Abstract
The Visual Arts Department at Union College presents Accordion Space, a group exhibition featuring works by Aschely Cone, Doron Langberg, Susan Lichtman, Sangram Majumdar, Claire Sherman, and Didier William, curated by Union College Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting, Laini Nemett. Accordion Space highlights six painters who challenge the classical idea of figure-ground, expanding and compressing space in unpredictable ways. The 13 large scale canvases and accompanying works on paper all represent tangible space in a range of styles from narrative figuration to gestural abstraction.
Each artist’s work is informed by nature, though the evidence of his or her subject matter varies from one to the next. Claire Sherman's imagery comes from her experiences traveling. She alludes to specific places and dramatic landscapes, yet leaves their identities open as the paintings oscillate between abstraction and representation. Susan Lichtman finds her subject matter closer to home, almost exclusively painting scenes from the first floor of her house and her studio as a stage for unfolding moments that offer a poetic twist to the everyday. Doron Langberg also paints from his personal life, capturing those closest to him in casual, familiar moments. His bold color choices, gestural brushwork, and sensitive portraiture invites viewers into his relationships. For Sangram Majumdar, everything is fair game; he starts from observation — paper cut-outs in a dollhouse, the view into a hallway window at night — then, through concealing and revealing forms, the painting becomes a heavily documented archive of looking. The paintings of Aschely Cone play a similar game, vacillating between obstruction and entry, creating patterned veils, while also suggesting windows or doorways through which to travel. Camouflaging fragmented figures, shadows, and patterns, Didier William’s paintings weave recognizable forms with poured paint, etched wood, and stuccoed surfaces that collide in questions of race, gender, identity, and Haitian history.
Exposing their hands in gestural mark-making and manipulated surfaces, Cone, Langberg, Lichtman, Majumdar, Sherman, and William reveal their processes in a way that invites the viewer into the act. The artists bring us in with familiar moments and push us back to take in the whole: their canvases, like accordions, modulating between a whisper and a bellow, and back again.