Dalet Art Gallery

apr. 1, 2011 – apr. 30, 2011         The Secrets of the Wind

Juri Kim

Dalet Gallery presents this solo exhibit of Juri Kim as a part of a project called CONTEMPLATIVE REALMS. Juri Kim’s work is an attempt at visual communication. She is interested in the relationship between text and image and between perception and knowledge and personal experiences. She uses text that she has collected from every day life to create a visual lexicon. Ms. Kim employs the Braille Alphabet writing system to prove the idea that what you see is what you know. The act of filling her painting with dots that are units and cells charged with a special and personal meaning is a practice that is reflective of a Zen exercise. The work is a constant act of finding and losing, remembering and forgetting, asserting and denying, inventing and destroying, daily evoking life and death. She wants to open a visual window for viewers to explore new possibilities.

may. 6, 2011 – jun. 25, 2011         The Orchestra of the Damned

The variety of the exhibited works reflects the 60-year period spanning the artist’s early paintings (dated 1951) to a recently created series of collages and mixed media on wood and paper.

In his paintings in oil paint and mixed media, Hart visually forges a concretized world of highly personal mythologies.

The central platform of the exhibition is Hart’s recent series of oil paintings, “The Orchestra of the Damned”, in which he creates a compelling metaphor on an anti-war theme, one engaging a contrapuntal collision between the beauty of music and the brutality of war. The figurative musicians in the paintings are all veterans of foreign wars. Much of his work represents complex reformulations through collage; these are deeply personal and symbolically relevant images on wood and paper. The artist has also created three-dimensional works on wood using collage and mixed media on various objects. Besides these paintings in oil and mixed media, Hart engages in book art; here he utilizes a style resonant of Gothic imagery and the visual power of medieval illustrated manuscripts.

may. 6, 2011 – may. 28, 2011         Gatekeepers of the Cycle

The inter-penetrating layers of symbolism, misticism, and narrative in my work constitute a timeless world of ancient rituals and divinatory rites.

In synthesizing techniques of the old masters, ancient mystical teaching, and contemporary science, my work focuses on the uniqueness and universality of inner landscapes and transcendent experience.

– Chris Sedgwick

jun. 3, 2011 – jun. 25, 2011         Autofiction

I paint the world in flesh and bones. Day after day, I write the living autobiography of my vision of the world. I seek to trigger the visual insurrection of an image, to reverse its point of view. Iconoclastic, vitalist, I seek to animate and to report, to expose the inner vision of that which surrounds and encompasses me, and expose it to the outside. I consider nothing or no one as “important” subject matter; but see only “small” characters in my republic
– Thibaud Thiercelin

sep. 2, 2011 – oct. 15, 2011         The Spiral

The Spiral, a title of the Iskhakov’s new show at Dalet Gallery, is used by the artist as an allegory for enhanced dimensionality of his paintings. This increase of depth of layers and meanings does not result in any significant shift from Valera’s trademark hedonistic style as much as it results in addition of new stylistic and emotional dimensions. By analogy to a curve which revolves around a central point but in the same time gets progressively father away from it, his essential visual vocabulary remains unchanged (sensual female bodies, or sill life with rhythmical patterns on the background), but a viewer can see how different in spirit his latest paintings are from the retrospective works, exhibited nearby.

jul. 6, 2012 – jul. 14, 2012         Made in Princeton

The Dalet Gallery, with co-curators Kate Somers and Irena Gobernik, is pleased to present two artist groups from Princeton, New Jersey, the Princeton Artist Alliance and the Princeton Photography Club. Together they prove that Princeton and its environs are thriving in the Arts. While New York City and Philadelphia may be a short train ride away, these artists do not have to travel to either city to become exposed to and inspired by great art. They have found what they need in their “collective backyard” and have banded together to nurture their creative spirits.

jun. 1, 2012 – jun. 23, 2012

In his “Primitive-Level Signals” exhibit, LiQin Tan, co-director and professor of art at Rutgers University, presents two of his art series: “Brain Spirit Levels” (2012) and “Burl + 4” (2003-2004). In the former, Tan uses spirit levels as a signal to describe a natural phenomenon in humans, where human brain development is an equalized procedure. The competing concepts of the brain – whether the battle of the brain’s size versus its intellectual capacity, or of its technological versus its spiritual side–are always kept in equilibrium. In the latter art series, Tan presents himself as a digital naturalist, choosing the burl/lava as the natural art form to explore his “Digital-Primitive” theme in a multifaceted and reciprocal process: Making digital 3D images through primitive technology and materials, while also making primitive rawhide/wood/rock art through digital technology.

This exhibition of work consists of spirit-level installations alongside dozens of digital prints on metal, wood, and rawhides. There are also numerous animations projected onto suspended rawhides and LCD monitors displaying separate animations.

apr. 20, 2012 – may. 26, 2012
My ideas arrive in clusters and flurries. I am prepared for this occasional invasion. I know how to control them and where they will be used. My work hasn’t proceeded in a straight line. Instead each artistic branch has its own independent burst which ultimately relates to a central root.

There is a wide variety of approaches to the human body, but what is constant are the various forms of movement through which I express my passion for life.

– Ernestine Ruben

oct. 21, 2011 – nov. 26, 2011         Go Live Your Own Life

Irena Gobernik
Leo Vayn

In their first joint exhibition, Leo Vayn, a photographer, and Irena Gobernik, a wood and mixed media sculptor, both from Princeton, NJ, explore the interplay and inter-dependency of the results of their inspirations.

There is nothing unusual that one artist uses the art of the other in his works. Sculpture especially is naturally predisposed to react to the environment and to be used in a certain context. But in this case this convention is taken a step further. Irena creates objects that by her design are meant to interact with surroundings and Leo, playing a role of a demiurge, tests them, puts them in different situations, creates narratives, while advancing his concept of “survival”. The resulting curious and touching portraits of the human-like beings create a stirring effect and serve as a social commentary on our own lives.

– Jeanne Heinz