PAST EXHIBITIONS

JOSEFINA AUSLENDER + TOM BUTLER, in conversation
September 23rd - December 15th, 2023 (EXTENDED)

Installation image: *Josefina Auslender + Tom Butler, in conversation*. On view through December 15th, 2023. PHOTO CREDIT: Luc Demers.

There is something about darkness, loss and the fallibility of memory that most prefer to avoid. As if through ignorance, we are safe. However, any Jungian analyst will tell you - we must embrace the dark to achieve balance. When we don’t, we risk being overcome.

The final exhibition of the 2023 season at Sarah Bouchard Gallery is a subtle and compelling exploration of some of the weightier aspects of human experience. The show positions the work of two very different artists in conversation around concepts of absence and loss. Both push boundaries between terror and triumph, finding beauty and poise in the effort to grapple with it all.

KATE RUSSO, Storyteller
July 1st - August 6th, 2023

Installation image: Kate Russo, *Storyteller.* On view through August 6th, 2023. PHOTO CREDIT: Luc Demers

Sarah Bouchard Gallery is honored to present Storyteller, a solo exhibition featuring three distinct, yet interrelated aspects of Kate Russo’s meticulous practice: painting, drawing and stitch-work.

In a statement for the exhibition, Russo writes,

Time is the storyteller’s medium. It can be manipulated, drawn out, exploited - all depending on the artist’s narrative. As both an artist and a writer, time and its parameters are the framework inherent in everything I make. My abstract narrative-based artworks are appropriated from existing art historical themes, as well as patterns and architecture, then re-channeled through a feminist lens.

As a complement to the intensity inherent in Russo’s work, there exists an intelligent and playfully dark sense of humor, hinted at in some of the titles for her most recent paintings in The Male Gaze series. Examples include Men Spying on Women Bathing, Men Staring at Women from Behind, and Men Contemplate Women Reading. In these works, Russo identifies paintings by men throughout history that she finds particularly engaging (join us at the opening to learn more about how she chooses each work). She then pulls the palette from that work to create a gridded, abstract “portrait” of the artist using the palette of one of his own paintings. She creates these portraits in groups defined by the subject matter of the paintings.

There is an interesting dynamic at play in this series that emphasizes the role of the voyeur while simultaneously obfuscating it, shifting the more familiar question of ‘who is looking’ back onto the artist himself while simultaneously denying the viewer the ability to visually experience what is being described. In a way, content has been coded into color and pixel, but with paint on board, not light in screen.

Russo’s stitch-works explore other notions of narrative by interpreting book covers, envisioning architectural and interior spaces, and creating artists’ “rooms” inspired by the likes of Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse, and Louise Bourgeois. Taken together, this occasionally quiet collection of works delivers a raucous investigation of gender roles, time as medium, ‘handiwork’ and obsession.

JAMES PARKER FOLEY, a solo debut
August 12th - September 17th, 2023

Installation image. James Parker Foley, a solo debut. On view through September 17th, 2023. PHOTO CREDIT: Luc Demers

Sarah Bouchard Gallery is thrilled to present James Parker Foley’s solo debut.

In a statement for the exhibition, Foley writes,

When working in the studio, I spend a lot of time in a place I might call my painting-ocean. It is a psychological space in which I am submerged in my own notions of space and time. Beneath its surface, the busy goings-on of the everyday are muffled. Cavernous possibility engulfs me. These paintings are about being in that space.

…

I sometimes take for granted the nature of the line between ocean and sky, between figure and ground. These edges are entire worlds unto themselves. The figures in these works are those of us on journeys through the in-between horizons. They are diligently going about the business of becoming themselves.

This new series explores the color blue and the mutability of the boundaries that define us.

KEN GREENLEAF, a solo exhibition
May 20th - June 25th, 2023

Installation image. Ken Greenleaf’s solo exhibition. On view through June 25th, 2023. PHOTO CREDIT: Luc Demers

Ken Greenleaf has been making critically acclaimed work for over five decades. Originally represented by Tibor de Nagy in the 1970s and early 80s, Greenleaf established his career making large-scale steel sculptures, one of which resides in the collection at the Whitney.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to view a powerful cross-section of Greenleaf’s work across time and media in an intimate space in the Maine woods. This exhibition will feature works on paper, shaped canvases, sculpture, and an unheard-of surprise.

CARLO PITTORE, I Am Still Performing
April 8th - May 14th, 2023
Presented in collaboration with International Artists Manifest

CARLO PITTORE. *La Buffonera.* 8’ x 16’. Oil on linen. 1982 - 1983. Photo Credit: Jay York.

On Saturday, April 8th, 2023, the Sarah Bouchard Gallery opened the first Carlo Pittore exhibition in over a decade. This show featured pivotal works from the artist’s prolific career – including paintings, drawings, collage, mail art, and video.

I Am Still Performing explores Pittore’s complex body of work through the lens of life-and-art-as-performance. The exhibition highlights the ways Pittore used his image and identity as media, with an emphasis on the more obsessive aspects of his work.

CARLO PITTORE (1943-2005) was a prolific painter, an outspoken activist, and an internationally renowned mail artist who lived and worked in New York City, Southern Italy, and Bowdoinham, Maine.

As a pioneer of the mail art movement in the 1970s, he contributed work to over 1,000 mail art exhibitions and corresponded with such mail art luminaries as Buster Cleveland and Ray Johnson. Pittore was influential in the Maine and New York art communities of the 1970s and 80s, co-founding Maine’s first statewide artist membership organization, the Union of Maine Visual Artists, and opening one of the first independent art galleries in the East Village, La Galleria dell’Occhio. During this period, Carlo began to experiment in film, theater, and spoken word performance, and participated in international performance art events in New York and Europe.

Some would argue Pittore’s entire life was a performance. Don’t miss this spectacular exhibition, offering a rare opportunity to view some of Pittore’s most iconic works alongside lesser-known gems.

YOU TAKE THE CAKE
September 24th - October 30th, 2022

AMY STACEY CURTIS
JESSICA PARKER FOLEY
JULIE K. GRAY
KEN GREENLEAF
LISA HOLLY KELLY
GARRY MITCHELL
VIVIEN RUSSE
KATE RUSSO
ANDREA SULZER

Fall in Maine is one of the most vibrant times. The landscape awards us with a stunning pop of color before retreating into the dormancy of Winter. For the final show of its inaugural season, Sarah Bouchard Gallery presents a group exhibition titled You Take the Cake, a playful exploration of life in layers. Mimicking Nature’s Fall hurrah, this exhibition bursts with color, energy, and spectacle.

You Take the Cake includes cerebral fireworks by Amy Stacey Curtis from her MEMORY exhibition; provocatively eerie paintings by Jessica Parker Foley; downright playful photography and sculpture by Julie K. Gray; gorgeous shaped color studies by Ken Greenleaf; intricate stitch-work by Lisa Holly Kelly; brand new geometric abstractions by Garry Mitchell; stunning paintings by Vivien Russe that combine geometry with nature and a hint of architecture; bright checked portraits by Kate Russo; and a beautiful suite of conceptually considered work by Andrea Sulzer.

TOM BUTLER
Don’t Show This to Anybody
August 13th - September 18th, 2022

Don’t Show This to Anybody brings together five bodies of work by British-born artist Tom Butler, all investigating the complexities of the photographic image. The works on view deny us visual information (the primary function of photography) in order to explore the sculptural qualities of the medium. Butler emphasizes how these found images have been treated over time and how photographs may alter or inhibit the natural process of forgetting.

This is an epic exhibition that includes large-scale photography, bronze casting, graphite drawings, sculpture and minimalist painting. Working through and across media, Butler invites the viewer to expand the notion of how a photograph both reveals and conceals its own identity, not to mention that of the subject and viewer. Each work within the show has been crafted with the utmost attention to detail, demonstrating true mastery.

Butler received his MFA in sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2007. He has had solo exhibitions all over the world including, most notably, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and the United States. Butler has served as a visiting artist and critic at Bowdoin College, Maine College of Art and Design and Maine Media Workshops and College. His work is in numerous private and public collections including the British Museum, Soho House, The Caldic Collection, the Bates Museum of Art and the Ogunquit Museum of Art. Butler splits his time between Portland, Maine and London, UK.

TOM BUTLER. *now don’t show this to any body, c.1910.* 11.5” x 9”. Colored pencil on paper. 2021. Private collection.

JOSEFINA AUSLENDER
July 2nd - August 7th, 2022

JOSEFINA AUSLENDER. *Self portrait from the series Los Cuerpos*. 23.5” x 17.625”. Graphite, colored pencil and ink on paper. 1979.

On Saturday, July 2nd, Sarah Bouchard Gallery opened a solo exhibition for Josefina Auslender, one of the most brilliant artists working in Maine, today. The fact that Josefina Auslender is not a household name to anyone in the arts is baffling.

Auslender is a master of her craft – a draftswoman with over sixty years of experience. She is a brilliant technician with a unique mind, a quick wit and a staggering work ethic. She is an icon of Latin American art. Originally from Buenos Aires, Auslender moved to the United States in the early 90s. She left Argentina at the height of her career, leading a much quieter life in Maine, but she did not stop working.

It is a rare privilege to present Auslender’s solo exhibition at Sarah Bouchard Gallery, featuring two distinct bodies of work – one created in Buenos Aires at the time of the Dirty War, and one created here in Maine, this year. Most of this work has not been seen in the United States.

The series from Argentina is titled Los Cuerpos (the bodies). It is a collection of abstract portraits of women looking out windows, waiting for their children and loved ones to return home. During the time of the Dirty War, people were often taken from the streets, never to be seen again. Auslender was one of the many women who waited up at night, staring out the window. This series took her over and commandeered her practice until the Dirty War ended.

The second series is titled Wind, an abstract group of ink drawings created this year. These are the first drawings Auslender completed since the passing of her husband, several years ago. They are quietly powerful explorations of circles and line.

DOZIER BELL
May 21st - June 26th, 2022

DOZIER BELL. *Elevation, 2*. 52” x 48”. Acrylic on linen. 2022. Private collection.

On Saturday, May 21st, Sarah Bouchard Gallery opened the first solo exhibition by Dozier Bell in Maine since 2016. Bell is a seventh generation Maine native who studied with Neil Welliver at the University of Pennsylvania MFA program and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Bell is one of the most masterful artists working in Maine today. Her fusion of the real and imagined reveals how a deeply engaged artist sees and feels the land, water and sky. Bell’s landscapes only occasionally depict a real place and consistently demand inward exploration. Her works rely heavily on the interplay of dark and light. They command attention. And space.

Since her first solo show in 1987, Bell has appeared in thirty solo and two-person exhibits in New York City and across the country. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship as artist-in-residence at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany; two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, and the Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant. Residencies include the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. Her work is included in a number of museum and corporate collections.

INAUGURAL EXHIBITION: A Gathering of Aces
April 9th - May 15th, 2022

An Ace is a sure thing. Singular. Independent. An Ace stands alone.

A Gathering of Aces brings together the work of six decidedly independent artists. Each has honed their practice and craft to arrive at a decidedly unique vision. Together, they are a study in the successful merging of concept and technique. Nothing is left to chance.

Featuring the work of Josefina Auslender, Dozier Bell, Tom Butler, Ken Greenleaf, Michael Mansfield and Kate Russo, this is the inaugural exhibition for Sarah Bouchard Gallery, a destination space in the woods of Woolwich, Maine.