This exhibition featured 5 different approaches to making abstract imagery through painting and photography by Carl Chiarenza, Karen Sardisco, Sarah Sutton, Patricia Wilder, and Bradley Butler (gallery director at Main Street Arts).
Artists featured in this exhibition included two photographers and three painters from the Rochester and upstate NY area.
Limited edition exhibition posters featuring images from the exhibition may be purchased in the Main Street Arts Online Gallery Shop. Each poster is signed by the artist and embossed with the gallery logo.
Artist Statements
Carl Chiarenza
Photographer, Rochester, NY
"The word “representation,” for me, is about photography’s way of transforming things, as opposed
to the idea of photography’s way of reproducing or tracing the supposed reality of things. Akin to poetry and prose, a photograph may be equally used to represent the mysterious or invisible. The images are transformations which refer to and represent visual sensations which I know only from a mix of past encounters with other pictures, music, the world, dreams, and fantasies."
Karen Sardisco
Painter, Rochester, NY
"Much of my work examines memory and looks back
at recollections that are now incomplete. The vague reconsiderations paint pictures that come and go. The process of sorting and sifting aid in acknowledging the role that retrospection offers, providing clues but leaving much to contemplate."
Sarah Sutton
Painter, Ithaca, NY
"The work investigates the complexity of our instinctual need to locate ourselves within a space, our innate desire to find pattern, and the ever-present possibility of unintelligibility within the inundation of images that characterizes our current cultural landscape."
Patricia Wilder
Photographer, Victor, NY
"Even in my early images, I was drawn to small parts of the subject rather than the whole scene, always trying to extract the essence of the subject. My first instructor worked in nature, so my early work was made in the natural world. I have become interested in urban subjects with more abstract and minimalistic images emphasizing line, color, and surfaces."
Bradley Butler
Painter, Canandaigua, NY
"I paint to disconnect from reality and then I keep painting to disconnect from the act of painting itself. In the studio, I use chance encounters with my chosen art materials to make lines and amorphous shapes. The remnants of my activity become something to be referenced as mirroring reality, something familiar to
both the viewer and myself. The simultaneous feelings of dread and curiosity are achieved personally while I make art and it is my goal to make people feel the same thing when they look at my work."
