Neeta Madahar : SUSTENANCE

Online exhibition at Jane Deering Gallery on ARTsy.net

January 9 - February 9 . 2016

Artist Neeta Madahar (Indian descent; born UK, 1966) explores the beauty and unexpected drama found in familiar surroundings, representing the physical world in unusual ways enabling the viewer to immerse themselves in the acute details. Sustenance  -- the artist's first body of work -- functions within the inter-relationship of nature, artifice and perception. Recipient of the Bradford Fellowship in Photography 2008-09, Madahar has exhibited extensively, including a solo exhibition of the Sustenance series (selected by Martin Parr) at the Recontres d'Arles Photography Festival in 2004. Collections include the UK Government Art Collection, The Victoria & Albert Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Kemper Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, MIT Art Collection.   A full resume follows below.

NEETA MADAHAR

1966 Born London

EDUCATION

2004 National Graduate Seminar, The Photography Institute, Columbia University, New York

2003 M.F.A. Studio Art, School of the Museum of Fine Arts (S.M.F.A.) and Tufts University, Boston

1999 B.A. Fine Art (First class honours), Winchester School of Art and University of Southampton, Winchester

1998 European Socrates Exchange Program - three-month study visit, Barcelona

1996 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, City of Bath College, Bath

SELECTED SOLO AND TWO-PERSON SHOWS

2011 Role Play (two-person show), PM Gallery, London 2010 Flora, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London

Flora, Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston

2009/10 Neeta Madahar: Bradford Fellowship in Photography 2008-09, National

Media Museum, Bradford

2008/09 Solstice, UK touring solo show at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, PM Gallery,

London and Harewood House, Leeds

Pollination (two-person show), Julie Saul Gallery, New York 2007 Cosmoses, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London

Falling, Vision Space, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton Unnatural (two-person show), Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston Neeta Madahar: Sustenance, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario

2006 Falling, Julie Saul Gallery, New York

Neeta Madahar: Nature Studies, University Gallery and Baring Wing, University of Northumbria, Newcastle

Nature Studies, Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston

Neeta Madahar, Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, Massachusetts Nature Studies, Purdy Hicks Gallery

Nature Studies, Galerie Poller, Frankfurt

2005 Falling, Fabrica, Brighton

Neeta Madahar, Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), London Sustenance, Julie Saul Gallery, New York

2004 Sustenance, curated by Martin Parr, Rencontres d’Arles Photography Festival, Arles

Sustenance, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London

Sustenance, Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston

2003 New Work, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University,

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Recent Digital Prints, Project Space, New England School of Art & Design, Boston

SELECTED GROUP SHOWS

2015 Feathered, Touchstones, Rochdale

Tekhno Garden, Washington Pavilion Visual Arts Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital Age, FACT HQ, Liverpool Portraits from an Island, Goa International Photography Festival, Goa

2014 The Itinerant Illustrator, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangladore

2013 Dressed Up, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City 2012 Digital Aesthetic, Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston

Still Life, Tasveer Gallery, Bangalore

2011 Beautiful Vagabonds: Birds in Contemporary Photography, Yancey

Richardson Gallery, New York

Naked, Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston

House Work, The International 3, Manchester

The Birds and the Bees, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario Mmultiples, Jane Deering Gallery, Santa Barbara

2010 Light, Passion and Darkness, Gallery Oldham, Oldham

Something That I’ll Never Really See: Contemporary Photography from the V&A, Bhau Daji Lad Museum

This Is Not The Chelsea Flower Show, Diemar/Noble Photography, London 21, Harewood House, Leeds

2009 Back to the Garden, 60 Wall Gallery, Deutsche Bank, New York Anomalies: From Nature to the Future, Rossi & Rossi Ltd, London

2008 (RE)Imaging Photography, Reinberger Galleries, The Cleveland Institute of Arts, Cleveland, Ohio

Bird Studies, Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, Washington Something That I’ll Never Really See, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University and Nottingham Castle Museum, Nottingham

Display of Sustenance works, Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street

Ornithology, Contemporary Art Galleries: Storrs and Stamford, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

2007 Alchemy: Transformations in Contemporary Photography, Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham, Nottingham

Natured Anew: reflections of the natural world, David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

Committed to Print, Sharples and Winterstoke Galleries, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol

Something That I’ll Never Really See, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich

Susan Derges, Neeta Madahar and Daro Montag, Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University, Lancaster

Wood for the Trees and Falling Leaves, Gimpel Fils, London Alchemy, Abbott Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria

On the Wall: Aperture Magazine ‘05/’06, Aperture Foundation, New York

2006 Alchemy, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London Make Believe, Shillam+Smith, London

Forest Dreaming, Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, Exeter

Going Ape: Confronting Animals in Contemporary Art, DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts

‘The Living Is Easy’: International Contemporary Photography, Flowers East Gallery, London

Into the Light of Things, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham

Alchemy, Harewood House, Yorkshire

Collecting, Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University, Lancaster

Taking Inventory - Transformation Through Compilation, Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, California

2004 Sanctuary: Photography and the Garden, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Brigstock, Kettering

Mostyn 2004, Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno

Masala: Diversity and Democracy in South Asian Art, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

For the Birds, Artspace, New Haven, Connecticut

2003 Construction – Coincidence?!: Young Photographers from the US, Momentum Gallery, Berlin

25hrs - International Video Art Show, Barcelona

“The Witney Biennial 2003”, Tisch Gallery, Tufts University, Boston 2002 Recent Work from the S.M.F.A., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Prequel, Tisch Gallery, Tufts University, Boston

Almost Home, Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, Massachusetts Consideraciones Al Respecto 7, Metrònom, Barcelona

Tanto por Ciento, Domestico ’02, Madrid

2001 Evolveart: Exposición de Arte Digital, Evolvebank, Barcelona and Madrid Toy, Gallery fx, Boston

2000 International Selection of Video Art, Centro Cultural de España, Lima

1999 It’s Only Paper, Stroud House Gallery, Stroud 

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College, 

Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Florida

Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, Massachusetts

DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts

Deutsche Bank, New York

Fidelity Investments, Boston

Fitchburg Art Museum, Massachusetts

Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 

Gallery Oldham Collections, Oldham

Government Art Collection, London

Joy of Giving Something Collection, New York

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri

MIT Art Collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts

National Media Museum Collection, Bradford

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario

Paintings in Hospitals, London

Pallant House Gallery Collection, Chichester

Progressive Art Collection, Ohio

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California

Twitter Inc., San Francisco

UBS Financial Services, New York

University of Warwick Art Collection, Coventry

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Wellington Management, Boston

West Collection, Oaks, Pennsylvania

SELECTED AWARDS, GRANTS AND RESIDENCIES

2013 Me and the Black Dog commission, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) and Arts Council

2008-2009 Bradford Fellowship in Photography, National Media Museum, Bradford 2008 Juror for the Photography Bursary Awards, National Media Museum and

Wilson Centre for Photography

Flora Grant, Joy of Giving Something Inc., New York

Selector for the 2008 Jerwood Photography Awards, Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Portfolio Magazine

Guest editor of Flowers edition of Leisure Centre magazine

2007 British Council Artist’s Travel Grant

Scape print commission from the Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England, Bristol

Solstice video commission from Film and Video Umbrella, Aspex Gallery, Harewood House and PM Gallery

2006 Braziers International Artists’ Workshop, Oxfordshire

2005 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize nominee, The Photographers’ Gallery,

London

Falling commission from Fabrica, Iniva and Photoworks Arts Council Grant

2003 Juror’s Award, Member’s Exhibition, Photographic Resource Center, Boston University, Boston

Karsh Award for Photography Honourable Mention, S.M.F.A., Boston

Photo District News 2003 Photo Annual

2000-2003 Full Graduate Scholarship, S.M.F.A. and Tufts University, Boston 2002 Boit Award, S.M.F.A., Boston

1999 The Lina Garnade Memorial Trust Award, Winchester School of Art

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Paul Cary Goldberg : Sense of Placement | Sense of Place

April 12 - May 15 . 2015

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A primary hue takes on myriad nuances in Gloucester

Blue arrived, and its time was painted at Jane Deering Gallery

By Cate McQuaid  | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT   AUGUST 19, 2014

Adin Murray’s “Rayleigh Scattering,” on exhibit at the Jane Deering Gallery.

GLOUCESTER — Stand in the kitchen of the Jane Deering Gallery, in Deering’s home in the Annisquam neighborhood here, and gaze out toward the shed in the backyard. Blue fills the frame of the shed’s doorway — a deep, breathless sky blue that couldn’t possibly be contained within the confines of such a small structure.

Adin Murray’s 6-foot-square painting “Rayleigh Scattering,” hangs solo inside. It’s part of a refreshing group show, “Blue arrived, and its time was painted,” the rest of which is in Deering’s house (open by appointment).

Murray has painted a luminous sky dwarfing a sun-dried Australian landscape. That thin bottom fringe of auburn grass and trees effectively anchors the cerulean expanse because Murray has rendered it with near photo-realist care. Pearlescent clouds limned with violet and orange-gold throw an aura upward, which the sky swallows, and then grows bluer.

The show takes its name from “Azul,” a poem by Spaniard Rafael Alberti, and snippets of verse have been mounted on the wall throughout. The text in the shed mentions “ecstatic blue.” That’s the color of Murray’s sky.

Murray is a Cape Ann artist, and “Blue” mixes local with national and international talent. Chris Baker, of Maine and California, reimagines the Baroque masterpiece “Las Meninas” in his painting “Study After Velázquez.”

A cobalt glow lights up Velázquez’s shadowy recesses in the room where he depicted himself painting a young princess and her servants. Using a thin film of plastic as a kind of stencil, Baker delineates figures and paints within their contours, each a balance of sharp lines and tart, runny smudges. It’s disarmingly strange — garish, ghostly, and affectionate.

Most of the work here, while smart, is not as unnerving. Tom Fels made his cyanotype “Arbor 6.16,” by climbing up into a tree and holding up a 3-foot-tall piece of photographic paper, exposing it to the sun and the shadows of rustling leaves. The results evoke the touch and movement of a friendly breeze.

There’s plenty more. Esther Pullman’s photographs of architectural details create spaciousness, even in small settings, with angles and turns that make the eye pivot. Tess Jaray’s untitled abstract silkscreen of increasingly blue bars describing an inverted pyramid has a basic, flat form, but color you could fall into. All told, the show’s effect is clarifying and direct, like a cool dip on a sunny day.

'Blue arrived, and its time was painted'

August 1 - September 1 . 2014

Jane Deering Gallery

Gloucester MA

viewing by appointment

978-281-8051

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2014/08/19/primary-hue-takes-myriad-nuances-gloucester/6ne6JxvOzR9T9VPEbWYutM/story.html

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ART REVIEW: A Bigger Picture, a Classic Declassified - CHRIS BAKER'S EPIC PAINTING, 'PACIFIC,' TAKES REMBRANDT'S CLASSIC 'THE NIGHT WATCH' AS A DIRECT SOURCE OF INSPIRATION

By Josef Woodard, News-Press Correspondent

March 14, 2014 11:54 AM

ART REVIEW

Chris Baker | Pacific

Despite the presence of studies, back-stories and supportive energies, the current fare in the Jane Deering Gallery basically qualifies as a one-painting wonder.  Even casually walking by the gallery space, Chris Baker’s Pacific screams out to the senses, in a side-of-a-wall, mini-mural kind of way, its whopping 106-inch-by-132-inch dimensions all but lording it over one long gallery wall, and engulfing our sightlines.

Chris Baker .  Pacific  2014 . Oil on canvas . 106 x 132 inches

And yet, if this seemingly casual gathering of figures in an identifiably iconic Southern California setting initially settles easy on the mind -- giving double meaning to the word ‘Pacific,’ as ocean and peaceful feeling -- the conceptual plot thickens and taps into something deeper and art-historically entrenched.  Pacific takes, as it s primary inspiration and model, Rembrandt’s classic and epic 1642 painting The Night Watch, aka its original title, ‘The Company of captain Frans Banning Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch preparing to march out.’

Chris Baker .  Night Watch, Abstracted  2014 .  Oil on canvas . 487 x 72 inches

Mr. Baker, who has studios in Carpinteria and Sedgwick, Maine, has maneuvered a post-Modernist flip here, unabashedly channeling and structurally mimicking Rembrandt, while lending a refreshing new twist in the realm of figurative art-making. He switches out the moody and dim-lit nocturnal setting of the original with bright, unrelenting California mid-day, and exchanges the 17th military aggregation for a motley crew of casual-dress Californians, slacker, possible scholars, and a jazz trio appreciated by a baying dog.

But clearly, the formal and organizational connection of the two paintings conspires toward an artistic, odd coupling across centuries, painting idioms and geo-cultural coordinates.  As the artist explains in a statement, ‘This is not a utopian order, nor is it a natural oder.  Rather, it is an alternative oder -- one that is large, wide, in color, imperfect.’

Across the room from the ‘big picture,’ hangs his piece, The Night Watch, Abstracted, service as a kind of point of reference and/or departure from the more than twice-as-large painting across the way.  Elements of the original have been scrubbed, scraped, blurred and blackened, as is windswept by the gusts or art historicist memory and contemplation.

With Pacific, the vast scale belies its ambivalent, easy-does-it, leisure-soaked imagery.  We instantly recognize the archetypal stuff of the SoCal lifestyle, from the swim-suited fashion, shorts (with camouflage pattern, mixed with the colors of the Ethiopian flag -- how SoCal is that?), and the odd presence of an older man positioned in an arch, pontificating pose, a direct lift of the central figure in the Rembrandt.  He is the surrogate 21st century, Californian stand-in for captain Frans Banning Cocq.

These disparate characters are curiously collected here, in a mannered, frozenly theatrical way in this stage, set-like space.  They could have been enlisted from a mega-mall or fresh off the strand in Venice, California, in the lazy, sunlight-kissed atmosphere with mild mountains in the background, a geometric, modernist beach house and the classic eucalyptus tree -- seemingly indigenous to California, but actually a non-native, like so many things on this far coast.

In the dramatic arts, in theater, opera and film, the process of updating and re-contexturalizing old standards of the repertoires is an accepted part of the creative process.  Updating and modernizing Shakespeare or Verdi, say, is a gesture toward making great art universal an of-the-now, as well as a potentially controversial prospect.  In the fine arts, the long arm and ominous echoes of art history feed into what comes next in ways that can be more poetic or twice-removed, or also sometimes realized by moving in an opposite direction.

Mr. Baker’s notion is, at once, bracingly direct, and sneakily complicated. With Pacific, somehow, the careful blend of transformation, adaptation and allegiance becomes a subplot in the fascination of the painting -- and the project itself.  The painting, this one looming tableau of a painting, is the thing, yes.  But it’s also just the starting point.

ART REVIEW            Pacific Study 1.5 2014

                                              Watercolor on paper . 6”x9”                                       

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Chris Baker | Pacific

When:  through March 29 . 2014

Where: Jane Deering Gallery . 128 E. Canon Perdido Street

Hours:  11am to 5pm Tuesday-Saturday . Information: janedeeringgallery.com . 805-966-3334

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The Land Has Many Parts

January 15 - February 15 . 2014 

@ JDGallery Santa Barbara CA

This exhibition was initially inspired by British artist Nigel Peake, whose book, In the Wilds, is a charming collection of drawings and close observations of his daily life in the country -- the surrounds of ‘shelter, mountain, ground and lake.’  Peake has an abiding love for the land, including the functions and structures  land supports, and writes ‘the land has many small parts.’ 

The idea for the exhibition then broadened as further sources came to light, connecting landscape to power, memory, modernity, cultural and climatic shifts, demonstrating the notion of land as complex and multi-layered.

Taking a cue from all of these sources, I asked each of the artists in this exhibition to communicate their notion of land through an inventory of their own observations, real or imagined.  What does the contemporary artist see in the landscape? Their interpretations articulate new visions, new connections and speak as much to the illusory, the nostalgic, the fantastic as to the real and the ruined, raising questions about how we interact with the land and what consequences this might have for the environment and, ultimately, the landscape.  

The Artists:    

Amanda Burnham (Baltimore MD)

Kerry Gorton Evans (Boston MA)

Jacob Hessler (Camden ME)

Ryan Hoover (Baltimore MD)

Julian Kreimer (Brooklyn NY)

Magnolia Laurie (Baltimore MD)

Rosemary Liss (Baltimore MD)

Adin Murray (Gloucester MA)

Susan McNally (North Kingston RI)

Michael Porter (Newlyn UK)

Kim Parr Roenigk (Baltimore-Washington DC)

Christina Seely (San Francisco CA)

Sommer Sheffield (Santa Barbara CA)

Ro Snell (Santa Barbara CA)

Emily Speed (Liverpool UK)

Joan Tanner (Santa Barbara CA)

Hazel Walker (County Clare, Ireland) 

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Drawing on Traces, and Winking Darkly : UNORTHODOX BLEND: DANE GOODMAN AND KEITH PUCCINELLI COLLABORATE ON 'TRACE PRINTS'

By Josef Woodard, News-Press Correspondent

March 22, 2013 11:19 AM

In the time-honored solitary and single-minded nature of art, especially in two-dimensional art, genuine collaboration is a rare thing.  No doubt, that very collaborative factor is the unique charm of the exhibition now up at the Jane Deering Gallery, which goes by the truth-telling moniker DANE GOODMAN + KEITH PUCCINELLI | The Trace Prints Project.

As it turns out, the join creative effort isn’t as strange as it might seem.  Yes, it’s true, these two distinctive and disparate -- though kindred-spirited -- Santa Barbara-based artists jointly worked on non-linear narrative coated with fever dream logic.  We ‘get’ that these two respect each other’s sensibility and know their points of crossover.  That was mot obvious in the retired-Atkinson-Gallery-director Mr. Goodman’s curatorial imprint on Mr. Puccinelli’s memorable 2011 cerebral circus at the Atkinson, a fantastic show dubbed ‘sweet cream sour fool.’

Both artists like a good, dark and cryptic joke, and find intriguing ways of drawing lines of connection between their own private sense of style and art history traditions, from grand Guignol to surrealism to post-Modernist malarky-ism.  They seem to be likely and like-minded collaborators and co-conspirators.

Even so, it slightly startles the art-appreciative mind to try and parse the roles of each involved in these curious drawings, using the humble but effective, one-off technique of ‘trace drawing’ in reverse.

Some pieces become parts of a series, or of negative imagery fragmented and reiterated, with rippling echoes and iconography of images seen elsewhere.  As a sum effect, the dense thicket of image on the gallery walls draws us into is slippery storylines and cross-references, its private and strange dark comical world.

Certain signature elements circulate amongst the drawings -- Mr. Goodman’s snowmen and pumpkin heads, Mr. Puccinelli’s iconic and historic sad clowns, for instance -- but often, it’s hard to distinguish who did what, or where the call-and-response responsibility lays.  Therein lay the artistically dialoguing charm of this unorthodox project.

Perils and dry pratfall comedy abound.  And while mostly they live in the realms of fantasy, childhood memories revised, and folk art-like freedom of expression (and free association of expression), the nasty real world sneaks into the picture at times.  For instance, can we ever view images of the World Trade Center with anything but tragic remorse and dread about the state of the world?  Recurring images of a falling bomb, and just the crudely-scrawled, loaded work ‘Afghanistan’ inserts a does of reality in the otherwise alternative/underground cartoony vibe of the room.

If the ‘centerpiece’ in this weirdly wonderful show is lavished on the walls, begging to be ‘read’ from left to right in some deceptively narrative fashion, the sculptural pieces on the gallery floor occupy their own sense of space.  Here in a cluster of serio-comic sculptures, the individual artists cling to individual responsibility fro what’s before us.

Pursuant to Mr. Goodman’s by-now familiar -- and vaguely creepy -- cast of characters, we find lovably grotesque heads and a pumpkin-headed boxer on tall sticks, as well as a mushy, melt-y ceramic piece, ‘World’s Largest Two-Faced Snowman.’

Mr. Puccinelli tends to steer his post-Oldenburgh-ish ideas around reformulation of form, content and materials, whether in the cereal-smattered ‘Bowl of Grapenuts’ or the visual and materialistic punning, wooden-cigarette facsimiles ‘Twig Cigs.’  He also shows defanged weaponry, guns made from organic, non-lethal materials, and a funny footnote of a piece, ‘Suspicious Package,’ slyly placed on the floor and empowered by its nearly unnoticed presence.  

In the end, the notion of suspicious packaging may be the best way to describe the strange wonder that these artists have wrought there, alone and together.  They have taken on a unique project in which the normally private passions and obsessions of the individual artist have merged with another creative head, and a certain enlightened, collective headlessness is the upshot.

ART REVIEW

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Puccinelli and Goodman

In The Trace Prints Project, Keith Puccinelli and Dane Goodman Draw Together

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

by CHARLES DONELAN

A COUPLE OF NOBODIES: In their new show at Jane Deering Gallery, well-known and prolific Santa Barbara artists Dane Goodman and Keith Puccinelli converge over a dizzying process known as trace printing. A piece of drawing paper is placed onto an inked linoleum block, and the artist then draws on the dry reverse surface of the paper with some kind of stylus. When the first proof is peeled away, a simple print is created, showing a mirror image of whatever has been drawn on the reverse side. In subsequent proofs, the original image comes up as a negative from where the ink has been taken away. At each go, the paper picks up more static and atmosphere from dust, air bubbles, and distortion. The trace printing technique was used to great effect by Marie Schoeff in her January 2012 show Traces, also at Deering, but in this instance, with two artists involved, the drama inherent in the sequencing and multiplicity of the images takes on an added dimension of dialogue.

In their new collaboration, Keith Puccinelli and Dane Goodman operate through cartoon alter egos, a clown and a snowman, respectively.