It’s about time that the alternative gallery scene starts high-flying again in the world’s self-identified art capital once again. And perfect that many of the standard-bearers in these new spaces are based, now, in the Hudson Valley.
Take the Skylight Gallery, located in a second floor space above a detective agency on the northern side of Chelsea, in Manhattan, where Elisa Pritzker is finishing a shared show this coming weekend and newly-local sculptor and collage artist Christy Rupp will start showing with Cold Spring-based painter Thomas Huber and NYC photographer Andrew Garn next week, with an Opening Reception set for Thursday, November 17.
“Skylight Gallery shows work by mostly New York State Artists and a little beyond the borders,” reads the innovative new space’s mission statement. “Our series of exhibitions this season features a conversation of artworks between artists based in the Hudson Valley and artists based in Manhattan and the boroughs. Typically the artists we exhibit have developed and honed their visual voice, having studied and made art for decades. Occasionally, we show exceptional young talent whose work is mature beyond their years. Skylight Gallery also conducts an open call once a year. We believe in giving talented artists the opportunity to show in Manhattan.”
Rupp, who lives near the river in northern Saugerties, has become something of a fixture of the local scene after years of work in New York and elsewhere. She came to the fore in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside CoLab, the Guerilla Girls, and the rest of Downtown Manhattan’s egalitarian take-over of the male-oriented abstract and minimalist art scene of that time. She’s since become known as one of the pioneers and leading lights of the EcoArts movement via her politically-astute sculpture, collage work, and drawings.
While Huber and Garn, via abstract paintings that hint at the flotsam and jetsam of modern life and close-up photos of the detritus left by Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill mess, create the basis for a show they’re calling “Residuum,” Rupp softly (and humorously) adds her own comments on the odd surreal junctures of contemporary political reality via two and three-dimensional collages that present “moments where the natural world, science and industry collide.
We’re sold, finding that we need such work to make sense of all the strange mash-ups that everyday life is handing us these days. Shrimp and other natural forms dancing with molecules before a backdrop of slightly scary amorphous blobs and oversized insect mutations? We’re sold…++
Skylight Gallery, located at 538 West 29th Street in Manhattan, is open Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m.and on weekdays from 10a.m.-4 p.m., when it is advised one ring the door bell for entry. For further information call 646-772-2407 or visit www.skylightgallerynyc.com. Or check out Rupp’s work by googling her.
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