April 13 - May 16, 2025
Michael Voss - Door to the Garden | Bill Carroll - Trees | Steph Krawchuk - #155 (a-c) | Seth Dembar - The Apollo Project | Christopher Boyne - Lobster
OPENING RECEPTION - SUNDAY, APRIL 13, 1-4pm
MELANIE’S OFFICE
Michael Voss - Door to the Garden
During the time that turned out to be the final months of my mother’s life, I began making works with oil stick or oil pastel on paper.
It was as if the circumstances demanded a change in my working methods.
Sure, I had used oil stick on paper before, making drawings from nature, mainly outdoors: Lots of drawings of fig leaves or of the feral cats that live in our backyard. But these new works are something all together different.
I approached them not so much as drawing, but as a continuation of my work in painting, alas in a different medium, and therefore altered methodology.
As with my painting, what I basically do is develop shapes until they make sense to me. The goal is to achieve clarity, not so much in the sense of purity or simplicity, but in the sense that a form has clearly reached a viable state of independence from my initial intensions, and goes beyond my limited imagination.
Michael Voss, born in São Paulo, Brazil, lives in Ridgewood, Queens. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, and at Hunter College, NYC. His work is in various collections, among them the Bavarian State Chancellery, the BMW Collection, Munich, Alcoa in the Lever House in NYC, and the collections of Ronald S. Lauder and Estée Lauder.
He is represented by Galerie Wittenbrink in Munich, where he last was in a two person show with David Rabinowitch in 2020. Ten of his “Tantric Floaters” paintings are concurrently on view at the Hearst Tower, NYC, as part of “2025 Art Now”.
WAITING ROOM
Bill Carroll - Trees
I have been painting New York City for many years. On long urban hikes through all five boroughs I use a small pad and black pen to make quick line drawings of all seen. Buildings, bridges, signs, water towers, and most recently, trees. New York has many amazing forests. This past year I have spent a lot of time drawing the trees in Queens in Forest Park, and in the Bronx in Pelham Bay and Van Cortlandt Parks. I then use the simple drawings to make paintings in acrylic on paper or panel. The finished paintings retain the simplicity and spontaneity of the original drawings. The most recent tree paintings in this show are in black and white acrylic on panel. Titled simply ‘Trees’ they are images of the forest in winter. I am fascinated by the variety and beauty of the differently shaped trunks and by the patterns the branches make as they overlap. It has been satisfying to shift my gaze from the urban built environment to document this natural and essential part of the city.
Bill Carroll has been involved in the New York Art World for over forty years as Artist, Curator, Teacher, and Arts Administrator. He was the Director of the Charles Cowles Gallery in Soho; and the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in Chelsea. Bill also worked in non-profit at the Dia Art Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum, and was the Director of the EFA Studio Program from 2010 to 2023. At Pratt Institute, for 13 years, he taught an MFA course titled Art World & Professionalism, and has lectured including at NYFA, NYU, Cranbrook, Bard College, SVA, Columbia, Cornell, and F.I.T. Bill has shown his own work extensively and had seven solo exhibitions with the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in Chelsea. The most recent was in January 2024. It was titled Living in the City and was accompanied by a catalogue with essay by David Ebony. In 2016 he did an installation of fifty-six paintings at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public titled New York: My City. Bill’s work has been reviewed many times, including in Art in America. Born in the Bronx, he has lived in the East Village since 1981.
AL’S OFFICE
Steph Krawchuk - #155 (a-c)
The triptych #155 (a-c) is apart of an ongoing series of indexically numbered works, where Krawchuk explores the interplay between line, shape, colour and texture. Her paintings are left pared down to enhance the most essential formal elements. Traces of the artist’s hand can be found as the surface of the paintings become worked and re-worked, often leaving behind unique minor imperfections of lines, shapes, and paint drips.
Born and raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Steph Krawchuk holds a BFA from the University of Saskatchewan. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions, both locally and internationally, and can be found in public and private collections throughout Canada. Krawchuk lives and works in Saskatoon.
AL’S OFFICE
Seth Dembar - The Apollo Project
Seth Dembar is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work has garnered attention in exhibitions across New York and Miami. He combines various mediums and techniques from diverse artistic disciplines to explore the dynamic interplay between representation and abstraction. In his artworks, the foreground and background merge seamlessly, showcasing a powerful synergy of form, color, line, and texture. In the studio, Seth begins by constructing “assemblages” using found objects, alongside painting, drawing, and sculpting with wire and clay. He captures these sculptures and painted compositions with a high-resolution digital camera, resulting in images that are exceptionally rich in color saturation. His painting process is driven by intention. At times, he approaches each piece with a clear vision, allowing for a “natural” method of applying paint, texture, and color. Other times, he embraces uncertainty, viewing it as a challenge to solve—transforming moments of doubt into opportunities for creative breakthroughs. The act of adding paint to the images is a fluid extension of his artistic expression, reinforcing his deep-seated love of painting. The interplay of disciplines distinctly influences the final product—photography captures the nuances of light, while paint delivers definitive lines and vibrant layers of color. Elements such as chance, freedom, discovery, and purposeful manipulation of the camera, lighting, brushes, paint, and other materials are all essential to his artistic process, culminating in the work.
SHELF
Christopher Boyne - Lobster
Lobster is a collection of five heavily painted sculptures I made while in-residence at the Annandale Artist Residency in rural Prince Edward Island, Canada. Annandale is a fishing village with a small fleet of older lobster boats. Many of the parts on these older boats are improvised, made of wood and heavily painted whereas the same parts on newer boats are ‘off the shelf’ and made of stainless steel or plastic. I found the approaches the fisherman and builders took to fashion these improvised parts fascinating. The boats all had similar parts, but the form of the parts was often different from one boat to the next. On working boats, it can be assumed that the parts were all highly functional, but each was conceptualized so differently. I loved it. It made me think about today and what I see as a boring and subjective interest in ‘best’. Whoever built these parts came to design conclusions over time and through experience and preference. I made careful measurements of five of these improvised parts on lobster boats including Jacob’s Run, the Robin Gayle and North Star and made precise replicas of the parts to heavily paint in high gloss marine black. I painted the objects over and over to mimic the build-up the real parts had from years of circular maintenance.
Chris Boyne (b. 1984. Halifax, Nova Scotia) is a multidisciplinary artist who uses task-based approaches to explore ideas and create conceptual content. He is most interested in generative approaches and his studio practice involves photography, the fabrication and manipulation of objects, drawing and writing. He holds a BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA from Concordia University, has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and currently lives and works in Montréal.
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