Reverence & Reverie
A Group Exhibition, The Lodge Gallery- NYC
Artists: Matt Hansel, Christian Rex van Minnen, Elizabeth Livingston, Kent Henricksen, Jansson Stegner, Peter Daverington, Allison Sommers, and Kate Clark.
The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.
– T.S. Eliot
Artists of the early renaissance grappled throughout Europe for access to the ancient cannons of art history. Each of those great artists were relearning the passions of archaic Greeks and Roman idealism and using those rediscoveries of the past to invent new techniques and new ideas. Through the lens of history, they were able to reconceptualize political ideologies, esoteric philosophies and challenged cultural distastes for subjective creative interpretation. Riffing off what then, as are now, those great classical motifs, the work of the Renaissance was imbued with mythic, romantic, and sexual imagery all woven, a perspective tapestry of reason and rhetoric and rediscovery. To an audience immersed the celebration of the liberal arts and sciences, it was the right time for a little turbulence and the right time for a little eye candy. Building upon the lessons learned from those heroes of philosophy and art from eons bygone those artists we know, such as Hoblien and Durer to DaVinci and Raphael, to all the renaissance artists we don’t know, those generations were able to transformed modern western art and society as a whole by laying philosophical and aesthetic foundations that reverberated then as much as today and on to resonate through time.
The annals of global art history are rich with movements that either grow out of conflict or are born in reverie for a more enlightened age. For the artists in this exhibition, reverent derivation has become the skeletal framework around which they each embark upon journeys of innovation and invention. This exhibition speaks to a larger conversation about where we come from, who we are. What should we leave behind and what to carry on with us to that yet unknown place where we are headed?
In the spirit of history repeating itself but never the same way twice, The Lodge Gallery is proud to present Reverence & Reverie, on view November 6 through December 13, 2015
The Lodge Gallery, founded by Jason Patrick Voegele and Keith Schweitzer, is located at 131 Chrystie Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It is the exhibition venue of Republic Worldwide and serves as both an art space and a gathering place for hearty discourse and experimentation.
