The Winter Street Gallery in Edgartown has kicked off its 2022 season with a show featuring work by three artists hailing from points around the globe — each one exhibiting a unique style and viewpoint.
Since opening in 2020, the gallery, located on Main Street, has proven itself to be the place to find cutting-edge contemporary art on the Island. The current show is a good indication of this focus on emerging artists with something new and exciting to share.
The current group exhibition is titled “Fields of View,” which is described in a press release announcing the show as a “photographic term signaling the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment.”
“They have all chosen unusual perspectives on what is being presented to the viewer,” says Ingrid Lundgren, co-owner, along with her partner George Newall, of the Winter Street Gallery. “Each takes a novel approach in their work.”
Artist Nana Wolke’s work provides perhaps the most literal example of the show’s theme. In her latest series the Slovenian artist, who now lives and works in London, takes a very different view of her subjects — selecting a vantage point that captures partial scenes — glimpses that present just a hint of what may be happening in a room, leaving the interpretation open to the viewer.
The young artist has taken the movie “Brokeback Mountain,” the story of a same-sex relationship between two cowboys, as inspiration. As described in the press release, “Choosing avowedly uncinematic vantage points — off-center and untethered — Wolke skillfully blurs the line between mass culture and private memory.”
Describing the trio of Wolke’s paintings featured in the exhibit, Newall says, “They show what you might catch from the corner of your eye — sort of stolen glances when no one is looking. She [Wolke] is interested in those sort of interstitial moments.” Newall describes Wolke as an up-and-coming star in the emerging art scene in London, and he notes that this is the first time she will be showing in the U.S.
Enrique López Llamas has chosen a unique medium for his most recent work. He has mixed pulverized antidepressant medications with paint, giving his surfaces a cracked, antique appearance. His inspiration comes from a visit to a psychiatric hospital, where Llamas was struck by the fact that the facility had a print of Hieronymus Bosch’s surrealist painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights” hanging on the wall. As described in the press release, “Llamas has unraveled this paradoxical relationship across successive bodies of work.” One of the paintings from this series, titled “I didn’t know anything about my father until I decided to paint a garden for him” is included in the “Fields of View” show, along with a sort of pop art-style piece called “Transición fundido a blanco” (Fade to White Transition).
Of the three featured artists, Carlos Reyes, who lives and works in New York and Puerto Rico, strays the most from the expected. He takes a rather reductionist approach to his sculptural pieces, which were created when sunlight faded the velvet covering of some discarded jewelry store panels, leaving behind ghost imprints of the jewelry once displayed there.
“Using light as his medium, Reyes’ work is essentially long-exposure cameraless photographs,” says Newall.
As a whole, the work is a fascinating look at the various directions that emerging artists from the art world at large are taking. Once again, the three-year-old Winter Street Gallery is bringing a new, contemporary perspective to Island audiences. By reaching out to national and international artists that the gallerists have connected with over their years spent working in the art world in New York and elsewhere, Newall and Lundgren have continued to surprise and stimulate Vineyard collectors and art lovers.
Of the three artists featured in the current show, Lundgren says, “I am excited about the dialogue between them, coming from various practices and approaches. What I really love is finding unique conversations between artists who have never shown together before.”
“Fields of View,” a group exhibition featuring work by Enrique López Llamas, Carlos Reyes, and Nana Wolke, will hang through June 12 at the Winter Street Gallery, 22 Winter St., Edgartown.
