For those of you who enjoy hearing from the experts of the art world, you’re in luck! This article serves as the first of our “Summer Series Favorites” in which we ask some of the best and brightest in the industry to give AZ readers a few tips on what to look for this summer in all things art. This week’s installment features Molua Muldown, Director and Curator of the Next to Nothing gallery in NYC. Here’s a little about her and the Top 7 artists she’s watching this summer:
Full name: Molua Muldown
Position: Director/Curator
Gallery: Next to Nothing, 181 Orchard St., NYC.
History: I’m the granddaughter and daughter of painters and was raised with a deep appreciation for the way that art can expand an individual’s mind and heart as well as influence and hold a mirror up to the wider culture. I studied art history and then worked as an artist’s assistant. I had the good fortune to have had many mentors, each influencing and challenging me to develop my own point of view. I earned my curatorial stripes at Dorian Grey Gallery, working with a roster of wonderful NYC artists. I’m now the director and curator at a new gallery, Next to Nothing on Orchard St.
About the Next to Nothing: A new gallery with a contemporary program of established and emerging artists with a special focus on intergenerational collaboration.
Artists I’m watching this summer:
1. Walter Robinson
Walter Robinson has an uncanny ability to access universal desire and memory- and bringing them to life with his marvelous brushwork and high key lighting. In his new bed sheet paintings, he’s managed to make bedfellows of beauties and beasts, longing and wit, trust and treachery.
A pioneering independent filmmaker, and a patron saint of New York artists, Coleen Fitzgibbon focuses her lens on the work and life of the sculptor, Jonathan Silver. Through interviews with his fellow artists, academics, critics and friends, Fitzgibbon deftly weaves a richly compassionate portrait of a complex artist and his work.
I’ve followed Ellen Berkenblit’s work for many years and am always excited to see her new work. Her paintings build on past work, feeding an ongoing narrative that straddles reality and imagination. Her line is effortless and her colors are sublime. Eye-candy with great substance.
4. Jane Dickson
Jane Dickson’s alternate realities and terrific textures are thrilling. Her innovative explorations in alternative materials are balanced by her deeply humanistic point of view. Tenderness and Astroturf rule!
Raphael Mazzucco turns a sculptor’s eye on photography and collages. His gorgeous remote landscapes, nudes and ephemera are built up into heavily textured collages. The tactile sensuality in these works trigger daydreams to get lost in.
6. Rick Prol
Edward Leffingwell once called Rick Prol “the master of gothic angst.” In a 1991 series, the foundational elements of his visual language and unique narratives are stunning in their freshness and prescience. In his recent work, the symbols and metaphors have evolved; rendering them even better companions on this mortal coil.
Juan Eduardo Gomez masterfully employs a visual language in the territory between figuration and abstraction. His lush, yet spare paintings explore the exquisite balance and tension between the conscious and unconscious.
top image // Courtesy of Ariana Wist Art: Justen Ladda, blue and silver profile and Brigitte Engler, No
