The opening reception for Christine Cariati, Liz Hager and Mark Ulriksen’s group show at Back to the Picture is tonight (Saturday, March 29th) at 7:00pm. You can find all the event details here. I’ve already dropped by the gallery and the work looks great.
Learn more about each of the artists on their web sites:
The image at the top of this post is a detail from Christine Cariati’s painting “Vuillard’s Garden.” The painting is, in part, a tribute to the intense pattern work in the paintings of Edouard Vuillard. The medium is gouache on paper. Gouache is opaque watercolor, and a notoriously difficult painting medium. Cariati’s natural landscapes are filled with color, beauty and spirit, even as the figures portrayed act out a darker Darwinian drama.
Liz Hager’s Digital MetalTypes are a revelation. I’d never seen photographs printed on to a bright copper metal sheet before. Hager incorporates self-designed textile patterns, 19th-century studio portraits and her own botanical photos into a series of captivating photo-montages. Through these images and the stories that accompany them, the viewer is invited into a private world filled with the secret thoughts and unconventional associations of its inhabitants. The viewer decides where to draw the line between fact and fiction.
Mark Ulriksen is well known for his covers for The New Yorker magazine. Over the years he’s had some of the great ones. Most recently his cover “The Emperor’s new clothes” was a wry comment on the troubles of Eliot Spitzer. Ulriksen creates acrylic paintings for most of America’s major publications, book publishers, advertising agencies and graphic designers. He paints pictures of the famous and infamous, newsmakers and homemakers, musicians and athletes, dogs and politicians. This show will exclusively showcase his work for The New Yorker.