Nathalie Karg would like to invite you to a special exhibition project with artists Wayne Ngan and John Riepenhoff. Curated by Vancouver based Lee Plested, the exhibition sets the work of master potter Ngan amongst a new suite of Plein Air paintings by Riepenhoff which were commissioned for the exhibition and painted on Hornby Island, BC, looking at the night sky from the beach below the cliff-perched home and studio of Ngan.
Wayne Ngan has distinguished himself as one of the most virtuosic potters of our time. His recent production incorporates increasingly sculpted, fantastical forms which begin from traditional shapes only to become exaggerated into nuanced contemporary vessels. Their richly glazed bodies express his mastery of classic techniques from China, Korea and Japan infused with an expanded use of understated color. Inspired by the elements around him, Ngan’s work functions on a different time continuum: a return to an essentialist connection to material. This will be Ngan’s first exhibition in New York.
John Riepenhoff inhabits the role of the artist within a larger project which incorporates making, curating, event planning, and experience providing. Through his socially based work he realizes evocative art which reveals the essential humanism of contemporary art and how at the core it’s ideas relate lives lived and shared. For his Plein Air paintings he incorporates conceptual constraints, mixing his palette from the environment and experience in the day and applying it ‘straight’ on that evening in the dark, while exploring his vocabulary of extended paintings techniques to create surprisingly subtle and evocative worlds on raw canvas. Also included in this exhibition will be the ‘John Riepenhoff Experience’, a miniature gallery which will feature the work of Hornby Island artist Gordon Payne who John met during his time in the Gulf Islands.
Wayne Ngan‘s work has been exhibited world wide and is in numerous permanent collections including the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, and the Gardiner Museum, Toronto. This spring he presented a solo exhibition at The Green Gallery, Milwaukee. Ngan was awarded the Governor General’s Commemorative Medal and the prestigious Saidye Bronfman Award for Masters of the Crafts. In 2013 Wayne was recognized by the BC Achievement Foundation with the 2013 Award of Distinction.
John Riepenhoff is a artist, curator and co-owner of The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI, co-organizer of The Milwaukee International and Dark Fairs, and is an inventor of artistic platforms for the expression of others. His recent exhibitions and curatorial projects have been presented at the Tate Modern, London; Marlborough, and the Swiss Institute, New York, NY; 356 Mission Rd, Los Angeles, CA; Cooper Cole, Toronto; The Suburban, Oak Park, IL; Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR; Poor Farm, WI; Lynden Sculpture Garden, Inova, and the Ski Club, Milwaukee, WI; and Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA. He also continues a program of the John Riepenhoff Experience at various locations around the world, most recently at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Misako and Rosen, Tokyo. He is the current Milwaukee Arts Board Artist of the Year, co-chair of Friends of Blue Dress Park, and organizer of Milwaukee’s first Beer Endowment for artist-run organizations.