Jeff Miller at Gallery at 46 Green Street
"Whatever else you may say about his art, you can't deny the purity of his line." Some critic wrote that about Aubrey Beardsley, an early hero of Miller's. Unsurprisingly, Miller has chased that "purity of line" as an ideal throughout his career, and through thousands of drawings. This month at Gallery at 46 Green Street in Hudson, Miller's highly stylized, imaginative line drawings—expressive yet still representational—exhibit their playfulness and elegance. Through January 20.
Ryan Cronin at Unison Arts Center
Cronin's painting walks the tightrope between Pop Art and abstraction, incorporating bright colors, text, elements of graphic design, and folk art. The work is also serious fun, as if a precocious kindergartener realized an ecstatic vision of a new iconography. David Hockney, Philip Guston, and Robert Indiana are clear influences on the New Paltz-based artist, whose work draws as much inspiration from 20th-century masters as it does from street art. January 6-February 28.
Sharon Lindenfeld at Garrison Art Center
Contemporary printmaker Sharon Lindenfeld's abstract etchings revel in the subtle and expressive frequencies of the subconscious in the exhibition "Iterations: Solo Printmaking" at the Garrison Art Center, featuring large-scale and small-scale prints. Ambiguous, dreamlike landscapes are peopled with strange figures, objects, and architectural elements. Within the plentitude of printmaking techniques and forms, Lindenfeld has developed a varied body of work with a distinctive ethereal painterliness. January 26-February 24.
Karl Volk at Art Society of Kingston
Born in Brooklyn in 1932, Kingston-based Volk has been exhibiting his paintings in the Hudson Valley for the past 50 years. This retrospective at the Arts Society of Kingston caps a career that began with studies with Mark Rothko, Burgoyne Diller, and Kurt Seligman and includes countless shows at regional galleries like Tivoli Artists Gallery, Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, the Garrison Art Center, and the Barrett Art Center. January 5-31.
Betty Parsons at Art Omi
Best known as a dealer of midcentury art through her eponymous gallery, Betty Parsons (1900-1982) championed Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. Parsons was also a painter herself and maintained a rigorous artistic practice. This is the last chance to see her ongoing investigation of landscape through the lens of abstraction at Art Omi in Ghent. Also included in this exhibition are some of Parsons' painted driftwood constructions. Through January 6.
"The imPerfect Poetics of Place" at Hudson Beach Glass
Eleni Smolen of Theo Ganz Studio curates a group show at Hudson Beach Glass in Beacon featuring Joseph Ayers, Samantha Beste, Cathy Cook, Jill Enfield, Elana Goren, Kevin Kearns, Meelia Kelly, Flynn Larsen, Herman Roggeman, Ooloosie Saila, and Emma Tapley. Works include video, film, photography, etching, sculpture, drawing, painting, and found object takes on landscape and place. January 12-February 3.
"Death is Black and White" at HVMoCA
Serena Staus curates a selection of stark monochromatic photography and video art from the Marc and Livia Straus Family Collection at HVMoCA in Peekskill. The exhibition takes a focused look at how the examination of mortality illuminates what it means to be alive. Featured artists include: Dieter Appelt, Gilles Berquet, Larry Clark, Martin Eder, Ion Grigorescu, Lyle Ashton Harris, Robert Mapplethorpe, Maria Marshall, Shirin Neshat, and Mike and Doug Starn. Through January 20.
Hongnian Zhang at Fletcher Gallery
Chinese-born painter Hongnian Zhang moved to Woodstock in 1991 and has been a fixture of the regional artistic scene ever since, as his students at the Woodstock School of Art well know. A realistic painter in the Western academic tradition, Zhang’s epic narratives are sweeping tableaux of Chinese and American historical and contemporary scenes. Several of his large-scale epic paintings on Chinese history have been featured in National Geographic magazine.Through January 13.
