
and Monya Rowe Gallery in New York.
Cristina Toro (New Berlin, NY) creates large, highly
detailed acrylic paintings. Toro's creations are chapters in a multi-layered
fable based on autobiographical elements. Influenced by living most
of her life in the tropical climates of Florida and Puerto Rico, Toro,
found a startling difference between the South and the harsh seasons
of the Northeast. Toro responded by retreating into her studio to
recreate these tropical environments she holds so dear. These elements
include odd creatures, lush plants and exceptional pattern making
with an intentional disregard for realistic perspective. Other recognizable
influences are drawn from the miniature paintings of India, Persia,
and Turkey, The Unicorn Tapestries and Chinese landscape paintings.
Cristina Toro very recently exhibited at HPGRP Gallery in Japan
in collaboration with Little Cakes in NYC.
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