Barnes Foundation Director Shows @ Knapp Gallery

For Immediate Release
Contact: Karl Slocum
267 455 0279
karl@knappgallery.com

The Knapp Gallery Presents:
Nicolas King & Petros Pappalas

In Through the Out Door

Exhibition Dates: January 7th – January 30th, 2011
First Friday Opening: January 7th from 6:00 – 9:30 pm

Artist Reception: Sunday January 9th, 2011 (1pm – 4pm)

Philadelphia) – The Knapp Gallery continues its tradition of First Friday openings and welcomes Nicolas King and Petros Pappalas in their joint exhibition, In through the out Door. A dramatic confrontation between divergent processes, emotions and perspective, King and Pappalas share the ring like mongoose and cobra. Complementary in only their bi-polarity, King’s post-impressionist renderings create a traditional portal through which we can witness the bravado of Pappalas’ expressionism. However divergent, a young Pappalas wrestles with age old questions to which a seasoned King invariably has the answer.

Nicolas King enjoyed a unique history with the Barnes Foundation, here in Philadelphia as Director, Curator and Head of Conservation. With inescapable influence, a mastery of the “softened” patina, King’s brush translates remarkable sense of sensitivity and affinity for Matisse. Emphasizing visibility of the canvas as negative space within a complex composition, offering differential materials and surfaces - paint and tooth – challenge resulting texture and light enhancing color and dimension of imagery. King juxtaposes vivid and muted colors; quantifiers and emotional tethers to his imagery, dramatic interplays stretching both depth of field and focus. With unique vantage, demonstrable perspective, King creates unique interpretive windows through which to view his myriad of garden-based situational vignettes.

The brawn of struggle yields honesty in Pappalas’ work. Petros paints in the moment. “I don’t like retracing my steps, cleaning up if you will. In this, I tend to sterilize the nuance with the most value. I need to get in and get out. Timing is everything. ” Fearlessly and aggressively painting offensively, Pappalas abhors the hindsight of defense. Without yielding to the confines of structure and unknowing, Pappalas creates living work borne out of offense, not defense. “Defensive painting, in its passivity, is about fending off fear and death; producing only static product. In tendering dead work, I abrogate my responsibility to the craft.” Kinetics and momentum excite and define his bent on bold and harsh light. Painting from black to light, Pappalas is a proponent of addition over subtraction.

Hoiliday Troika @ Knapp

The Knapp Gallery Presents: Meeting the Diversities

First Friday Opening: December 3rd
Exhibition: December 3rd – January 2nd 2011
Artist Reception: Sun. December 5th (1pm-4pm)

(Philadelphia) – The Knapp Gallery continues its tradition of First Friday openings and welcomes local emerging philadelphia artists Salvador Di Quinzio, Kevin Von Holtermann and Gail S. Kotel in our Holiday “Three in One” exhibition Meeting the Diversities. An homage to collectivism, Meeting the Diversity hi-lights the complex melting pot of Philadelphia’s Contemporary Fine Art scene; an artful harnessing of commonality amidst divergent processes, genres and aesthetic. The resulting seamless troika gallery division, normally divisible by two, acknowledges the existing collective thread tethering Philadelphia’s local artists.

Di Quinzio’s timeless display of traditionalism, a cornucopia of non-typical imagery, dispels conventional notions of ethnic–based creativity. A story teller of sorts, Di Quinzio tickles our remembrance with fable-esque yet relevant vignettes; surreal by definition, however dominated by German expressionism. Copious depictions of life within life, juxtaposition of orientation, incongruent image sizes and dramatic perspective shift accentuate his veteran ideals of “drawing outside the lines.” More than collectible, an existing familial and heirloom quality is enhanced by a warm “egg tempera-esque” patina.

Von Holtermann shoots from the hip with refreshing naiveté, energy and abandon bent on investigation. Like in the James Brown song, “Ain’t no static”, and akin to the “Three faces of Eve,” there is a profound visual schizophrenia, albeit with a free ongoing and eclectic conversation. Von Holtermann creates new language. Much about the paint, Kevin’s varied processes, including unorthodox “resists,” yield unpredictable results birthing dramatic and inventive abstraction.

Gail Kotel’s reworked 3D sash arrangements, mounted as 2D wall hangings, present viewers a fresh new vista through a remarkably non-traditional window. Tactile and tangibility mark Kotel’s rethinking of a window with a view. Supercharged, fractured, staggered and structurally altered window panes incorporate mechanics with form, figure and color; unique is her “telling” portraiture shown through the looking glass. Voyeuristic in their intimacy, Kotel’s distorted and haunting “reflections” challenge our isolationist sensibilities. Translucence, ambient luminescence and fragmented shadowing dramatize an innate crispness.