Art of angst dominates exhibit
Cultural Council’s 2017 prize winners selected from 637 entries.
The disappointment of not feeling satisfied despite owning piles of stuff. The demands of adapting to a rapidly changing environment. The suspicion that life as we know it is on the way out.
The prize-winners in the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County’s 2017 Biennial exude 21st-century angst.
Consider the man slumped on the floor in first-prize winner Natalya Laskis’s mixed media work “The Collector’s Room.” He’s in a room packed with valuables yet he’s oblivious to it all.
Like many of us, the collector is feeling overwhelmed by work, bombarded by information and burdened by his possessions, Laskis said. At 6 feet 5 inches-by-5 feet 3 1/2 inches “the painting is so large it engulfs the viewer,” she said. “I’m trying to have the viewer experience the same oppressed feeling as the collector.”
Laskis, who lives in West Palm Beach, knows something about the art market that’s churning out goods for collectors like the one in her painting. She spent eight months in 2015 working for Jeff Koons’ New York studio as he and the 300 artists staffing his studio were preparing for a gallery exhibition. “We were like a machine,” she said.
Although the three cash prizes (Best in Show, $2,000; Second
Place, $1,000; and third place, $500) went to narrative paintings, the 627 entries spanned a variety of media and themes, said juror Jennifer Inacio, assistant curator at the Perez Art Museum Miami. The winners shared a sense of mystery that drew her into the works, she said.
Inacio selected 49 works by 40 artists. Fifteen of the artists — including two of the prize winners — have never exhibited at the cultural council before, said Nichole Hickey, manager of artists services.
She aims to have the council’s exhibitions stand out from what visitors might see elsewhere in the county. “I want fresh new artwork that’s never been shown before,” she said.
Second-place winner Rick Newton of West Palm Beach isn’t a council newcomer. His painting “Christopher Columbus Discovering the New World” is typical of the post-apocalyptic Florida landscapes he’s known for.
The painting portrays a cross-section of an off-kilter scene with the precision of a science textbook illustration. A motel sign and wells sunk in the ground “are leftover ruins from the society and world we know today,” Newton said. A creature with the body of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik and a giant crab claw hovers in the sky.
In third-place winner Linda Finch’s painting “Open Window,” spotted eagle rays fly toward a window in a room where a brown-skinned woman wearing a polkadot