The original work of three French artists Christian Charrière, David W. Whitfield and Florent Lubienicki will be on display at Agora Gallery, NYC. The exhibitions open on January 17, 2015 and continue until February 6, 2015. The opening reception takes place on the evening of January 22, at 6-8pm.
Entrance is free and all art lovers are encouraged to attend, enjoy and meet some of the artists whose works make up this delightful show.
About Christian Charrière
A collection of highly recognizable characters populates Christian Charrière’s paintings. Screen stars and rock icons are depicted with all the detail a portrait photographer would give them. The artist’s skill at capturing the personality of his subjects gives each image an echo of the familiar, while his subtle color palette and varied textures lift them beyond duplication. His subjects have a quality of simultaneously posing and being caught unaware, giving his paintings an immediacy that is tempered by a strong sense of formal composition.
Working in oils on canvas, Charrière employs a palette dominated by greys. “I strongly control grey colors,” the artist says, and in his work they take on a degree of variety matching that of paintings that use a far broader spectrum of colors. Equally impressive is the way in which he handles light. From cigarette smoke to reflections in a pair of eyeglasses, the varied qualities of light and how they animate faces and the spaces around them result in paintings that bring those faces alive while placing them firmly in the artist’s personal world.
About David W. Whitfield
David W. Whitfield’s intriguing watercolors expertly use the medium to push the limits of the subject matter and vice versa. Whitfield appears infinitely flexible - he switched to gestural figure painting after many years of creating Surrealist art, and is exploring acrylic as well as working in watercolor. His boundless imagination is very present in his work, which buzzes with images-within-images, free association, and impossibly bright colors. Figures pile up on one another, superimposed like ghosts, each absorbed in their own vignette. They vary wildly in size and can stand on top of each other’s heads. Sometimes they seem to be part of one group, but at other times appear unrelated to one another. Whitfield exercises the transparency of the paint, which can be taken to delicate extremes, to build his compositions into stories of novelistic proportions. Where his figures overlay, they inform each other’s narrative. With an exaggerated palette, fine texture, and realistic detail, the paintings are both real and unreal.
Whitfield was born in England and today lives in France. He has exhibited in Scotland, Austria, France, Italy, the United States, and all around England, and is widely published.
About Florent Lubienicki
Florent Lubienicki's work reflects his fascination with science, astronomy, and philosophy with elegant earthy tones and complex swirling lines. Made with acrylic paint, Indian ink, and walnut stain, his pieces allude to natural, geological processes and phenomena. Variations in flourishing, billowing forms create an extremely diverse collection of work, featuring a fascinating tension between the intricate, weaving lines and their crisply defined, bold geometrical borders.
The artist cites Asian art among his influences, as well as medicine, nature, and human gesture. After being introduced to art in his preparatory school in Castres, he went on to study at the Fine Art School in Nîmes. Lubienicki is a musician as well as a visual artist, currently living in France but traveling as often as possible.
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