Carl Solway Gallery opens exhibitions by John Torreano, Hadley Holliday and Diane Landry

CINCINNATI, OH.- Carl Solway Gallery presents solo exhibitions by artists John Torreano, Hadley Holliday and Diane Landry. Torreano’s paintings, prints and sculpture and Holliday’s paintings employ varying levels of abstraction and suggest the celestial world. Diane Landry’s kinetic mandalas also relate to the cosmos.

JOHN TORREANO
John Torreano’s exhibition at Carl Solway Gallery will feature a selection of work created between 1987 and 2012. He is best known for incorporating faceted gem forms in many mediums including painting, sculpture and printmaking. The gems may be three-dimensional and free-standing or they may be relief objects imbedded in painted wooden panels, thus combining two-dimensional and three-dimensional pictorial space. The gems in these often large-scale panels and sculptural columns form galaxy-like constellations. Torreano’s titles often refer to actual galaxies in outer space and ongoing discoveries in astronomy. He states that his art exists between complete abstraction and realistic depiction of the world around him.

John Torreano has lived and worked in New York City for 40 years. He was born in Flint, Michigan and attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Ohio State University. His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. He has taught at New York University since 1992 and currently serves as Director of the M.F.A. in Studio Art Program. In 2007 he authored Drawing by Seeing, a book of perceptual drawing exercises for the beginning and advanced artist. Prior to teaching at N.Y.U., he acted as visiting artist or artist-in-residence in nearly every art school in the United States. His awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Nancy Graves Foundation.

John Torreano, Dark Matters Everywhere, 2012. Acrylic paint, gems and Wood balls on Plywood panels, 7′ x 7 ‘.

HADLEY HOLLIDAY
Hadley Holliday’s abstract paintings have been described as kaleidoscopic, fluid and psychedelic. In acrylic paint, she creates intricate and interwoven patterns exploring space and depth. She contrasts geometric structure – often a radiating framework of interlocking circles – with the fluid nature of poured paint. Although her references to astronomy are less literal than those of John Torreano, titles such as Strange Radiance and Sun King suggest the light emanating from celestial bodies.

While completely contemporary in scale and feeling, Holliday’s paintings contain many allusions to the history of abstraction. In spirit, they recall the stained surfaces of pigment on unprimed canvas characteristic of color field painters from the Washington School such as Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. One can also see the influence of early twentieth century watercolorists and painters such as Arthur Dove or Georgia O’Keefe.

Hadley Holliday lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts and her B.F.A. and M.A. from the University of Kansas. Her paintings are widely exhibited and published.

DIANE LANDRY
Diane Landry’s kinetic sculptures involve found objects, light and shadow. On view are three works from Mandalas in series Blue Decline. Deriving from the Sanskrit word for “circle“, a mandala is an artistic representation of the cosmos, and is used in Eastern religious traditions as a focus for meditation. Using the now-ubiquitous plastic water bottle, Landry’s mandalas conjure shadow versions of this spiritual symbol. Each of Landry’s mandalas is created from only one kind of bottle, and bears the name of the brand of water it once held, i.e., Mandala Perrier etc. For instance, in Mandala Naya, a laundry basket ringed with water bottles is attached to the wall. A tripod, supporting a light attached to a mechanized arm, stands in front of the basket. As the arm moves forward, the light shines through the holes of the basket and through the water bottles, creating a startlingly beautiful shadow that stretches across the wall moving through a one-minute cycle.

Diane Landry resides in Québec City, Canada. She is the first recipient of the Giverny Capital Prize, a distinction awarded to a visual artist from Québec. Her work is internationally exhibited and published including recent exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario; the Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh and the Festival Almost Cinema 2011, Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium. She was included in the exhibition “Oh, Canada” at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts. A major retrospective of her work will be on view this summer at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina.