| About the Exhibitions
Opening reception: First Friday,May 7, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
1968
1968 marks the founding year of Marian Locks Gallery.
The exhibit offers a snapshot of the period, one that was
significantly defined by new materials and processes. In tribute
to our founder, 1968 features artists long associated with
the gallery and their contemporaries that created breakthrough
work in the decade following 1968.
Perhaps fitting for its era, the 60s art world awakened to
unconventional materials - artists experimented with industrial
and commercial materials such as lead, Plexiglas, synthetic
fabrics and automotive paints. Works in the exhibit reference
the shifting political and social landscape.
Edna Andrade’s Earth Day (1970), Richard Artschwager’s
paintings on celetox, Judy Chicago’s Lifesaver series,
Thomas Chimes’ vinyl box constructions, and Jasper Johns’
lead reliefs all acknowledge the progressive ideas each of
these artists pursued with subjects and materials.
The basic support for paintings was rethought by artists
like Ralph Humphrey (shaped canvases) and James Havard (substituted
a molded plastic support for canvas).
Painters such as Noel Mahaffey, John Moore, Elizabeth Osborne
and Warren Rohrer tackled traditional subjects such as the
landscape, the figure or interiors with new expressive energy
- stirred by Pop, and influences from an older generation
of artists such as George Segal, Agnes Martin, Alice Neel
and Alex Katz.
Marian Locks (1914–2010) championed both emerging and
established artists in a long career spent nurturing talent
and creating a lively forum to present new art in the city.
Beginning with a modest space and young artists, Marian Locks
helped shape the contemporary art scene in Philadelphia—a
legacy that continues today.
New Light
Locks Gallery is pleased to present New Light, a group exhibition
featuring gallery artists Neysa Grassi, Ellen Harvey, Warren
Rohrer, Pat Steir, Ena Swansea, and Rob Wynne, New Light.
Light -- a timeless subject and painterly device used in
art throughout the ages, is also a metaphor for renewal, new
development, and rediscovery. In the hands of artists, artificial
or reflected light becomes a sensory experience and a vital
component of the work.
This thematic presentation of six painters and one sculptor
offers highly individual approaches to varied meanings of
“light”. In the abstract paintings of Neysa Grassi,
Warren Rohrer and Pat Steir, shadows and light are often at
play in their subtle layering and dense applications of paint.
Ena Swansea draws from daily life in her semi-autobiographical
figure and landscape paintings. Her views of New York’s
Broadway Avenue hum with the overloaded LED environment.
The conceptual artist Ellen Harvey has long explored optical
effects with mirrors and LED lighting. In her new series Ruins
are More Beautiful, Harvey invents a lost Romantic forest
crafted from hand-edged mirrors.
Rob Wynne’s blown glass sculptures of words and phrases
utilizes text as the subject. His pieces at first read as
signs - but for the viewer, each text triggers memories or
koan-like meditations.
About the Gallery - Member of the Old City Arts Association
Founded in 1968, Locks Gallery represents an international group of critically respected contemporary artists working in a wide variety of disciplines. The gallery exhibition program presents new works by mid-career artists while introducing the work of emerging artists to a national audience. Survey and thematic exhibitions of work by essential artists of the 20th-century including Louise Bourgeois, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson and George Segal, are regular highlights of the gallery exhibition program. Organized by the gallery working in concert with the artist and/or their estate, these exhibitions offer an opportunity to view an insightful selection of rarely seen works in a museum quality setting. |
