Southampton, NY – Tripoli Gallery is pleased to present Night, a group exhibition featuring the work of Katherine Bernhardt, Ross Bleckner, Katherine Bradford, Francesco Clemente, Ann Craven, Félix Bonilla Gerena, April Gornik, Mary Heilmann, Bryan Hunt, Adrianne Rubenstein, Hiroshi Sugimoto, José Luis Vargas, and Lucy Winton. On view from October 6th through November 12th, 2018, Night will open with a reception for the artists on Saturday, October 6th from 5 to 7 pm, at 30a Jobs Lane, Southampton, NY.

Night begins as we move further into the autumn months, when the nights grow longer with each passing day. As night approaches, a certain energy is awakened in our nocturnal selves. Night is the realm of dreams from which artists can take inspiration, transforming their dreams into reality. Through art and exhibitions, we are given an opportunity to study ideas, words and their meanings. In this exhibition, “night” is the point of departure–without reality determined under bright light, night allows for the imagination to fill in the spaces of the dark where we can travel outside the confines of our physical existence.

Artworks of the night often take the form of landscapes, as seen in the work of José Luis Vargas and Lucy Winton. Vargas collages a face onto his painting that rests beside a painted speech bubble calling out Por fin (At last), while Winton embroiders a found tapestry of folkloric lands, creating a night scene through a painted vignette. In Katherine Bradford’s painting, Halloween in Connecticut, figures are dressed as ghosts, the cutouts of eyes in their white sheet costumes become windows into the matching landscape beyond. For Félix Bonilla Gerena, the night releases feelings held in throughout the day; expressive scenes of evening indulgences–sultry female figures perhaps from a night’s dream–are feverishly drawn and painted onto raw linen in black and white.

The presence of the moon is significant in any night landscape as the predominant source of natural light–as in April Gornik’s Moon Behind Clouds–the moon becomes a defining force as it lights the fractured surface of clouds, compressing the space between background and foreground. Similarly, Ann Craven’s paintings capture the constancy of the moon as it illuminates and colors the atmosphere of night sky with a palette both vivid and minimal, while Adrianne Rubinstein’s painterly images of broccoli within multicolored landscapes seemingly generate their own light amongst their surrounding nighttime blues. Beyond the moonlight of Earth’s night sky, Bryan Hunt explores the celestial objects of the universe, creating scientific sculptural works, while Mary Heilmann’s ceramic, Mars, suggests forms akin to planetary rocks.

Night also presents a symbolic interpretation of the dark, as in Katherine Bernhardt’s paintings of Darth Vader, which capture the essence of darkness as a galactic force. Ross Bleckner’s recent paintings conjure up phantoms of nighttime as ghostly brush strokes mix with dark variations of black hues, creating fields of gesture and movement, while Francesco Clemente’s intimate watercolor, a contemplation of blue with an impression of a white skull evokes the identity of the moon in the night sky. In Hiroshi Sugimoto’s image of a movie theater, the black and white photograph reinforces the separation placed between night and day–a film-length exposure leaves only a glowing white screen, while the movement of time is measured by tracks of stars across the sky.