Salon Summer 2023

Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to re-open The Garage. The Garage is the gallery’s sweeping 7,000 square foot warehouse space at 62 Newtown Lane. The 2023 summer season initiates a new concept: an ongoing dialogue of cross generational curation that will rotate through the summer.

The installation is conceived as a “salon,” combining historic material represented by the gallery, and younger generations of contemporary artists.

The open warehouse space has been recently renovated with specially designed large moveable walls to create exciting exhibition possibilities. The gallery hopes that the Salon installation will encourage viewers to spend extended time looking. The installations will visually showcase and highlight the gallery’s mission: an ongoing reevaluation of the art historical canon, and its legacy and influence on younger artists.

The dramatic installation includes monumental abstract paintings from the 1960s, alongside abstractions made as recently as this past year. Also in the mix are stacked ceramic sculptures by Sana Musasama and 8 foot tall mosaic totems by Jeanne Reynal.

A range of surfaces, textures, shapes, scales are in play. A stained canvas from 1974 by Pat Lipsky is alongside a recent craggy impasto painting by Ben Pritchard. Technical experimentations of all forms are present. On view is a diamond-shaped poured and collaged 1982 painting by Joe Overstreet, a 1970–71 sprayed and pleated free form canvas by Nina Yankowitz, a 1960 “projection,” anti-art painting by Martha Edelheit, and a soft sculptural 2019 painting by Meg Lipke, created by stuffing canvas with polyester fill. A group of 2015 ceramics with smooth, glazed color surfaces by Keiko Narahashi stand frontally near the intuitive, neutral-toned abstract paintings by self-taught artist Thomas Sills.

The inaugural installation includes painting and sculpture from the 1950s–1990s by Ellsworth Ausby, Martha Edelheit, John Ferren, Pat Lipsky, Pat Passlof, James Phillips, Jeanne Reynal, Thomas Sills, and Nina Yankowitz. These will be shown alongside more recent works by Meg Lipke, Ted Kurahara, Keiko Narahashi and Ben Pritchard. In the case of Sana Musasama, the work itself is a conversation with her own earlier production: the House Series sculptures on view were made during the pandemic as “siblings” to her 1980s stacked ceramics. Passlof will be represented with paintings from the 1960s, as well as a group of works on paper from 2003.