2 May – 5 May, 2024
Exhibition
For NADA New York, Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present a group of works by gallery artists Jule Korneffel, Krista Clark, and Szabolcs Veres. The curation of the booth revolves around the garden as an intimate green space and as a metaphor for personal growth and tending. Each of three practices featured in the booth, and the chosen artworks in particular, arise from highly personal experiences from their lives - experiences that warranted self reflection and demanded emotional evolution which directly affected their respective practices.
Krista Clark, in her most recent solo exhibition with the gallery, used the analogy of the garden to encapsulate those moments of hyper personal events. The sprouting of new life and feelings, the labor that goes into their maintenance that requires both cutting and watering, the lifecycle and beauty in relatively contained space and time are all topics that these artists touch on. Clark’s practice enlists largely unaltered materials from construction sites and architectural styles. Mother, Daughter, and… (after artist Barkley Hendricks’s Father, Son, and…[1969], a study of basketball’s geometry and movement painted in a triptych of arches) is shrouded in dark green, the pair of concrete and wood arches are bridged by a church pew book rack, ubiquitous in places of worship. Placed within the book rack is Alice Walker’s collection of texts “In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens”.
Jule Korneffell’s practice involves the creation of her own pigments by experimentation and studies in color theory. Alex’s Garden features earth pigments, deep greens and browns, that are the focus of her current work. Marks in various natural tones dot the canvas organically. The size of the work, along with the depth created by sweeping washes of thin color produces more of a space than a subject.
Szabolcs Veres’s work draw their initial inspiration from the artist’s raw memory, candid photographs, and artworks throughout history.. Emerging from flawed recollection and destruction, the final images reflect the sketch-like technique of alla prima, where pencil or oil paint is applied in decisive yet rapid strokes. The figures, objects, and landscapes that inhabit the canvases are therefore hazy in their edges, with distinct features and energized movements fading into obfuscation. As lingering imprints of a particular time and space, they mimic the visual outcome of memory recollection – at times opaque or surreal, yet unwaveringly intimate in nature. The resulting picture is an unsettling evolution of concepts of beauty, tension between the intimacy of the image and the painting method.
Artist Bio
KRISTA CLARK, born in Burlington, VT, currently lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her BFA from Georgia College of Art, her MFA from Georgia State University. Her work is in the permanent collection of the High Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta. Clark’s work has been featured at the New Museum Triennial in New York, Studio Museum in Harlem, Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York, Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta, RedLine Contemporary Art Center in Denver, The United States Embassy in Bratislava, Slovakia, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and the High Museum in Atlanta. She is a recipient of the Artadia Award and the Working Artist Project Award with MOCA GA. Krista Clark is an Assistant Professor at Morehouse College.
JULE KORNEFFEL was born in Germany and graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2008 as Meisterschüler under Tal R. Since 2015 Korneffel has been based in New York City where she received an M.F.A. from Hunter College in 2018. She quickly gained attention for her emotional but reductive paintings. Recent shows include “Phase Patterns” at ltd los angeles; “Here comes trouble” at Spencer Brownstone in NYC; “Mini Me Mary” in dialogue with Mary Heilmann at Albada Jelgersma Gallery in Amsterdam; and “All that kale” at Claas Reiss Gallery in London. In October 2021 her work was featured on Platform Art (backed by David Zwirner) with Spencer Brownstone Gallery, followed in 2022 by the two solo shows “Snippets from the Met” with Albada Jelgersma Gallery; and “Here comes the night” with Spencer Brownstone in NYC. Most recently her work was selected again by Platform Art (backed by David Zwirner) as part of their Anniversary Capsule and featured in their Spotlight section. Some recent press and writings are John Yau’s review "Color Is the Carrier of Emotion" in Hyperallergic (2019), followed by his review “The Pleasure of Slow Looking” in Hyperallergic (2022); “The Ongoing Present Moment of Making: Jule Korneffel" Interviewed by Hannah Bruckmüller in BOMB Magazine (2021); Terry R. Myers’ essay on occasion of her show at Claas Reiss (2020/2021); “Jule Korneffel: Here comes the night” by Andrew L. Shea as Artseen in the Brooklyn Rail (2022); Platform Art Spotlight: “In the Studio: Jule Korneffel. The artist on the alchemy of color and calling two places home” (2022.)
SZABOLCS VERES, born in 1983, Satu Mare, Romania, is a painter currently working and living in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He is part of the Cluj School of painters alongside well known artists like Adrian Ghenie and Victor Man. He received his PhD, MFA, and BFA at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Veres has had solo exhibitions at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, NY; Galerie Martin Kudlek, Cologne, Germany; at Bazis - The Paintbrush Factory, Cluj Romania and Galeria Radio Cluj, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He recently exhibited at Zona Maco art fair, Mexico City in a solo booth. His work has been featured in several group exhibitions in New York, Romania, Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, and Italy.