George Tice
Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to present Infinite Summer, on view Thursday 29 June through Friday 28 July 2017. Please join us for a reception at the gallery on Thursday 6 July from 6:00 –8:00 PM. Gallery hours for the summer are Tuesday through Friday, 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and by appointment. Please note that the gallery will be closed from Saturday 1 July through Tuesday 4 July for the Fourth of July weekend.
Infinite Summer features work by seven contemporary artists, all of whose work is deeply anchored in place and steeped in the singular moods and ambiance of summer. The delicate play of light and shade casts a hallowed glow over otherwise quotidian moments in the platinum/palladium prints of George Tice (b. 1938, Newark) and in an exquisite piece from Pentti Sammallahti (b. 1950, Helsinki); while in the masterful gelatin-silver prints of Sumner Wells Hatch (b. 1984, New Hampshire), sunlight filters through water and foliage, bringing to life a magical world in which time seems to be suspended. In the work of Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962, St. Petersburg), city-dwellers flock to St. Petersburg’s urban lakes in tableaux that evoke Georges Seurat’s famous depiction of Parisians in summertime in La Grande Jatte.
Also featured in the exhibition are photographs by Marcia Lippman (b. 1944, New York), William Meyers (b. 1938, Providence), and Ann Rhoney (b. 1953, Niagara Falls). Together, the artists’ work provides a visual counterpart to what Marcel Proust, hearing the buzzing of flies in the heat of the French countryside, called “the chamber music of summer…born of sunny days, and not to be reborn but with them, containing something of their essential nature, [which] not only calls up their image in our memory, but gives us a guarantee that they do really exist, that they are close around us, immediately accessible.”
"Nailya Alexander Gallery’s midsummer show is humming with heat and tranquility. The photographs, mostly black-and-white, work beautifully together, balancing soporific gray hues and high contrast lighting to achieve a feeling of otherworldliness. The works are as much about quiet seclusion as they are about the mental transcendence it allows for...The show’s seven photographers are connected by their distinctive artistic processes, which extend beyond conventional shooting and printing. Alexey Titarenko, George Tice, Pentti Sammallahti, and Sumner Wells Hatch are masterful dark room printers who employ unusual printing techniques to alter color and light while developing their own work."
