Michelle Concepcion, Strings 5, 59 x 82 1/2 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2010, MCO160
Three Abstract Artists at
ArtSpace Virginia Miller Galleries
Dear Friends,
I am delighted to present an exhibition of intriguing works that also celebrate the joy of color and forms in space. I hope that you will find the same inspiration and emotional satisfaction that I get from these extraordinary paintings.
According to Bassmi, his paintings “are created to serve as windows to an inner passage where viewers can find their own undiscovered dimensions. When viewed in a meditative sense, they convey the poetry of creation; they help us experience the one-ness of life and a peaceful state of being.” For me, that statement could apply to all the works in this show.
I invite you to join us on Friday, October 5th for our opening reception for this exhibition or come by the gallery during the week and enjoy the beauty and serenity of these works.
I look forward to seeing you on the 5th during Gables Gallery Night!
Warm wishes,
Virginia Miller
Florian Depenthal, Flash Light, Oil Emulsion with Pigment on Canvas, 36 x 60 inches, 2012
Three mid-career artists with distinctive visions of abstract paintings will be featured in “Color, Form, Space,” opening from 6-10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5th at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables.
The background of the artists is as varied as their works: Bassmi, who paints under the single name Bassmi, is from Egypt and now lives in this country; Michelle Concepción is from Puerto Rico and lives in Germany; and Florian Depenthal is German and divides his time between Europe and this country.
“The unifying principles of the exhibition are that all three artists are superb colorists who work in a non-gestural manner,” said gallery owner and director Virginia Miller. “Rather than a literal view, they are concerned with the emotional effect.”
In the words of Constantin Brancusi: “Abstract (art) is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.”
Bassmi, Isness 2, Mixed Media on Canvas, 60 x 48 inches, 2004
As stated by critic Peter Frank, “The hundred-year history of abstract art is a history of distilling the ineffable. Whether motivated by intellectual argument or spiritual quest, the abstractionists in our midst have chosen not to depend on the recognizable world as a subject, although it remains available to them, and us, as a visual or conceptual armature; rather, it is the world inside their heads, and ours, they choose to elaborate.”
Bassmi has held solo exhibitions in galleries in Cairo, New York, and Paris as well as the Burroughs-Chapin Museum in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; the Pensacola Museum of Art; the Ormond Beach Memorial Museum; and the Hardin Art Center in Gadsden, Alabama, among numerous other venues.
Bassmi, Awareness 10, Mixed Media on Canvas, 48 x 60 inches, 2006
According to art critic John Mendelsohn, Bassmi’s paintings “speak in a language that we intuitively recognize—the movement of water, the massing of clouds, the delicacy of light in mist...the luminosity of translucent color alerts us to the essentially non-physical nature of what Bassmi is pointing to... the far shore of experience, where delight is the most natural thing in the world.”
Michelle Concepción, Volver 4, 71 x 65 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2008, MCO161
Michelle Concepción has exhibited widely in Europe, the U.S. and the Caribbean, with solo exhibitions in Frankfurt, Barcelona and at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries. In his essay for her most recent one-person show at the gallery, Peter Frank summarized her work with an observation that might apply to all the paintings in this exhibition:
“Michelle Concepción follows in the footsteps of Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and a host of nonobjective painters who in their various ways have explored and conveyed what was at once deep inside them and all around them, visually inchoate but profoundly immediate in experience. When this auratic force emerges and coalesces, we tend to find the mundane world in such formulations. But even as we do, those formulations act upon us and within us. Concepción’s is an art not of things, but of their ghosts.”
Florian Depenthal, Synthesis, Oil Emulsion with Pigment on Canvas, 36 x 60 inches, 2012, FDL94
Paintings of Florian Depenthal have been exhibited in numerous prestigious venues in his native Germany as well as in this country and are included in such important permanent collections as those of H.P. Schwerfel-Sammlung, Paris; Stone Container Corporation, Grant Thornton Collection, and Lake Point Tower Collection in Chicago.
Critic Janet Batet found that his “dazzling canvases”... “are loaded with powerful expression. Each emphatic stroke ...evidences a trace of mood, the vivid feeling invading the canvas before being tempered by reason.” His new work softens the edges of his subject matter as well as his somewhat flamboyant palette.
“Color, Form, Space” will be exhibited at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, 169 Madeira Avenue in downtown Coral Gables, through Jan. 2013. For more information, call 305-444-4493 or visit www.virginiamiller.com.
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