Each summer LGTripp gallery is pleased to mount its summer invitational, RSVP. The selected artists share technical maturity and a commitment to abstraction. Working in diverse media with individualized processes and styles, and coming from different levels of exhibition experience, art education and artistic career, their pursuits take many forms. Their works hang throughout the gallery in a focused but lively conversation.

Upon first stepping into the gallery, you will notice Raphael Fenton-Spaid’s explosive and mesmerizing wall installation, which extends into space like the pages of a giant pop-up book. Nearby, Laura Sallade’s sheets of cut mylar drape over a glass table surface inspiring quieter reflections on presence and absence. The organic screen of the mylar draws your eye to Lori Evensen’s cellular masking tape sculpture and photos. A sense of vibration focuses your attention on William DiBello’s large acrylic grids, which pulsate and flicker like electronic screens. Karen Freedman’s kaleidoscopic encaustics, which also deal with repetition and illusion, are simultaneously freewheeling and ordered. Lynn Denton and William Phelps Montgomery share a fascination with mark and color. Her paintings are more gestural than his digital prints but both produce works whose parts continually coalesce and dissolve. Their ebb and flow contrast sharply with John Singletary’s iconic, rune-like photographs, which entice you with their boldness and rich textures. Two more photographers, Andrew Tomasulo and Stuart Lehrman, alert you to the often overlooked intricacies of ordinary objects. Under Tomasulo’s careful eye, cracked glass creates soaring, organic compositions. Lehrman’s pavement has more gravitas, but no less movement. Two painters and a printmaker complete the group. Albert Fung’s oil paintings crackle with texture while Tim Ruffin’s are quieter and more fluid with piercing spots of light, both employing deep color palettes to create moody works. Ken Schiano’s densely built up layers of lines are no less moody, both frantic and deep—he’s the introverted philosopher hiding in the corner you wish you’d discovered earlier.

RSVP 2014 showcases thirteen artists from Philadelphia and the surrounding regions. Twelve are exhibiting at LGTripp for the first time. On exhibit are paintings by Lynn Denton, William DiBello, Karen Freedman, Albert Fung, and Tim Ruffin; installations by Raphael Fenton-Spaid (solo 2011) and Laura Sallade; sculpture by Lori Evensen; prints by William Phelps Montgomery and Kenneth Schiano; photographs by Lori Evensen, Stuart Lehrman, John Singletary, and Andrew Tomasulo.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2014 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Exhibitions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.