Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent drawings and paintings by gallery artist Jay Kelly. Jay Kelly celebrates clean and fundamentally abstract forms, with a minimalist sensibility. This will be Kelly’s first show of abstract paintings, having worked in small scale sculpture and drawing for many years. Applying oil on linen stretched over 8 x 8” and 11 x 8” irregularly-shaped wood frames, Kelly creates rich, hazy-colored fields and translucent layers bisected by crisp abstract shapes. His recent sculptures, made of wire, nickel silver, wood, gesso, acrylic, and Japanese paper, are no larger than 10” tall. Loosely inspired by Modernist design, these works possess a quiet grace. Structural woven metal shapes, diaphanous Japanese paper nets, and smooth, nonreferential forms are aged with a patina which reflects Kelly’s love for weathered surfaces.

For more information, please email [email protected]

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of artist/architect, Jim Watt’s 20 newest paintings.

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Spring has always been about new beginnings, the smell of magnolias and lilacs, migrating birds, optimism, love, hope, youth and, of course, baseball. This spring, however, as the lilacs and magnolias gloriously bloom and the beautiful birds migrate north, we seem to desperately cling to love and hope and optimism, fearful of the unknown while socially distanced and isolated. And, there is no baseball.

The artist Jim Watt has taken his own optimism and is creating a visual record of our present time replete with love, hope and possibilities. This Spring, throughout the quarantine, as a kind of ritualistic exercise he is painting 100 dreamy, meditative watercolors as his contribution to our new collective psyche. Let these be a small but rich addition to the slow, steady return of our lives. The final painting will be completed on June 19th, the last official day of spring.

As Watt fills his studio walls with his 9 x 12" paintings, they will become available for sale. Each painting is $350 framed.

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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night." –Rainer Maria Rilke

Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of recent prints by Charlie Hewitt. These relief prints - blends of woodcut and linocut - are a colorful celebration of the regional geography of the coast of Maine, where Hewitt grew up and now lives. Since the resurgence of the woodcut in the 1980's, Hewitt has cut and gouged his way into the very soul of the medium. The physicality of this body of work reflects Hewitt’s emotional connection to the regional landscape, as well as his appreciation for the tactility of the medium. Recognizable shapes of buoys, waves, and lighthouses create a narrative throughout the show. This imagery is part of Hewitt’s personal iconography and references some of the New England industry Hewitt remembers from his childhood. The prints were printed by master printer David Wolfe, of David Wolfe Editions.

All prints in this show are priced for challenging times. Each is available for $800.

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Mischak’s fantastical, action-based images magnify the intricacies of daily life. Instead of depicting a realistic scene, Mischak amplifies moments of domestic turmoil and loss of control. Each scene embodies raw physicality and action, and abandons a sense of perspective and earth’s gravity. Objects spiral out of the composition in all directions, creating an elastic sense of space. Mischak’s cups spill disproportionate amounts of liquid, and his abstract shapes mingle with household appliances. These improbable factors, coupled with dramatic neon color, make ordinary problems feel surreal. By exacerbating small mishaps, Mischak allows the viewer to feel the frustration of the day-to-day and find humor in it.

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of color photographs by gallery artists Christopher Beane and David Mitchell. The show features 20 images from Christopher Beane’s series Portraits from a Ranunculus Room, and new geometric abstract photographs printed on canvas by David Mitchell. The exhibition opens on January 19th and will remain on view through February 26th, 2017. An opening reception for the artists will be held on Thursday, January 19th, from 6-8 pm.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected]

>Click here for full press release

>Click here for David Mitchell: Photographs exhibition catalogue

>Click here for Christopher Beane: Portraits from a Ranunculus Room & Others exhibition catalogue

Internationally known for her work as a landscape photographer, Tanja Hollander shifted her focus in 2011 to embark on a new venture of photographing all of her Facebook friends. “Facebook seemed an ideal forum for this exploration. Though we are in the initial stages of understanding the effects of social networking on American culture and photography, there is a pervasive feeling that it is changing our interactions with each other and building a false sense of community,” Hollander explains. Hollander’s Facebook rolodex will send her to 100+ cities, 43 states and will send her to 11 countries and 4 continents to see 600+ friends. By reaching past the profile page, Hollander peers into the everyday environment of her Facebook friends to discover a portrait dictated by physical friendship and home, rather than a virtual persona. While traveling for the portrait project, Hollander discovered and documented different landscapes, thus revisiting a familiar subject and developing a new layer of meaning.

> Click here for the press release

Known for rendering decadent and pristinely organized desserts, Wayne Thiebaud is a seminal artist in post-war American art, lying at the vanguard of Pop Art and modern realism. The exhibit is intended as a small-scale retrospective of Wayne Thiebaud’s prints, showcasing his trademark subject - American food- along with his images of San Francisco’s urban landscapes. Thiebaud was thoroughly interested in the beauty of print media, and the elements of chance, surprise, and continuity that existed in the practice. This exhibition showcases the editioned and hand-colored trial proofs that came out of his well-crafted investigations into various print practices. Print media was used as a platform for Thiebaud to explore the possibilities of transfiguration, and the idea that a work of art is never truly complete. In printmaking, a trial proof or artist proof allows the artist to explore different compositional decisions and color palette (known as a color trial proof). Thiebaud described this process by saying “It is the potential for change that captivates me. Trial proofs offer a chance to experiment with variations and permutations that can be transmitted to the next stage.” Applying a layer of watercolor or pastel over a print encourages a direct freshness and gives new life to the images. Thiebaud relishes the ability to rework an image and the struggle to find the point at which an image is truly resolved.

> Click here for the press release

Jim Kempner Fine Art will present an exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg's prints, drawings and objects from the 60's through the 90's from November 1 through December 14. The show will feature early prints from ULAE, Gemini Cardbird constructions from the early 70's, Bellini prints from the 80's, and Opal Gospel, a rare multiple included in Rauschenberg's 1976 retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington. The gallery is located at 501 West 23rd Street at Tenth Avenue. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10-6; and Sunday from 10-5.

Currently, Rauschenberg's work is the subject of a major retrospective at both the uptown and downtown branches of the Guggenheim.

For further information, please contact the gallery.

Jim Kempner will inaugurate the fall season at his new gallery location in Chelsea with an exhibition of Jennifer Bartlett prints and drawings from the 70's through the 90's. The exhibition will feature seminal graphic works from her important series In the Garden, The Elements, The Seasons, and Rhapsody. The show will also include several drawings from In the Garden and her recent Earth series. The dates of the exhibition are September 11 through October 18. The gallery is now located in Chelsea, at 501 West 23 Street (entrance on 10th Avenue), New York City. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10-6; and Sunday from 12-5.

Drawing and printmaking have always been important facets of Bartlett's oeuvre, sharing a common imagery with her paintings. The works in this exhibition will exemplify the artist's mastery of all aspects of drawing and printmaking -etching, woodblock, lithography, silkscreen, aquatint , pastel and colored pencil.

Jennifer Bartlett has been acclaimed as one of the most important painters of her generation. Her work has been widely exhibited in this country and abroad, and is in the collections of such museums as The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others. She is also the subject of four monographs, Rhapsody (1985), In the Garden (1982), and Air: 24 Hours (1994) by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; and Jennifer Bartlett (1985) by Abbeville Press.

Parts I & II

January 6 - March 1, 1997

JIM KEMPNER FINE ART presents a group exhibition of master prints at his Chelsea gallery from January 6 - March 1, 1997. The exhibit will include many striking examples of contemporary American printmaking by the following artists: JOHN BALDESSARI, JENNIFER BARTLETT, ROSS BLECKNER, LOUISE BOURGEOIS, CHUCK CLOSE, JIM DINE, SAM FRANCIS, HELEN FRANKENTHALER, DAVID HOCKNEY, HOWARD HODGKIN, ROY LICHTENSTEIN, BRICE MARDEN, ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, ED RUSCHA, FRANK STELLA, and ANDY WARHOL.

The exhibition will be held in two parts. Part I will be installed for the month of January and Part II for the month of February. The print media presented will include: color lithography, silkscreen, etching, woodcut, photogravure and multiples of a variety of media. This exhibition offers our viewers an opportunity to view a strong selection of American printmaking from the 1960s-1990s. During this period of American contemporary art there occurred a literal leap in the technological processes in printmaking. Artists and printers began to establish a different kind of working relationship, making the print project a collaboration. Their efforts pushed the limits of traditional methods of making prints. By the mid 1980s, print publishers such as Tyler Graphics, ULAE, Graphicstudio and Gemini were outfitting their print shops with state-of-the-art equipment to produce large, more multiple process editions. Our exhibition will include work made in this span of four decades, from the more established shops as well as editions made by other lesser known publishers.

Our gallery hours are: Tuesdays - Saturdays, 10-6 and Sundays 12-5.

For further information please contact the gallery.