Edgy Art From the Water's Edge. Water Show Sails into Red Hook

Author by Anonymous

August 17, 2004 -- It's time again for that raucous experiment in artistic democracy, the summer BWAC show. This time a "water theme" links this Water Show to the waterfront of Red Hook, Brooklyn, home to BWAC for 13 years. On a sunny day, the water glitters and the tankers float by, providing the perfect environment for the show inside. The show fills a sprawling 20,000 square feet of warehouse space across from the giant conical ruin of an abandoned Domino sugar factory, itself one of the most beautiful sculptural environments in New York. A building across the street is being renovated for a new Fairway Market, commercial and residential space. When it is finished BWAC will jump across to that location.



The Brooklyn Waterfront Arts Coalition, established in 1978, is a collective of 400 artist members who work, live or show in Brooklyn. The shows, which average four a year, are installed and administrated by member-volunteers. This non-profit organization is committed to providing a place for both seasoned professionals and emerging artists to share their work with the public and each other. The BWAC website http://www.bwac.org provides directions to the site, a listing of upcoming events and a registry of members' artwork.



This summer's show, which features over 300 artists, has a range, verve and funkiness that makes it unique on the New York scene. The full gamut of media is represented, from painting, drawing and prints to photography, sculpture and mixed media. These shows have become known as a prime place for collectors, curators and gallery owners to discover new artists and acquire affordable art. In addition to the main show there is an auction wall with art which ranges affordably from $35 to $900.



For the first time, photography is grouped in one section, which happily allows one to pull into focus the subtleties of the medium and gives a nice coherence to the grouping: a show within a show. Here we see, among other sites, New York's myriad waterfronts in all their variety and moods.



A conceptual interpretation of the water theme is seen in a spare series of four photographs by Diane Kandel called "Beach Float." These may technically be still life, but evoke a robotic but affecting face in subtly changing moods. Also photography, but hanging in the main body of the show, are Daniel Durning's photo prints which play in the nexus between the real and the unreal via 50's-era Kodachrome-saturated color, and the embedding of text in images.



The joy of such an open show is the range of media and art styles jostling together with something for everyone, from meticulous realism to painterly and sculptural physicality to cool conceptualism.



There are many small and sensitive works that bear close scrutiny. Carmen Porfido's idiosyncratic embroidered picture of a sharp-nosed fish menacing a cowed man is simultaneously surreal and homey. Monika Zarzeczna has drawn quiet and disturbing watercolors of people having unexpected trouble with water. Larry Giacoletti shows shimmering woodcuts of water, poetic in their simplicity.



Muscular painting shows up in the joyful, leaping, near-abstract nudes of Jacquelyn Lipp, exuberant heirs to the figures of David Park. Constance Lombardo's abstracts of bright daubs give the unmistakable feel of water, without naming it. Another strong abstract statement is a blue color field splashing up the canvas, a visceral blue wave by Dawn Petrlik. In a more realistic vein, Bart Berggren shows us lusciously colored water lilies from an impossible underwater vantage point.



There are examples of Pop in both its ironic and straightforward forms.

Merilee Liddiard's big-headed, fashionably disaffected girl with surreal

strung-up fish companions gazes out from a background of buzzing orange and blue. Enjoy the goofy verve of Igor Mykhalin's doe-eyed bathing beauties. Eye-bustingly bright, they look like dappled impressionism married to cartoon kitsch. David Rosenberg presents a deceptively simple canvas divided into quadrants featuring four forms of water. As we read along; faucet, glass, soap, and awful ocean void, the last frame with its obscure threat begs the redefinition of the first ordinary three.



Among the many sculptural pieces the striking standout is Sheryl Stewart's transgressive carving of a bare-breasted Mary, close enough to the conventions to make us do a double-take. She is a pagan goddess, a Mary gone bad.



The Summer BWAC show is one of the best exemplars of the current trend towards stylistic diversity and inclusiveness that informs the contemporary New York art scene.