NYC Culture/Style: BEYOND THE THRESHOLD - Dialogues Within the Space of Painting

Curator Renwick Heronimo with artists Erika Diehl and Justin Lee Hoekstra

On June 22 S Artspace Gallery NYC presented a group show curated by independent curator/art critic Renwick Heronimo. Beyond the Threshold is a group exhibition profiling emerging Mid-Atlantic painters, all exploring meaning and dialogue inside as well as outside the space of painting. The group consists of Erika Diehl, Justin Hoekstra, Andrew Lubas and David Myers. All the above artists and curator met in recent years at MICA, one of the most prestigious art colleges in the United States.

Thinking of the threshold one envisions the passage from one stage to another in life, experience, knowledge, and concepts. This passage, rich in as many questions as answers, encompasses some of the most stimulating, complex and intense moments of human existence where one ventures into the unknown territory.

The selected artists for this exhibition have all approached the threshold in their own individual way each addressing this passage and its layers of meaning in their personal explorations within the space of painting.

Erica with some of her work

The works of Erika Diehl are there to be unraveled, there to engage in a dialogue with the spectator that will have to make the effort to pay close attention in order to reap the benefits of the experience. These attractive and complex pieces can be seen as parts of a whole that evoke the spectator to try to reconstruct their level of meaning. Diehl invites one into her space of dialogue, into her mind-space where she seems to be thinking through paint shaping the indefinable boundaries of the imagination.

In the works of Justin Hoekstra we are prompted to give in to total abandon and suppress logic, entering into an abstract space of cognitive meaning where life manifests itself in radiant color and gesture. The endless mutation of visual information is outright staggering to consider, and the decision to work abstractly is in service of the development of a visual language that might be simultaneously universal and specific. He is drawn into the work by the open ended question that painting presents, against which he stacks answers that only serve to open the question again.

Jorge Ibinarriaga, Justin, Elisabeth Ollé Coriel, Jacqueline Coriel, and Renwick

These and the following four photos show the work of David Myers

David Myers uses the objective structure of the grid in order to define and convey meaning, here one is drawn in by the aesthetic allure of these cityscapes with their layered collective histories, complexities and meaning, while beyond the façade the deeper, subjective, personal interpretation, and translation of this confrontation with the other can be perceived. Here structure defines meaning and directs ones gaze to the greater questions within the work of art.

Kandra Matthew gets a memory shot

These two and the following three photos show the work of Andrew Lilas

The explorations of Andrew Lubas have led him to abandon and expand upon the support system of the painting in order to explore new transitive spaces where the passage and awareness of space become essential. His works are based on explorations beyond the notion of order and control and how the context of the inside and outside the frame of the painting engages in dialogue with the space itself. The interplay between the two acknowledges the surrounding world and reconciles it with the work.