Interviews by Brainard Carey

Jason Lustig is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from the S.F. Bay Area Jason’s work is largely informed by the environment he grew up in.

Often moving between  cities, mountains, and coastal areas, Jason uses these as the main settings of his paintings and  then adds charmingly mischievous characters to live inside them. Using a bright and saturated color palette, his paintings capture moments in time from other worlds that seem to parallel our own.

 

Jason Lustig, "Joyride", 2023, Flashe on canvas, 18 x 24 in.

Jason Lustig, "The Regular", 2022, Flashe on wood panel, 10 x 8 in.

Jason Lustig, "Window Cat", 2021, Flashe on wood panel, 7 x 5 in.

Danielle Roberts. Photo: Anushka Bohra | @ab.frames, Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser Archives.

Danielle Roberts (b. 1991, Stockton, CA; raised in Gabriola Island, British Columbia; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.) She received an M.F.A. from Hunter College in 2021. Recent solo exhibitions include "Evening All Day" (2023) at Fredericks & Freiser, New York and "Afterglow" (2022) at Friends Indeed, San Francisco. Group exhibitions include "What Now?" (2022) at PM/AM, London; "Women of Now: Dialogues of Memory, Place and Identity" (2022) at Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX, and "Towards a More Beautiful Oblivion" (2021) at Fredericks & Freiser, NY.  Danielle is represented by Fredericks & Freiser in New York, and Friends Indeed in San Francisco.

Drawing from personal experience Danielle Roberts' paintings are grounded with an uncanny sense of place. Through the collision of light and shadow she creates a world where light is simultaneously magical and toxic; against a darkness that is both soothing and foreboding. The spaces in her paintings radiate with dark luminescence. Roberts does not shy away from discomfort and awkwardness in her worlds. She hones in on the pathos of her own experiences and those of her peers which are at once individual, unique to each of Roberts’ figures, and universal, instantly recognizable to audiences. The artist does not retreat into her painted worlds as an escape from the overwhelming anxiety and instability coursing through contemporary society; instead, she pushes right up against them, opening those spaces onto her audiences. There is an insistence on life and desire, even if those desires are complicated. The people of her scenes - withdrawn and ambivalent - wade through the mess, surviving on their own terms.

Danielle Roberts, Hidden in Plain Sight (The Reading), 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 54 x 60 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York.

Danielle Roberts, The sky weighs heavy through the night, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 76 x 96 inches.Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York.

Danielle Roberts, Adrift, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 56 x 66 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York.

By Jordan Wong March 1, 2023

Lexi Bishop received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Russian Language from Bryn Mawr College, and a Master’s degree in The History of Art and The Art Market: Modern & Contemporary Art from Christie’s Education. Prior to opening here in 2020, Lexi was Associate Director of Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles. From 2014 to 2019, she worked in the Post-War & Contemporary Art department of Christie’s Auction House, New York as a specialist.

Before joining Christie’s in 2014, she worked for Kim Heirston Art Advisory and at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, CT.

Installation view of ‘Tara Fay Coleman: Marginalia.’ Image: Sean Eaton.

Tara Fay Coleman iPhone Note (#1), 2022 screen print on paper 40 x 26 in. (101.6 x 66 cm.) Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof.

Tara Fay Coleman iPhone Note (#2), 2022 screen print on paper 40 x 26 in. (101.6 x 66 cm.) Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof.

Kathy Osborn is a painter currently based in Hudson, New York and represented by Susan Eley Fine Art. She has exhibited at all SEFA locations—UWS, LES and Upstate. She was raised in Rochester, NY and earned a BFA from the Road Island School of Design.

Osborn was an illustrator for 25 years, with work featured in many major publications: The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, GQ, New York Magazine, and The New Yorker (including twenty cover images). She has also illustrated eight children’s books. In 2014, Osborn began her painting career. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY (2015), Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA (2015); Gallery Molly Krom, New York, NY (2015); Art on Paper Fair (2016), Art Miami and CONTEXT (2016); Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson, NY (2020); and LABSpace, Hillsdale, NY (2021).

Kathy Osborn, Woman in Brown Dress (2022), Oil on paper mounted on art board, 10 x 13.5 inches

Kathy Osborn, Woman Reading (2020), Oil on paper mounted on art board, 11.8 x 15 inches

Kathy Osborn, Nude Pair (2022), Oil on paper mounted on art board, 16.75 x 23.75 inches

Sara Garden Armstrong: Layered Scapes February 11 – March 11, 2023 Installation View with artist at Steffany Martz, ONWARD Series 49 East 78th Street, Suite 2B, New York, NY 10075 photo credit: George Kondogianis

Sara Garden Armstrong is a visual artist whose decades-long practice embraces a wide range of scales and techniques, from large site-specific sculpture to artist’s books. Lyrical, nature-based biomorphic abstraction characterizes the work, focusing on life processes and systems. It addresses organic change and transformation, while exploring properties of materials. Breathing is a major concern, as are mechanical support systems of the body. Other recurrent themes are water and time, with its elements of decay, chance, and shifts of reality.

Recent atrium commissions have focused on scientific phenomena and their interactions with the human condition such as the installation for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Alabama-Mississippi Chapter, at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB) Medical Center. A past recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation CALL (Creating a Living Legacy) grant through Space One Eleven, Armstrong has exhibited nationally and internationally for over 40 years. Her artist’s books can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others.

The monograph SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers, published in 2020, reveals the influences and concepts that run through her diverse body of work. It coincides with a traveling exhibition of the same name, incorporating site-specific work. The exhibition made its final stop at the Gadsden Museum of Art, January 2023. The Museum published a catalog documenting the history of the exhibition.

Armstrong received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and a Master of Art Education from UAB. After living in New York City for 36 years, in 2017 she returned to Birmingham, where she currently lives and works. She has recently received the 2022 Artist of the Year Award from the Birmingham Museum of Art Collectors Circle. Find her on Instagram.

Layered Scape 9, 2021 Acrylic and pigmented fiber on canvas 48” x 60” photo credit: George Kondogianis

Sara Garden Armstrong: Layered Scapes Installation View photo credit: George Kondogianis

Sentient Matrix, installed 2014, Abaca and kozo paper fiber, acrylic, gel medium, programmable light-emitting diodes, microcontroller, aluminum, stainless steel, and PVC. Approx. 16’ x 20' x 21' Photo credit: Hugh Hunter

SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers Gadsden Museum of Art November 4, 2022 – January 26, 2023 Artwork in Image: Abaca Wall Backs 1 – 4 Sprayed abaca forms, plastic hoses, incandescent lights 24” x 98” x 12” Photo credit: Savannah Lowery

Bruno Dunley. Photo: Maxwell Matias / @kief.m

The work of Bruno Dunley questions the specificity of painting, particularly in relation to representation and materiality. His paintings depart from carefully constructed compositions, which he gradually begins to correct,alter, and cover up, frequently revealing the lacunae in the apparent continuity of perception. Bruno Dunley is part of a new generation of Brazilian painters called 200e8 group. The collective, based in São Paulo, was founded with a common interest in painting, to enable its eight members to develop a critical approach to painting within the contemporary art scene. Dunley’s work begins with found images and with an analysis of the nature of painting, where language codes such as gesture, plane, surface, and representation are understood as an alphabet. Recently, his practice has shifted towards gestural abstraction, all while maintaining his interest for representation.

As stated by the artist “I see my work as a series of questions and affirmations about the possibilities of painting, about its essence and our expectations of it.” Often, a single color predominates the surface of his compositions, establishing a minimalist language and a meditative quality, that is frequently addressed in critical texts about his work. More recently, the artist has shown an interest for more aggressive composition, expressed through vibrant and contrasting colors. The 200e8's practices stipulate that stable or preconceived ideas about artistic processes should be abandoned, and procedures continually reformulated. In the work of Dunley, promises are made and consequently broken, testing the limits of the viewer’s tension.

Bruno Dunley was born in 1984 in Petropolis, Brazil. He lives and work in São Paulo. Recent solo shows and projects include: Virá, at Nara Roesler (2020), in São Paulo, Brazil;The Mirror, at Nara Roesler (2018), in New York, USA; Dilúvio, at SIM Galeria (2018), in Curitiba, Brazil; Ruído, at Nara Roesler (2015), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; e, at Centro Universitário Maria Antonia (CEUMA) (2013), in São Paulo, Brazil. He participated in the 33th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2018). Recent group shows include: Entre tanto, at Casa de Cultura do Parque (CCP) (2020), and many others.

Cloud VIII, 2022 conté crayon, pastel chalk and charcoal on paper 29,7 x 21 cm 11.7 x 8.3 in. Courtesy the artist and Nara Roesler.

The obvious, 2022 oil paint on canvas 170 x 140,5 x 4 cm 66.9 x 55.3 x 1.6 in. Courtesy the artist and Nara Roesler.

Maze, 2021 oil paint on canvas 200 x 250,5 x 4 cm 78.7 x 98.6 x 1.6 in. Courtesy the artist and Nara Roesler.

Alex Griffin (b. 1978) lives and works in East Falls, Philadelphia. In 2008, Griffin received his B.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting and Printmaking.

His work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, including at the esteemed Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. From 2017 until 2019, he was associated with The Professional Artist Membership Program at the Mainline Art Center. Today, Griffin’s paintings are included in private collections across the country and abroad. The Catalog for the exhibtion discussed, Afterglow, can be seen here.

Agatha's Dream, 2022, oil on panel, 20 x 24 inches

Afterglow, 2022, oil on panel, 20 x 24 inches

Nightingale, 2022, oil on panel, 18 x 18 inches

Bradley Castellanos is an American artist, born in Hartford Connecticut in 1974. He currently lives and works in North Hampton, NH and is represented by Foley Gallery, NY.

Castellanos received a B.A in English Literature and Studio Art from Skidmore College in 1998, and an MFA from School of Visual Arts in 2006. He has been featured in exhibitions at Foley Gallery, New York, RYAN LEE, New York, Caren Golden Fine Art, New York, Marx & Zavattero, San Francisco, and Mogadishni Gallery, Denmark. Castellanos’ paintings have been widely exhibited in galleries, museums, and cultural institutions in the US and abroad, including The Queens Museum,  PS 1, The Nueberger Museum, The McDonough Museum of Art, The Tang Teaching Museum, and The Brooklyn Academy of Music. His work has been featured and reviewed in a variety of publications such as ARTnews, Harper’s Magazine, The Huffington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle.

Sleep Walker 2022 Oil, acrylic, resin, and photo collage on panel 60" x 48"

Fire Braider 2022 Oil, acrylic, and paper collage on paper 48" x 38"

Artist Portrait 2022 Oil, acrylic, and paper collage on paper 46" x 35"

photo of the artist by Frederick Aranda

Joey Terrill is a formative figure in the Los Angeles Chicano art movement and AIDS cultural activism. Painting and making art since the 1970s, Terrill has always explored the intersection of Chicano and gay male identity (where they overlap and where they clash) as a strategy for much of his art production.

A native Angeleno, he attended Immaculate Heart College and lists influences as diverse as Pop Art, Corita Kent, David Hockney, Mexican retablos, and 20th-century painters ranging from Romaine Brooks to Frida Kahlo. His work conveys the energy, politics and creative synergy of Chicano and queer art circles in Los Angeles.

His works from the 1970s and 80s are considered pioneering examples of a queer sensibility and Latinx identity. He has been living with HIV sine 1980.

His work was featured in Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. which opened at MOCA LA in 2015 and toured to venues in NY, Denver, Las Vegas , Houston, Massachusetts and Ohio  with its final iteration at moCa Cleveland in 2021.

Some selected exhibits he has been in include: Drama Queer, Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver, BC -2016. Forging Territories: Afro & Latinx Queer Contemporary Art, San Diego Art Institute -2019, LA Memo: Chicana/o Art from 1972 -1989, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Los Angeles -2022 . His work is in the collections of the MoMA, The Whitney, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, MOCA, The Hammer, SFMOMA and the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (opening 2025)

"Mi Casta es Su Casta- Portrait of Rudy Garcia"  2018

Robert Resting After Work -1988-89 acrylic on canvas

Orlando Waiting for Toast - 1999-2000 acrylic on canvas

Danny Sobor (b. 1992) is a self-taught oil painter born in Chicago. He received a B.F.A. in cognitive aesthetics from Brown University in 2015. Spending most of his adult-life in Detroit, his exposure to techno and vacancy shaped his belief in futurism. This is his first solo show in New York.

Previous exhibitions include 10 Warm Months, Playground Detroit, Detroit, Michigan; Ultra Light Beams, Mount Analogue Gallery, Seattle, Washington; The Printer’s Devil, The Scarab Club, Detroit, Michigan; Joined/Fading, Galerie F, Chicago, Illinois; The Korean Contemporary Printmakers Association Annual Exhibition, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea. Butterfly Effect, Tchotchke Galley, New York, New York.

In this presentation of eight new works at Tchotchke Galley, Sobor explores anxieties about technology and faith, in terms of what is true through media consumption and how painting can meaningfully engage with that in 2023. With an emphasis on thematic absurdity, paired with a sardonic approach to visual culture, Sobor works through his convictions and doubts with a devoted, labor-intensive methodology. In creating these works, Sobor became fanatically committed to the process and often crossed over into what he referred to as “a trance,” frequently kneeling for hours over countless days in their creation.

Informing Sobor’s theological imagery and approach, old archetypal symbols such as angels and doves are rendered as flat white stock vectors, signifiers made vacant. According to the artist, “I’m trying to express ideological culture wars by schizophrenically mashing signifiers until a piece feels like it articulates my confusion and frustration. The pieces aren’t non-committal as much as they are doubtful and searching.”

Icons by Danny Sobor will be on view from February 14th, 2023 through March 18th, 2023 at Tchotchke Gallery, located at 311 Graham Avenue. The opening reception for the exhibition will be held from 6-8pm on Tuesday, February 14th.

Danny Sobor swans II, 2022 Oil on canvas 42 x 26 inches

Danny Sobor, painting for world peace, 2022. Oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches

Danny Sobor, peacekeeper, 2022, Oil on canvas, 62 x 40 inches