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In 2016, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) unveiled “From the Collection: 1960-1969,” a chronologically organized capsule of its world-renowned permanent collection that went beyond the expected paintings, drawings and sculptures to include books, design objects and archival materials in immersive environments that conjured stylized time capsules. Reporting on that inspired reconfiguration, the New York Times pointed out that “treasures long secreted in departmental galleries have come to the center ring, like the Jaguar E-Type Roadster that dominates, perhaps a little too completely, the 1961 gallery.” 

Borrowing creative direction from MoMA’s 1961 gallery, the McNay takes a similarly unorthodox approach to its new era-focused exhibition “American Dreams: Classic Cars and Postwar Paintings.” Organized by the McNay’s René Paul Barilleaux, head of curatorial affairs; Kate Carey, head of education; and Jackie Edwards, assistant curator, it reconstructs a vivid slice of what’s been called “America’s Golden Age” by parking 10 painstakingly restored vintage automobiles inside the museum to engage in “unique visual conversations” with paintings that exemplify artistic movements that emerged from the economic expansion following WWII — specifically abstract expressionism, pop art and op art. 

In addition to paintings by such heavy hitters as Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana and Ed Ruscha, “American Dreams” strives for “strong representation of women artists” by highlighting works by Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Judith Godwin and Dorothy Hood. It also celebrates the contributions of women in the male-dominated auto industry with complementary programs including a lecture by author, Girls Auto Clinic owner and self-professed “sheCANic” Patrice Bank (save the date for April 4). 

Interesting. Unusual. Uniquely NYC. Highlights of this week’s top events include “The Art of Fashion,” “Eric Dever: Painting in a House Made of Air,” “Race, Sex & Cinema: The World of Marlon Riggs,” and more. Get the NYC-ARTS Top Five in your inbox every Friday and follow @NYCARTS on Twitter to stay abreast of events as they happen.

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Click here to Experience Eric Dever: Painting in a House Made of Air as a VR walking tour thanks to Eazel!

Eric Dever (MA ’88) is a painter who graduated from NYU Steinhardt’s studio art program.

His paintings are part of notable public collections at the Parrish Art Museum, Grey Art Gallery-New York University Art Collection, Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York, and Centre d’Art et de Culture, Saint Just de Bellengard, France. He was in the permanent collection exhibition, Parrish Perspectives: Art in Context at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York, and on display at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York. Current exhibitions include the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong, and Macau, Art in Embassies, Department of State exhibition.

Eric Dever: Painting in a House Made of Air is on view this month at Berry Campbell Gallery in New York City. The exhibit features a new body of brilliantly hued, large-scale paintings, which emerged when Dever was planting a garden at his Water Mill, New York, studio.

We spoke to him about his artistic process.

You paint in New York City and the East End of Long Island.  How do these locales influence your work?

My painting during graduate school, 1986-88, was influenced by urban landscape and physical forms of civilization. New to town from Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time in museums and was fascinated walking around the city and boroughs. My paintings were often elegiac; the AIDS crisis concerned everyone. The city was very exciting, one had the sense that anything could happen, and each day held life changing possibilities.

Since 2003, I have worked on the East End of Long Island. It is always exciting to move to a new place and my paintings reflected this change. I began with sampled color from a new landscape, but soon moved towards a more personal experience which space and contemplation seemed to permit.

Working with just white paint for four years gave me a heightened awareness of my material. Canvas, linen, paint media—painting itself became the subject of my work. The addition of black and red corresponded over time with an increasing awareness of the subtle qualities of ‘Clarity, Passion and Dark Inertia’ (exhibition NYU Kimmel Galleries, 2015), or the 3 gunas, a key aspect of yogic studies, and a means of interpreting nature itself.

Neon pinks, lush greens, vibrant purples and a variety of orange hues enliven vibrant abstract compositions with direct ties to nature. These colorful paintings that seem to capture spontaneous moments are part of a new body of work by artist Eric Dever. Surprised? Hold on because there's more.

In a groundbreaking departure, Eric Dever has let go of his controlled use of limited color palettes and tight grids to embrace the entire color spectrum and loose shapes that seem to capture a joy that's both quiet and profound. Historically, Dever has slowly been opening his art to color after a period of four years where he worked in white only (Zinc and Titanium White). During this time, Dever discovered the possibilities of the spectrum of white as well as the textural interactions of raw linen, canvas and burlap with paint.

Eric Dever’s recent paintings literally take over Berry Campbell’s Chelsea space. They hang prolifically and fervently on the white walls, bringing the intense hues of spring and summer into the rooms and warming a cold and wind-blown morning.

The show, titled “Painting in a House Made of Air,” comes alive with the artist’s unabashed use of saturated, matte, electric, and often acid color. The paintings offer scattered references to Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and even Andy Warhol.

The works on view build on a transformation of the artist’s practice noted in The Star in April of 2017. Before a major illness, Mr. Dever had painted the same way for more than 10 years, choosing a limited square format and a palette consisting of white, black, and red in different combinations at different intervals.

Eric Dever in Chelsea

“Painting in a House Made of Air,” an exhibition of new large-scale paintings by Eric Dever, will open this evening at the Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea with a reception from 6 to 8 and remain on view through Feb. 9. For more than a decade, the painter used a limited palette, but in recent work he has embraced the entire color spectrum. 

The shift in Mr. Dever’s art occurred when a move from square to rectangular formats loosened up his compositions, as “there was no longer a central area of interest, but multiple areas of concentration.” He has coupled his new palette with an awareness of the yogic notion of the charkas — seven energetic centers in the human body where matter and consciousness meet — in which he finds a parallel to the visible spectrum. Mr. Dever lives and works in Water Mill.

As the Royal Academy in London two years ago, the “New York School” prepared a great appearance, were intended for the painter’s inner self-supporting roles only very sparingly. After all, the Denver Art Museum in Texas, had 2016, also, the artists of the Abstract expressionism devoted to an Overview of the Setareh now has the düsseldorf gallery, are excited to a Review: The thirteen artists in the exhibition – the majority in New York, but also in Europe – quite an expressive abstraction of the day, but found only in a few cases, inclusion in the exclusive circles and Clubs of men. The painters were in turn represented in a large number of, of all things, of the two avant-garde gallery owners, namely the Peggy Guggenheim and Betty Parsons.

The name of the in Dusseldorf, gathered painters, Helen frankenthaler and Lee Krasner, anything other than common. And all of you would like to see more than two to three images from the fifties and sixties. Especially from the in 1923 in Kapuvár, born a Hungarian, Judit Reigl and the energetic Gera Celts images from the series “Ecriture en mass”: instead of appearing to be a cross-format Reigl distributed with the spatula bizarre Islands of cabbage Raven black oil Paint on snow white and leaves behind the traces of the Malakts on the canvas – powerful, these contrasts. The Surrealist André Breton was fond of Reigls way to paint and organized in the fifties, the first exhibitions for the artist, who now lives in France...

The Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg

The Museum of Fine Arts is currently showing artwork by Sarasota's Syd Solomon. Solomon is locally well-known for helping launch the Sarasota arts scene in the 1950s. He moved to Sarasota after World War II, in 1946, hoping the warmer climate would be better for his war-acquired frostbite. According to his son, Michael Solomon, Syd Solomon's studio home rapidly became a gathering spot for artists and writers in Sarasota. Gather at the Museum of Fine Arts before January 20 to see a sampling of his work.

We are preparing for our Eric Dever exhibition, opening on November 15, 2018. Please read our online catalogue to learn more about the artist and his career.

Eric Dever: Painting in a House Made of Air
January 10 - February 9, 2019

Opening Reception
January 10, 2019
6-8 PM