Group Exhibition: Quiet Summer

Nancy Toomey Fine Art is pleased to announce a group show titled Quiet Summer with works by Miya Ando, Peter Halasz, Andy Harper, Maria Park, Mark Perlman, Gregg Renfrow, Michael Russell, Gilles Teboul, Audrey Tulimiero Welch, and Suzan Woodruff.

Traditionally, the season of summer suggests a time of excitement and an enhanced enjoyment of life, when the days seem to last forever. Spellbinding light allows us moments of tranquility to experience a joyful response to nature in this most relaxed of seasons. Yet this year, unlike any other, beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that life has been unhinged and the normal rules no longer apply. We do not know when, if ever, we will feel truly safe again. As we re-emerge, it is as though we are experiencing the moment when disaster and its aftermath have begun to overlap.

Humans are not well designed, it appears, to live in uncertainty. Yet for the first time in over a year, we can reasonably contemplate the future—most of us are no longer locked in the perpetual present of long days spent with ourselves or our families. We are able to at least create the illusion of movement in our lives, giving form to a time when the future had appeared to be so shapeless. Though uncertainty continues to reign, the weight of the world feels a little lighter, even if only for a moment.

Some of the works in this exhibition were chosen for their nod to the true beauty of our external environment, providing balm to the battered psyche. Miya Ando’s pure reductive form is infused with light and atmospheric tranquility. Peter Halasz’s technique of layering glazed monochromatic color results in a night seascape that is at once haunting and hallucinatory, suggesting a half-remembered dream. Andy Harper’s rich tapestry of grass is a verdant tangle rendered mysterious by its unknown, multiple light sources that catch us off guard, inspiring awe and unease simultaneously. Maria Park’s OCR-A font chart is crumpled, disrupting and redirecting the legibility of the font but also suggesting a flight guided by its own strange rules. Mark Perlman’s oil on paper is a push-and-pull of line and tone that stops short of agitation, finely walking a visual tightrope.

Gregg Renfrow, in his signature process of pouring polymer and pigment on cast acrylic, creates overlapping tones that appear to be glowing mysteriously from within. Michael Russell’s delicate use of line suggests space that is interlocking and unknowable, skewing the viewer’s center of gravity. Gilles Teboul gives us a delicate rendering of poured color that suggests a summer sky of limitless possibility. Audrey Tulimiero Welch approach is a more textured and layered construct, suggesting psychologically charged maps leading us to unknown terrain. The glorious riot of poured color created by Suzan Woodruff suggests an impending storm or a planetary disturbance, alluring, seductive and unsettling.

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