End of Summer Artist Talk

Contemporary Art Matters is pleased to present an End of Summer artist talk recorded via Zoom featuring: Erika b Hess, Daina Higgins, Dion Johnson, Jignesh Panchal and Nikos Fyodor Rutkowski.

Click below to watch the video!

Erika b Hess is known for her distinctive use and interest in color. She creates abstract forms and movements with oil that represents figurative and symbolic viewpoints. Persephone, goddess of fertility and the Greek mythology that surrounds her inspires this most recent body of work. This is Hess’ inaugural show as represented by Contemporary Art Matters. Her work has been exhibited nationally in galleries in NYC, Los Angeles and Boston. She is also known for her popular podcast ‘I Like Your Work’.

Daina Higgins paints in a photo-realist style that showcases the American landscape as told by every day scenes such as a parked car and the emptiness of parking at night. So often these forgotten parts of our everyday vernacular hold much of our identity. Ivy Ridge at Night, 2020 and Toyota Corolla, 2020 give a glimpse into the most mundane aspects of life with such careful attention to our own reality that stops us in our tracks.

Dion Johnson depicts the intersection of landscape and architecture in this work. Intersect, 2019 is a study of movement, time and space. The softness and blending of hues come together for a quiet moment amidst the strong movement of sharp lines in this painting.

Jignesh Panchal grew up surrounded by an intense vernacular linguistically, aesthetically and culturally. On a daily basis he is bombarded with images and objects of everyday life in India, which is now the fabric of his work. In 2020 Panchal created a series titled Remapping where he used urban elements from daily life that turn into mixed media works on paper. In his most recent suite of works Panchal explores the traditions of his surroundings through symbolic groupings represented by the layering of iconic symbols as miniatures.

In this recent series of work, Rutkowski collages paper patterns for clothing as formal elements in his acrylic paintings. His most recent body of work focuses on a triad of themes from the Covid-19 influenced still life to science fiction. What were abstract works have in these turbulent times taken on representational compositions. Cubism still appears in the Punch and Judy play in ‘Comments Section’.