Painting by Lukas Scheurer

This past Friday night I attended an opening reception for “Land, Sea and Other Scapes” at the Paul Fisher Gallery in West Palm Beach, Florida. The show will be up until May 29th. The gallery is located in a warehouse on Flamingo Drive near the railroad tracks. It is both dojo and gallery. This explains the location of a lifelike sculpture of a policeman placed at the entrance to the space made by artist Marc Sijan. Paul Fisher is a blackbelt and entrepreneur. He is popular in Palm Beach. His artists include Dale Chiluly and Bruce Helander who recently created a collage about the loss of fortunes to Madoff.

The opening attracted artists, dealers and collectors from Palm Beach and NYC. I bumped into Randy May, jewelry designer and Lloyd Macklowe, NYC gallerist and antiques dealer. Cheryl Maeder, Nune Asatryan, Mark Davis, Henry Kaye, Derek Prospero, Lukas Scheurer, Barbara Macklowe, Norm Gitzen and Lily Capehart exhibited artwork.

Two artists stand out: Henry Kaye,a sculptor and a young artist, Lukas Scheurer, a painter who will attend The Rhode Island School of Design this fall.

Henry Kaye is an alchemist. He exhibits two pieces of sculpture, small intimate idiosyncratic abstract bronzes that seem informed by Giocometti. They are like three dimensional snapshots of the artist’s imagination. Think, “… matter becoming spirit” but visa-versa.

Lukas a young emerging artist belies his age. The piece he exhibits in the show is mature, well executed and integrated. See his orange and green depiction of waterfalls to the right.

Two photographers explore traditional subject matter through abstract color photography: Barbara Macklowe captures surprising color found in bodies of water in nature and Cheryl Maeder shoots an out of focus world.

Barbara seems to merge with her subject matter perhaps in meditation to appropriate nature’s marks made by the movement of water. Her photographs blur the line between drawing and photography. They remind me of stills from quiet laser light shows.

Cheryl’s photographs straddle a fine line between dream imagery and the documentation of reality. The works in this show may signal the beginning of the creation of a powerful body of visionary work. Her unfocused world is now more strongly integrated with her subject than in earlier work.

Clement Penrose is an artist to watch. His slick surfaces combine with sci-fi subject matter to produce a winning combination. I say, “Dump reality and go for outrageous fantasy Clement! It’s where you live! Keep the surface in tact, stir and all will be right with your world”!

A large scale fish sculpture stands in the center of it all. It seems a Pop version of a Chinese fish broach with medieval and sci-fi leanings. The piece provides a point of orientation and anchor for the show. No pun intended!

PAUL FISHER GALLERY
The Flamingo Building, 433 Flamingo Drive, West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
(3 blocks south of the Norton Museum, off Dixie Hwy)
561.832.5255 or 561.818.3235