Southampton, NY- TRIPOLI GALLERY is pleased to present a group exhibition entitled Water. This exhibition marks the gallery’s fifth year at its current location and brings together some of the Hamptons’ most pivotal artists from the 19th to 21stcenturies focusing on the direct role the East End of Long Island has played on their work as
well as an individualized appreciation for water as subject matter.
Water couples history and content to promote a dialogue between external influences and the lives that shaped American art as we know it today. From Thomas Moran to Maya Lin, all of the works exhibited, either literally
or metaphorically, portray a fascination with water as filtered through the lens of the artistic creation—blending environmental inspiration and cultural camaraderie. Through sculpture, found art, painting, drawings, and prints this exhibition highlights the development of the East End as a haven for artistic ingenuity in a landscape where city meets country, modern meets contemporary, and land meets sea. On a broader spectrum, Water brings attention to global environmental issues we are faced with today.
This exhibition seeks to share with the community a complex and engaging selection of artwork—featuring rare examples from important private and museum collections—spanning over three centuries. Juxtaposing works by emerging artists with those of contemporary and modern masters, Water acknowledges both the historical significance of a former generation and the vital contributions of our contemporaries as we move toward the future—connected through a continued need for and appreciation of water.
A percentage of proceeds from this exhibition will support WHOLE WORLD Water, an international campaign developed to help end the global water and sanitation crisis. WHOLE WORLD Water works to engage the hospitality and tourism industry to filter, bottle in reusable glass bottles, sell its own water, and contribute 10% of the proceeds to the WHOLE WORLD Water Fund. The WHOLE WORLD Water Fund is a democratic platform that grants funds to multiple charities, including charity:water, among others.
WATER-BORN
By Klaus Kertess
Water is the subject of this exhibition, curated by Tripoli Patterson, that calls back and updates a related exhibition titled “Sea Change” that was part of the 100th Anniversary celebration of the Parrish, in 1998. The ocean as main character. The ocean that surrounds us, the water that nourishes our agriculture, the farmland bordered by numerous beaches. The Atlantic Ocean almost always in sight on the southern tip of Long Island. The ocean provides vital relaxation, sport, jobs for fisherman, hobbies for surfers. The ocean that has become a prominent subject for local artists making a living partially from the sea, just as the fishermen do. Willem de Kooning summed up the painting side, when he declared oil paint was developed to paint flesh, as well as water – not just the ocean tides but bodies of fresh water as well – streams and lakes and more. The different bodies of water depicted in various works seen here remind us of the need to have clean water to be environmentally effective. The lush physicality of flesh and the continuous dance of water inhabit a considerable amount of space in this exhibition, bringing new life to paint’s liquidity and versatility. While a number of artists previously represented in “Sea Change” can be seen again in the liquefied terpsichore of this exhibition, a greater freedom and abstractness inhabits some of the works included here by younger artists, known and not so well known.
Who would have surmised that Keith Sonnier’s luminous neon, abstract contrivances so readily call to Willem de Kooning’s lushly arabesquing strokes, calling to breaking waves, or that the earlier paintings of John Marin might be summed up by his title “The Written Sea” given to a lyrical work created in 1952? Process has become more visible, perhaps more daring, often as bold and nearly as painterly as Winslow Homer’s “Kissing the Moon,” from 1904, in which three nocturnal fishermen barely visible in a rowboat are almost swallowed by the waves they are trying to navigate through, by the light of a luminous moon. Homer and Albert Pinkham Ryder have become more than Old Masters. Ryder was one of the very few painters that Pollock was willing to learn from; and Ryder was surely one of the older masters Fairfield Porter consulted, just as he did the viscous beauty of Franz Kline’s and Pollock’s abstractions, so openly revealing their process. And Kline would surely have been as aware of Ryder’s dramatic viscosity as was Pollock.
Here and there, Malcolm Morley’s masterful depictions of water have surely influenced some of the younger liquefiers encountered in the present display, although Morley has not joined the water travel this time. Roy Lichtenstein’s glorious screenprint, “Seascape” with its rectangular, riotous staging of Technicolor polka dots reveals his masterful re-purposing of the ordinary that enlivens so much of his art. And Thomas Moran’s 1907 watercolor and pencil on paper, “Smoking Ships at Sea” elegantly reminds us of the sea’s mastery over materiality. Keith Sonnier’s “Los La Butte,” created in 1994, makes him a seasoned representative of all those sorters and ponderers of beach detritus that all but magically are called upon to enlighten the ocean’s power with the utterly ordinary. Marsden Hartley has given us a charcoal “Starfish,” 1938, perhaps snared from his charcoal representation of “Breaking Surf,” 1936-41 to be joined by De Kooning’s lithographic portraitizing of a “Sting Ray” created in 1971. Billy Sullivan’s representation of his dog, Red, racing after a ball at a bay beach makes sure to let us know how important the sand can be to our canine companions – in one of his elegantly conceived and painted landscapes. Maya Lin’s “Blue Wave,” 2013 seems to freeze the continuous ripple of the ocean’s surface into an unlikely but beautiful frozen rectangular parade of crystal peaks. The pleasures of this liquidity continuously lie in wait for our searching eyes to surprise, edify and delight.