ALL IN

Participating Artists:  Diana Gabriel, Magalie Guerin, Alexander Herzog, John Phillips, Melody Saraniti, Christopher Smith, Scott Stack
January 25 – February 21, 2015
Reception: Sunday, January 25, 3 ‐ 6pm
Curated by Karen Azarnia

The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present All In, a group exhibition featuring artists who share a love for painting and a reverence for abstraction.  With an insistence on the haptic qualities of the hand-made object, the work included in this exhibition ranges from the imperfections of the loose gesture to the precision of hard-edge abstraction.  Throughout all, the fundamental elements of line and shape present an entry point that strikes a balance between intellectual and emotional intelligence.

Working within a set range of parameters, ranging from conceptual, to process-based or the performative action of mark and gesture, each artist commits themselves to fully mine and explore a particular avenue of formal inquiry.  With rigorous practices, in which nuanced variations function to generate richly complex iterations, the insistence on the basic use of line and shape creates provocative visual relationships and a shared lyricism. The simplicity of these basic formal elements can be deceptive; there is risk and the danger of failure.   The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

-Karen Azarnia