Anita Rogers Gallery is pleased to present INTERSECTIONS II, a group exhibition featuring work by Stephen Bethel, Wm. Dilworth, Richard Keen III, and Grant Phillips. The exhibition will be on view through March 2 at 494 Greenwich Street, GFL in New York City.
The exhibition will bring together four artists, each working with different materials and techniques, but united by their intuitive embrace of nature within their art. These artists’ works emerge from careful observation of and interaction with their environment, particularly the natural world.
Bethel’s sculptures draw their very materials from the earth– he transforms found tree branches by adding his own marks in the form of richly colored plaster. The artist will exhibit a selection of wall-mounted works, as well as new large freestanding sculptures, some reaching 10-feet in height.
Dilworth’s works too rely on the outside world – a tree limb, a fingerprint, a visitor to DIA’s Earth Room – to tell a story in ink and paint. Dilworth will exhibit works from three series – CountMarks, TouchMarks, and WovenLimbs – the bodies of work are distinct but deeply connected, both visually and conceptually, and this interconnectedness will be mirrored in the installation. The works, which span a period of 50 years from 1974 to present day, will hang side-by-side, even at the bottom, to underline their oneness.
Keen’s imagery is deeply informed by his surroundings in Maine, from the waterfronts to the boat components that he sees on a daily basis. He distills this source material into simplified explorations of color, line, and composition. Keen will show a collection of paintings, shaped panels, and wall-mounted sculptures, including work from both his Form Singularity and Abstracted Topographies series.
Philips’ work will include paintings on canvas and wood, completed during his time at Pratt. In many pieces, the artist pares down forests and branches to their most minimal forms, creating works on wood that verge on abstraction; in others, he depicts his subjects, perhaps a leaf or a sleeping nude, with both clarity and a deep sensitivity.
Each artist seeks to make sense of the world through creation. Together, these works form a dialogue about the relationship between art and nature. Their respective fine art practices do not exist in a separate sphere from real life – in these works, art and life are one: these artists invite the wild in, and indeed, in many cases, let nature lead the way forward.
This exhibition is dedicated to Grant Phillips (2000-2023), a promising young artist who we lost too soon. The gallery would like to thank the artist’s parents Linda and Martin Phillips for their help in putting this exhibition together.
For further information and photographs, please contact Elizabeth Thompson at elizabeth.thompson@anitarogersgallery.com, or call 347.604.2346. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 10am – 6pm.