Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition their annual recycling show and juried exhibitions.

The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC – be cool and pronounce it Bee-Whack) opened its sprawling warehouses in the middle of May. Don’t miss your chance to absorb works from Brooklyn’s largest artist-run gallery. I recently strolled through and passed several gems:

Unlike just about every gallery in Manhattan, the works here are reasonably priced. You’ll find spectacularly composed street photographs by Resa Sunshine (Adrian Resa Jones) around $120 and alluring domestic scenes with rough brushstrokes by Isabella Sarra “Glaz.”

On the first floor, you’ll find “Black Orpheus” by Mary Alice Orito. The flat dress raised to a canvas on the vertical wall is made of acrylic, draped canvas, and macramé. Given the humble materials, it’s a surprisingly affecting arrangement that mirrors a dress floating in a river.

The self-taught artist Ed Kent has an alluring piece whose flatline red, yellow, and mostly gray paint would make Barnett Newman proud. What makes the piece different, even by contemporary art standards, is the skeleton of a computer mainframe casually placed in the lower left quadrant. This one is called “Object 202”

George Sand made some unique photographs in a field that’s very hard to innovate within. “Vestige #2” has a digital photograph on an antique cabinet card of a man who’s all but erased saved for his shoes standing near a plant with high resolution. The result is a question-welcoming object; vestige you say, vestige of what? It’s the questioning that helps this piece (and the viewer) come to life.

On the second floor, Tiziana Mazziotto dominates with well-known subjects rendered in a unique tesserae. “The Water Tower” appears to be represented with acrylic, but Mazziotto’s canvas appears to be a quasi-cement slab. The representation, beautiful in and of itself, is given a weighty feel with the physical pairing of such a formidable base.

Mark Oliver showcases finely observed watercolors from the city. “42nd St Sunshine” captures a sunrise in Midtown East. Rising from the ease in a still quiet day, the piece captures the tender side of our dearly beloved concrete jungle.

BWAC’s 2019 Recycling Show

The Recycling Exhibition 2019 is as impressive as ever. Carole Landisman’s “What’s Important is on the Inside” uses old office supply in a sort of Malevich composition. Colors — all pastels of cerise and pewter and pale yellow – appear to be laminated beneath an encaustic white surface. Whether this was Landisman’s intention, it calls to mind a hospital ward and that illness doesn’t surpass personhood.

The sculptor Peter Hiers used torn and ripped highway rubber tire fragments to create a beautiful work in “Declaration of Dependence – Main View.” The elegant lines of the central part of the tires recall the Nike of Samothrace.

Yongsin Cho’s “Abandoned” is another poignant homage to newspapers of yore. Using old newspapers and discarded paintings, Cho made a large mural featuring a close-up of an ambiguous face. The collage never loses its aura of being painted; that it is, in fact, collage is an impressive technical feat.

 

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
On Key

Related Posts

An ode to the bar at the edge of the world, theater review by Oscar Fock

It smells like harbor, I thought as I walked out to the end of the pier to which the barge now known as the Waterfront Museum was docked. Unmistakable were they, even for someone like me maybe particularly for someone like me, who’s always lived far enough from the ocean to never get used to its sensory impressions, but always

Millennial Life Hacking Late Stage Capitalism, by Giovanni M. Ravalli

Back in 2019, before COVID, there was this looming feeling of something impending. Not knowing exactly what it was, only that it was going to impact the economy for better or worse. Erring on the side of caution, I planned for the worst and hoped for the best. My mom had just lost her battle with a rare cancer (metastasized

Brooklyn Bridge Rotary Club returns to it’s roots, by Brian Abate

The first Brooklyn Rotary Club was founded in 1905 and met in Brooklyn Heights. Their successor club, the Brooklyn Bridge Rotary Club, is once again meeting in the Heights in a historic building at 21 Clark Street that first opened in 1928 as the exclusive Leverich Hotel. Rotary is an international organization that brings together persons dedicated to giving back