Gallery Archive: Beckstead, Booth, Burman
May 10 - June 7, 1997, at McKinney Arts, 526 East 11th Street, New York.
Group show featuring art by Ted Beckstead, Jennie Booth, and Ron Burman.
* Images scanned from 35mm slides taken during the 1997 exhibition.
All artworks are © the respective artists: Ted Beckstead, Jennie Booth, Ron Burman.
Press Release
MCKINNEY ARTS is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of works by three painters: Ted Beckstead, Jennie Booth, and Ron Burman. The gallery is located at 526 East 11th Street in the East Village. The three artists, unknown to each other before this show, have been brought together based on a shared sensibility, as each painter makes figurative works with a raw and direct approach.
The figures in Ted Beckstead's paintings originate out of small, quickly-made sketches, usually involving cartoonish figures. The finished canvases, however, are built up with layer upon layer of expressionistic brushstroke, with elements of abstraction creating an peculiar setting in which these painted figures exist.
Jennie Booth makes paintings that involve two-dimensional primitive figures that interact with each other in a brightly colored plane in order to tell a story. The composition and placement of the figures in relation to other symbolic elements allows for a pictorial narrative to take place. Ms. Booth's descriptive titles for her paintings add an exclamation mark to an already powerful visual statement.
Ron Burman's paintings incorporate found objects from the streets of the East Village which are then covered with an array of figures. Scraps of wood, boxes, doors, windows and other miscellaneous items are transformed by the painted presence of bold, primal figures. Mr. Burman has not received any formal training in painting or art history, and therefore his imagery springs from an unaffected response to the people and situations surrounding him in the city.
