NETWORKS 2008: A COLLABORATION
Newport Art Museum
76 Bellevue Avenue
Newport, Rhode Island
October 25, 2008 - January 18, 2009
5 Traverse Gallery
5 Traverse Street
Providence, Rhode Island
December 5, 2008 - January 11, 2009
AS220 Project Space
93 Mathewson Street
Providence, Rhode Island
December 5-28, 2008
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By Meredith Cutler (for Artscope Magazine)
Article Excerpt:
“NetWorks 2008: A Collaboration” is an ambitious exhibition spread across three diverse venues in Rhode Island where the artwork and stories of 19 influential Rhode Island artists have been celebrated and documented through a triad of gallery exhibitions launched and supplemented with video and photographic portraits of the participants. This unique exhibition and historical document is the result of a partnership amongst the Newport Art Museum; the artists; celebrated Rhode Island art collector Joseph Chazan, MD; Umberto Crenca, artistic director of AS220 (Providence’s renowned alternative art space); and 5 Traverse, a private gallery in Providence.
In the elegant setting of the Newport Art Museum’s Cushing Memorial Galleries, distinguished Rhode Island artists Howard Ben Tré, Toots Zynsky, Salvatore Mancini, Jonathan Bonner, Jacqueline Ott, James Watkins, Elizabeth Pannell, Timothy Philbrick, Mark Freedman, Denny Moers, Ruth Dealy, Umberto Crenca and Walter Feldman hold court with artists newer to the local art scene, or flourishing in its well-formed underground.
These include Angel Quinonez, Xander Marro, CW Roelle and the artists who photographed and filmed them, Richard Goulis, Scott Lapham and Lucas Foglia. It’s an ambitious undertaking, finding the kernel of common ground that unites this group and translating that into a cogent exhibit experience.
The component of the wider project that best illustrates this goal is the lasting document of photographic and video portraits of the artists themselves. The stills were tackled by Lapham and Foglia, and, at their best, center the personalities of each individual in a space that informs their work and narrates their story. In Foglia’s portrait “Umberto Crenca,” the joyfully non-hierarchical catalyst sports dark glasses scrawled with the words “Not Art,” as he stands before the blank canvas of a paint-splattered wall, his muscular arms crossed confrontationally.
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Image: Angel Quinonez, "Vincent Van Goya", 2006, acrylic, gold leaf on plywood.
