October 5 - 30, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday, October 7, 6-8 pm

Robin Levandov
“Flower and Thorn”

Jenn Levatino
“The Keratin Series”

Michael Frassinelli
“Pianista Cabinets of Curiosities”

Robin Levandov
“Flower and Thorn”

 Life is both flower and thorn. Flowers aptly embody life’s contradictions. They provide moments of rapture and delight yet are symbols of life and beauty that convey the finite nature of everything earthly. 

I made these paintings against the dark backdrop and chaos of the Covid pandemic. These works, some of which may include a clock, candle or dead insect, reinterpret the Baroque concept of “vanitas” paintings, acknowledging both beauty and transience of life. 

During our period of isolation, I felt gratitude for my art practice which has been a palliative as well as a refuge during these dark times. I often would muse upon the life affirming quality of flowers in stark contrast to the horrors and catastrophes of the modern world. 

After I had begun this series, my father unexpectedly passed away from Covid, and, suddenly, flowers were everywhere. Somehow these delicate beings help us all navigate through the wilderness of grief, yet, ironically, their beauty is ephemeral. 

I am also reminded of the political aspect of flowers, and generally, of beauty, as the essayist In Orwell’s Roses, Rebecca Solnit states: “People have a “right to roses”—to an existence in which beauty, delight, love and a rich interior life are possible.” 

Cultivating beauty matters. 

Jenn Levatino
“The Keratin Series”

Through the Keratin Series, I am creating my own symbiosis- my own species- that has evolved by paring down visual information to get to essential visual and symbolic connections between animal and human forms.  My drawings and sculptures spawned from various influences including the theories and discovery associated with Symbiogenesis, the hairstyles donned by women represented through Roman portrait sculpture and the animal remains I have collected over a lifetime on various excursions, including hikes in England through the Yorkshire Moors and in Ireland across the bogs of Connemara. 

This series developed as I imagined a world in which cellular mutations happen on a large scale to tangible and recognizable organisms.  The corkscrew of a sheep horn twists into the tower of curls of an elite woman from the Flavian era.  Glossy rows of plaited hair wrap delicately around a rough horn’s well-defined grooves and ridges.  These juxtapositions of hair and horns are made harmonious through intricate interweaving and placement- they come into being by living together.  Taking cues from the hairstylists of Ancient Rome, braids are sewn, woven and wrapped around their animal appendages.  Forms and gestures are informed by creatures who inhabit or infest habitats on land or at sea.  These surrealistic configurations express aspects of symbiotic relationships and elevate the common elements that bind us; in this case keratin and melanin, and the fact that we are all made of the same gore.

Michael Frassinelli
“Pianista Cabinets of Curiosities”

Michael Frassinelli’s conceptual series is populated by objects reminiscent of artifacts made entirely of discarded piano parts. This recent show features new trompe l’oeil-style paintings, along with the objects, presented in the tradition of cabinets of curiosity.