“Paris and Pinpoints”, an exhibition inspired by The 5th Avenue Theater’s play “Sunday in the Park with George”

from Robert Weingarten's series, "Portraits Without People"

APRIL 22ND – JUNE 13TH, 2009

5TH AVENUE RECEPTIONS; APRIL 24TH AND MAY 1ST; 5:30-6:30pm

YOU MUST HAVE A TICKET TO THE PLAY ON THESE DATES TO ATTEND THESE RECEPTIONS.
PUBLIC RECEPTION;
FIRST THURSDAY MAY 7TH 6-8PM

On April 24th and May 1st, Benham Gallery will host patrons of The 5th Avenue Theater for a pre-show reception featuring an exhibition designed around the theme of “Sunday In The Park With George.” Selected photographic works will inspire and engage the audience to contemplate what it means to be an artist.

Images of Paris and surrounding areas by fine art photographers Rosanne Olson and Tod Gangler capture the landscapes that inspired Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on la Grande Jatte” which the play “Sunday in the Park with George” is based upon. Olson’s black and white photographs of formal French gardens and women in period costumes are reminiscent of Seurat’s famous painting, while in Gangler’s dusk and dawn hues of Parisian skylines, one can understand where Georges found his color palettes.

Color images by Esther Sirotnik give viewers a sense of contemporary life in Paris that inspires today’s artists. In her series, “Women from Behind,” one wonders how Seurat would paint the women of today in his famous images and what symbols he would use to represent their various occupations.

Exemplifying the pointillist style artists, Jerry Spagnoli, Robert Weingarten  and Marcio Diaz use the Seurat technique in a variety of ways to create their art. Black and white photographs by Jerry Spagnoli create recognizable gestures of people jumping into water using the minimal information of the film grain. In Robert Weingarten’s palette series, details of Chuck Close’s studio transforms 2 inches of information into 5’ of abstraction, depicting the famous painters style.

Finally painter Marcio Diaz, an artist member of La Sala, incorporates this neoimpressionist approach with a Latino palette in his most recent works and will demonstrate this technique for the Theater Patrons on April 24th and
May 1st at the reception.

“I was also particularly impressed by three small paintings by Marcio Diaz. These images of farmers and beasts of burden shimmer with densely layered circles in many colors, which give them the look of a Pointillist painting by Georges Seurat.”
Weekly Valcano by Alec Clayton?Apr 02, 2009

by Rosanne Olson from her "Pinhole Travel" series

By Tod Gangler from his "Cloud" series

by Esther Sirotnik from the "Women from Behind" series

By Marcio Diaz an artist member of La Sala