New Exhibit: Extra Extra
The Flinn Gallery will be presenting bold and vibrant abstract works for its November 14 opening of Extra Extra, a three-person exhibition running through January 8, 2025.
Sharing a common strategy, Palma Blank, Stephen Maine and Doreen McCarthy create artworks of visual abundance and intensity, pointing to the “extra” in Extra Extra!
Dedicated to Abstraction, each artist approaches their work with distinct processes and materials to convey visual energy. Viewing these works elicits a physical experience that can be both mesmerizing and momentarily jarring.
Stephen Maine’s indirect production method employs a system of foam board printing plates, which allows him to put his high contrast paint under pressure. He juxtaposes his more deliberate color relationships with the spontaneity and chance effects of this painting method. All the while, color, scale, surface, and seriality are kept in place.
Palma Blank also uses striking color juxtapositions for maximal effects. Painting through her own digitally created pattern stencils, she applies layers of dashes and stripes of color across the canvas. Slowly shifting shapes emerge from the work, charged with energy. Grounded in real visual moments, she is influenced by the phenomenological ideas associated with Impressionism. Building on this premise, Blank’s optical illusions simulate the movement of light and form through virtual space.
While Maine and Blank use non-traditional methods to achieve greater chromatic intensity in their painting, Doreen McCarthy creates a similar visual impact in her sculptural work. McCarthy’s inflatable vinyl sculptures become giant drawings in space, pushing viewers to engage with their own comparative scale. Complex forms of tangled tubes with inverted twists bounce toward viewers in distinct hues. This physical interplay between mass and gravity creates an arresting sense of torqued energy.
All three of the artists in Extra Extra prompt an overwhelming response.
The psychology of visual perception can cast these works as playful, pushy, reflective, or electric. Regardless of interpretation, the works of Maine, Blank and McCarthy grab and hold onto the viewers’ attention.
Doreen McCarthy is a multimedia artist based in New York City. Since 1985 her work has been exhibited in the United States, Europe, China and Japan. She received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) focused in Painting from City University of New York-Hunter College. Throughout her career she has received grants, awards and residencies at various institutions including Edward Albee Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute and the Indiana University Institute of Art.
Stephen Maine is a painter and writer living in West Cornwall, CT. Maine earned a BFA (Painting), Indiana University, Bloomington, and an MFA (Visual Art), Vermont College of Fine Arts. From 1982 until 2017, he lived and worked in New York City and continues to show there and in Connecticut. Maine’s writing has appeared regularly in Art in America, ARTnews, Artnet magazine, Art on Paper, Artillery; and Hyperallergic.com. He has taught at numerous universities including most recently at SUNY Purchase, where he was Chair of the Bachelor of Science in Visual Arts program.
Palma Blank is based in Brooklyn, NY and was born in Norwalk, CT. She received an MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT, and a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Her paintings have been exhibited throughout New York including most recently in Ninth Street Women: 70 Years of Women in Abstraction, at Hunter Dunbar Projects and Psychonautic Traces, at Davidson Gallery, New York, NY. Her work has been acquired by the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris and NY Presbyterian Hospital, along with many other collections. She is on the board of directors at Black Ball Projects, a non-profit arts organization supporting underexposed contemporary artists in New York City.
Events:
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 14 from 6 - 8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, December 7, 2pm
Extra Extra is curated by Flinn Gallery committee member Kirsten Pitts. The Flinn Gallery is a non-profit organization sponsored by Friends of the Greenwich Library.
The Gallery welcomes visitors daily Monday to Saturday, 10-5pm, Thursday until 8pm, and Sunday 1-5pm, and is located on the second floor of the Greenwich Library, 101 West Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT.