A conversation with artist Russell Steinert and Henry Klimowicz, sculptor and Director at the Re Institute, Millerton, New York on the occasion of Steinert’s exhibition at Tanja Grunert, Princess Beatrix House, 21 Prospect Avenue, Hudson, New York. The conversation took place on Saturday, July 27th, 2024.
Russell Steinert
Cityscapes, 2024
Paper size: 19-1/2 x 26 inches
Oil paint on paper using a plastic sheet plate
Monoprint
Printed with Janis Stemmermann, Russell Janis Projects, Brooklyn, New York.
Odette Steinert's 2019 write-up of an open studio in my Canal Street workspace discussing paintings now on view at Private Public Gallery in Hudson, New York.
Hasegawa Tōhaku (Nobuharu), Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang, 16th century (Momoyama period). From How Art Historians Cracked the Case of Enigmatic Japanese Painter Hasegawa Tōhaku, Allison Meier, March 9, 2018, www.artsy.net
"This is an exhibition of seven artists addressing deeply personal emotional states. They are manifesting visible representations of something abstract… the incomplete idea of place, the reconstruction of intimacy, the theoretical biography, and while we are looking to examples of the ethereal, there is an equally palpable undercurrent of active strength of body and mind that fills the air. The consciousness as a group is not so much aiming for transcendence, as they are looking for proximity to the state of being near… and what they can be near to – the evidence of territory, the confirmation of presence, and locating balance, all of which would be an account, a confirmation to that which cannot be found otherwise." -- Christopher Freeman, Director, Private Public Gallery, Hudson, New York
"The manner in which he works is the atmosphere of it all. It’s his action of understanding. Russell Steinert has developed the extraordinary capacity for seeing the essence of time and place. It’s more like being within a visitation. The feelings witnessed within the Work radiate. And he’s so smart about it, that he involves us. At a recent studio visit I became emotional looking at his work, nothing distinct, just an overwhelming sense of the senses. So, I asked him if he cries a lot… and he said… All the time."
Below, a short video of where the ideas for the wooden pieces in the Re Institute installation come from.
Opening May 27th from 4 to 6PM followed by a potluck dinner.
Material Sustenance includes work by Frank Jackson, Tom Goldenberg, Jonathan Fabricant, Russell Steinert on view in the upstairs gallery.
Family Snapshots, The work of Nikko Sedgwick will be on display in the downstairs gallery.
Material Sustenance: Sometimes an art show is not about “the art”. Sometimes it's about the time that the art is made in. This show is a document of how art and life bring meaning to each other. The things that have happened when making the work are often invisible. I invite you to look for the deep relationship between the process of making and the lives of these five artists. The answers they have found are in the relationship of the materials they use to themselves. They are fascinated with the process of creativity. They turn towards an inner world, towards nature, patterns, and to the families each artist has been blessed to live with.
-- Henry Klimowicz, Founder and Director
Russell Steinert, Dresser Painting, 2020
Jonathan Fabricant, Bubblelicious XII, 2022, 17 x 22 inches
Jonathan Fabricant: My relief print work is a game of chance, a dive into the unknown, an experiment renewed each day. I use the unique qualities of the print process to purposefully distance myself from the immediacy of painting and drawing; a different way of thinking. The print process takes me into the slower more protracted, backwards-puzzle of the multi-layered, printed image; it confounds my expectations and engages me with its own peculiar problems and surprises. I start with a simple unit, printed in different ways. Sometimes I see “things” pop up in the work, usually a visual phenomenon; sometimes an emotional energy, or a trip through time to a “place”; these subjects come to me through the process and are not looked for or intended. The work becomes a presence that introduces itself to me.
To be in the studio; to explore the abstract and essential nature of shapes and color; to work with the process of printmaking; These visual elements, are a universal language of their own, not exactly definable, but a profound positive force, that is embedded in everything, both natural and human made; it is a rich world! My practice is a place where I try and quiet the noise, breathe through my anxieties and fears, and move from what is underneath toward what is Visible.
A few years ago I was on a Zoom call for work, and I was in Jonathan’s studio because the wifi in my office wasn’t working for some reason. A few works in progress were on the wall behind me, and one of my colleagues marveled at them. I remember thinking, “Oh, I guess not everyone gets to live with an artist.”
Tom Goldenberg, Pitigliano, 72 x 90 inches, Latex on canvas, 2020
My compositions are often formed around ancient foundations and inspired by glacial moraine and the rock walls of Northwestern Connecticut.
The Ancient Past informs the Present as a poem to our time.
Michelle Alfandari: I could write volumes about Tom but the essence of this man is being a painter. While he is a multi-faceted human; the one constant and necessity for him is painting. Making art for Tom is not optional any more than breathing is for the rest of us. He knew it when he was 4 years old and his mother gave him a bucket of water and a paint brush to paint the bricks of their house.
He has an acute visual sense. He sees things you and I do not. He takes in a lot of information and with talent, knowledge, and a quest to create an original, engaging and enduring work of art – he does just that. His art breaths as life does because each work is a part of him. He has opened my eyes and enriched my life in a multitude of ways.
Frank Jackson, CULUS, fresco, egg tempera, graphite, burlap on board, 7 x 8 inches, 2020
These questions are held particularly close for me through the poetic materiality of fresco. During the brief passage of time that the intonaco layer of lime accepts pigment and image, surfaces move from wet to dry, color is buried and hardened, and transparency and opacity locate moments of the day. There is an urgency to the material of fresco, and the possibilities and limitations work off each other. These works are a set of ideas and questions. They are meant to poeticize the seen and felt world and to offer another version to consider.
Nikko Sedgwick, Wedding Cake IV
There is a decay/renewal aspect at the core of this work. The first step in my process is a destroying of the image with solvents that cause the emulsion to deteriorate and melt implying not only a painterliness that I strive for, but an animation, energy and manifestation of aura, breath and life that contradicts our conventional notion of a photograph distilling a moment time. Through the process of making this work there is an excavation, a literal peeling away of layers to reveal that which lays beneath that is akin to exhuming something that has been entombed. These layers serve as a metaphor for layers of personality and identity; what we choose to reveal or obscure, our visions of how we perceive ourselves as opposed to how we present, layers of skin, of generations, of self.