THE PORTRAIT: HISTORIES, MYTHS, AND ALLEGORIES
Steve Prince, LEWIS COHEN, Oleg Dou, Jeffrey Whittle, Billy Martin, Lee Matney, Jill Carnes, Jadea Knight, Nicole Santiago, Brian Kreydatus, Ivan Plusch, Olga Tobreluts, Christi Harris, Bob Krueger, Brittainy Lauback, Kristen Peyton, George Papadakis, BRIAN FREER, Chris wagner and others
September 14 - December 1, 2024
MATNEY GALLERY, 5435 RICHMOND RD, WILLIAMSBURG (BEHIND CAROLINA FURNITURE), CONTACT THE GALLERY.
VIEW MORE WORKS FROM THE PORTRAIT: HISTORIES, MYTHS, AND ALLEGORIES
Synesthesia
Location:
SATÉ, A New American Experience
694 Town Center Drive, Newport News, VA 23606
Phone number
(757) 330-2299
Psychological Landscapes Revisited
Often calling to mind stills from 1920s-era cinema, Matney's photos capture the figure in various states of contortion and relaxation, creating an illusion of continued motion. READ MORE
A FOCUS ON VIRTUAL EXHIBITS
Show
Smoke Screen
September 26 – November 27, 2023
Presented by Matney Gallery
Press Release
"Smoke Screen", Rob Carter's exhibition in Richmond, Virginia, was predominantly made up of photography. The city is home of Altria parent company of Phillip Morris USA, and Virginia owes its existence to Nicotiana Tabacum, a remarkable plant that continues to plague and pleasure humans all over the world. The success of tobacco has been maintained by obfuscation regarding the health impacts on users, but even as we peer through the smoke, nicotine remains an irresistible commercial product. The exhibited photographs capture the story of tobacco from seed to cigarette as an allegory for our addiction to fossil fuels, and the political and marketing tactics employed by multinationals who keep us hooked on their suicidal products. The exhibition explored the ironic absurdity of society’s apparent death wish, the beauty and grandeur of bright leaf tobacco plants, and the beguiling quality of smoke. VIEW EXHIBITION
Eva Series: Mark Miltz
September 30 – November 30, 2023
Presented by Matney Gallery
Press Release
This series of works features the integration of Japanese pop cultural images (anime) into traditional western fine art objects. The pieces rely on both the contrasts inherent in the disparate source materials and the interplay between these contrasting cultural symbol systems for their content. In effect, the works are translations. They attempt to emphasize a commonality of experience through the mediation of the native symbol systems of the viewers, whether western or Japanese. By using Japanese elements in western motifs, I am exploring the ways in which the assimilation of content is affected by its form.
The works overall deal with universal issues of love, alienation, sacrifice, and the crucible of adolescence by using that most universal of images, the human body. The body (often at life size) facilitates a metaphysical link between individual viewer and art.
SANDRA-LEE PHIPPS LESSONS IN SURVIVAL VIEWING ROOM
Lesson in Survival Buried memories do strange things to confidence and creativity. The energy spent in survival mode darkens the palette, clouds vision. To counterbalance the weight of a season of heavy news and challenging life events, I began a personal project that evolved to be a study of light and the body. This work represents a challenge to the darkness of past experiences, buried thoughts.
INTRODUCING BRITTAINY LAUBACK
Not unlike the moment a cry gives way to a laugh, Brittainy Lauback’s work reflects the
emotionally chaotic reality that we experience daily. She received her BFA from the University
of New Mexico and her MFA from University of Georgia. Her work has been featured in the
traveling exhibition, Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do
Good Fund, Looking Male, at the La Grange Museum of Art and Bo Bartlett Center in
Columbus GA, and New Southern Photography at the Ogden Museum of Art in New Orleans.
Her first Monograph Infinite Bonheur is set to be published in 2023 by Fall Line Press. She
currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. READ MORE
FEATURED PROJECTS 2022
Three Excellences of Culture: Painting, Poetry and Music, the Work of Art Rosenbaum and Friends
Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts, Spring Texas
CONTACT US FOR MORE INFORMATION
This fall the Pearl is proud to present, in cooperation with the Linda Matney Gallery in Virginia, a colorful exhibition featuring the narrative painter Art Rosenbaum; his wife, professional photographer Margo Newmark Rosenbaum; and the friends and former students they met along the way. The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, September 24.
Art Rosenbaum paints images of Southern folklore in richly colored canvases that depict lively figures often dancing or holding musical instruments. After moving to Georgia, Art and Margo met musicians such as Ring Shouters on the Georgia coast, banjo and fiddle players in the mountains, faith-filled singers in African American churches, and old-school blues players. These musicians made their way into Art’s paintings as well as Margo’s photographs. “
A typical Rosenbaum canvas is fairly teeming with figures, many of them specific portraits, often including the artist himself,” writes painter Philip Morsberger. “Elements of landscape, of architecture, of still life (often musical instruments): all are presented in rich detail, but at the same time with bold and fearless brushwork. There is no dead space in a Rosenbaum painting. Something is going on everywhere one looks.”
Rosenbaum’s paintings are in many collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art. He also plays a variety of folk instruments, and his music will be part of the exhibition at the Pearl. Rosenbaum’s boxed set, Art of Field Recording Vol. 1: Fifty Years of American Traditional Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum won a Grammy for Best Documentary Recording in 2008.
Margo Newmark Rosenbaum has collaborated with Art over many years in documenting American traditional music. Her photographs have been published in several books by Art Rosenbaum as well as the New York Times, Newsweek, and The Old-Time Herald. Margo’s work has been widely exhibited and is part of many private collections.
Three Excellences of Culture will be featured in both the Main Gallery and the Cole Gallery at the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts this fall. Among the other artists whose work will be included are Howard Finster, who designed album covers for R.E.M. and the B-52’s; Len Jenkin, whose work includes scripts for Family, The Incredible Hulk, and the novel New Jerusalem; Michael Paxton, Bonnie Loggins, Dennis Harper, Kent Knowles, Scott Belville, Dilmus Hall. Zuzka Vaclavik, and Teddy Johnson.
The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, September 24 with a members-only preview on Friday evening. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and admission is free. Please note that the Pearl will be closed September 4 – 23 for the exhibition change.
For more information, visit pearlmfa.org.
Events
About
The Linda Matney Gallery is a Curator-driven art space in Williamsburg, Virginia. The gallery was founded by John Lee Matney to exhibit innovative and emerging artwork from both national and international artists and works by students and professors associated with top universities. With a focus on painting, photography, installation, video, sculpture, and performance art, the Linda Matney Gallery provides a unique opportunity for patrons to view some of the most significant pieces being created today.
The Linda Matney Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded in honor of Linda Matney, who lost her battle with cancer in 2001. The gallery specializes in curating services for museum exhibitions and art collections, notably Southern figurative art and photography. We are exclusive agents in Virginia of the deeper catalogs of select contemporary artists, which we showcase in special previews of new and newly available work at our exhibitions. Our mission is to promote research-based contemporary art and support artists while providing quality art collecting experiences for our patrons.