Odetta Gallery Brooklyn, NY

EVENTS- RECENT Exhibitions

Victory Over the Sun

In conjunction with Bushwick Open Studios
Exhibit Dates: June 5 - July 5, 2015

Suprematism was an art movement, focused on basic geometric forms, founded by Kazimir Malevich in Russia, around 1913. The term Suprematism refers to an abstract art based upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” rather than on visual depiction of objects. Malevich created a suprematist “grammar” based on fundamental geometric forms; in particular, the square and the circle. For Malevich, it is upon the foundations of absolute non-objectivity that the future of the universe will be built – a future in which appearances, objects, comfort, and convenience no longer dominate.

Bushwick based artist and gallerist Mary Judge and Brooklyn based artist Gilbert Hsiao have distilled their visual vocabularies into a similar austere grammar. Yet, unlike Malevich, they use the simplicity of these fundamental forms, the circle and the square, as their jumping off point, and move into maximalist paintings employing figure ground reversals, pattern and optical diversion.

Victory Over the Sun will open during Bushwick Open Studios, with an Artists’ Reception on Saturday June 6, from 6-8 pm. This exhibition also celebrates the first anniversary of ODETTA gallery. On Sunday June 7, from 1-6 pm there will be a series of bands performing, curated by Bushwick artist Max Yawney, of the Unglued Radio Workshop.

Gilbert Hsiao

Gilbert Hsiao’s works revolve around philosophical questions of experience and consciousness. Specifically, he wonders “whether we can be conscious of those experiences for which we have no words?” Using music as inspiration, Hsiao sets out to create visual images that have not yet been catalogued into our minds.

Gilbert Hsiao has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally including notable shows at MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, NY; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; MassMOCA, North Adams, MA, Gesellschaft für Kunst und Gestaltung, Bonn, Germany; and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/Museum of Modern Art, Queens, NY. Hsiao is also the recipient of numerous awards including the Space Award from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, a Painting Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts as well as an Art Omi Residency for painting. Hsiao received his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

Mary Judge

Mary Judge’s inspiration for her paintings derives from architecture. Through the use of symmetry, she creates constructions of expanding and collapsing forms in flat, overlapping, ornamented layers. Think of it as a mash-up between the original garish polychrome colors of the Parthenon married with sacred geometry. She creates a mystic and immersive experience through taut color vibrations, sensual surfaces and a refined sense of craft.

Judge attended Moore College of Art (BFA 1976 ) Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (scholarship recipient 1974) and Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia and Rome, Italy (MFA 1978). Her continued travels to Italy precipitated a decisive break from traditional modes in the late 1980s and allowed Judge to build a deep relationship with contemporary Italian art and artisans: she worked for several years with the Grazia factory in Deruta. It was during this time that The Drawing Center in New York City presented her unique “spolvero” drawings, based on a technique derived from fresco painting. Since then she has shown extensively in New York and abroad particularly in Italy, where she maintains a residence. The art, design and architecture of Italy continue to inform her work.

She currently resides in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where she is Owner/Director of Schema Projects, a gallery dedicated to art on paper and St Louis MO, where she maintains her studio.

Judge's works are included in the collections of The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Fogg Art Museum, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The British Museum and The Victoria and Albert Museum among others.