CHARLOTTE HALLBERG : TOUCH EVERY FLOWER

October 11 – November 9, 2024

Opening Reception: Friday, October 11, from 6-8pm

HESSE FLATOW is pleased to announce the opening of

Touch Every Flower, an exhibition of paintings by New Yorkbased

artist Charlotte Hallberg, marking her fourth solo

presentation with the gallery.

Hallberg’s vibrant, kaleidoscopic abstractions indulge in the subtle vivifications of

slow looking, often directed at objects within nature. Converging in on details, forms

begin to deconstruct into formal elements of contour, gradient, and texture within

her works. Rosy, fuchsia tones signal dahlias growing in her garden, while black and

yellow ombre fields invoke the rounded bodies of bees frequenting them. Altogether,

these protracted examinations culminate in pithy, pictorial moments that are

rendered and assembled across her surfaces with parallel attunement and care.

Debuting a new body of work, dual arched panels usher a novel shape within

Hallberg’s practice, a departure from her previous tondos, which merged circular form

with concentric action akin to the focusing of a microscopic or telescopic lens. Here,

optical experience is still at the forefront, yet the tools for observation have shifted

to a more analog frame - the binocular vision of two hands cupping one’s field of

vision. Left and right exist separately as double takes or are stitched together into

an unexpected, unified whole. Amplifying to anthropomorphic proportions, Hallberg’s

works assert a corporality that not only prescribes a gestural mark making that

enlists the entire body, but also extends that gesture by inviting an immersive, nearly

synesthetic viewing experience, going beyond the purely visual.

The directive – touch every flower – bears an urgency to connect with one’s natural

surroundings, savoring moments for leisure but also hastily before they are gone. The

zoomed in perspectives approximate close encounters, enacting an innate urge to

stick one’s head into a bouquet. Relishing in a sensory bath, touching every flower

requires concentration on the present moment for the sake of instant pleasure.

SHARPER STILL

OPENING RECEPTION: May 21, 5-8PM

OCHI AUX: 3305 West Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

HESSE FLATOW is pleased to present Sharper Still, an exhibition of paintings by the New York-based artist Charlotte Hallberg. Organized in association with OCHI PROJECTS, this occasion marks her third solo presentation with the gallery, and first in Los Angeles. 

 Through vibrantly hued compositions, Hallberg’s signature tondos engage viewers in a purely optical experience. Each painting presents a distinct palette inspired by observations of her immediate surroundings. From the glow of brake lights to the glistening of trees after a rain, Hallberg hones in on subtle gradations of color and light that gradually reveal themselves as a result of prolonged looking.

Although her paintings are not mediated through a camera’s lens, their circular formats call to mind apertures through which to focus the eye. In the past, Hallberg has relied on a geometric logic to partition her canvases into distinct shapes and patterns, ushering one’s gaze concentrically in and outward in regular, pulsating rhythms. Her recent iterations adopt a more intuitive approach, as she loosely delineates her surfaces with crisp edges and hazy outlines, as if steadily zooming in and out of the picture plane. Her durational process is reminiscent of long photographic exposures and slower shutter speeds, which in turn prescribe a protracted form of reading. 

 Sharper Still brings together Hallberg’s newest tondos whose imagery is sourced from nature scapes outside the artist’s home. Not only do their subject matters encourage a contemplative state of stillness, but their persistent abstractions simultaneously embody an incessant desire to refocus and capture a sharper still.  

HESSE FLATOW
Opening Reception:  Sept 19th 6-8PM
508 W 26th Street, Suite 5G
New York, NY
info@hesseflatow.com

Karen Flatow is pleased to announce the opening of HESSE FLATOW a new gallery at 508 West 26th Street, NYC, an expansion of the artist-run project space, CRUSH Curatorial.  CRUSH will remain as a project space in the same building as well as a residency and exhibition space in Amagansett NY, and will continue to focus on collaborations with emerging artists and curators.  The new gallery will support the artists and curators she will continue to work with and provide a larger platform for their projects.  Jesse Greenberg, former owner of 247365,  will join as Director and co-direct the gallery with founder and owner, Karen Flatow.  

Please join us Thursday Sept. 19th for the solo openings of Amy Beecher and Charlotte Hallberg

Charlotte Hallberg, Time Leaves, Oil on canvas, 48" x 48" 2019

Hesse Flatow is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Charlotte Hallberg entitled Blind Aura. This is her second show with the gallery.  Hallberg will showcase her most recent tondo oil paintings, as well as small scale graphite drawings on paper. Bold geometries and atmospheric color play with optical space, proudly exploring the realm of painting by pushing pigments, old and new, to produce a sensuous surface rich in texture and tone. Each painting is the result of a succinct series of carefully calculated steps that preclude revision. Hung in loose pairs, the paintings offer differing views from similar vantage points, yet individually create their own separate meditative space for long looking. 

The circular canvas’s radiating compositions are reminiscent of dilating pupils or celestial objects. Palettes, and ultimately the mood of each painting, are developed from direct observations and existing color worlds: the marine layer of the San Francisco Bay, neon signage reflected in the rain, or the measured color of the universe incorrectly calculated as pale turquoise and later corrected to beige.

Peter Halley in conversation with Charlotte Hallberg at Crush Curatorial remarked, 

 “To me it makes sense to bring this up at the beginning, but what really impresses me in terms of the slow read, is to think of them as really complex mathematical equations that a person like me could never solve. I’ve always been fascinated by works of art like that, often in traditional figurative painting —a Titian or  Rubens— or even in architecture, with Frank Lloyd Wright.”        

Installation images courtesy Hesse Flatow, photos by Jenny Gorman

When Geometry Smiles

curated by Eric Hibit


March 3 - April 8, 2018
opening: Saturday, March 3, 6-9pm

Geometry that is soft

Geometry that is sewn

Geometry that is squishy

Geometry that is off

Geometry that is permeable

Geometry that is wrapped

Geometry that is crooked

Geometry that is flat

Geometry that is colorful

Geometry that is gray

Geometry that is tender

Geometry that is gay

Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to announce When Geometry Smiles, a group exhibition curated by Eric Hibit. The opening reception is on Saturday March 3, 6-9pm, and runs until Sunday, April 8th.

When Geometry Smiles presents the work of 12 artists who use geometry as a structural aspect of their work, while simultaneously exploring how structure opens doors to play and cultivates emotional levity. Eschewing rigidity, the artists in When Geometry Smiles create work that is potentially smile-inducing for its liveliness and lightness. These artists explore geometry as an essential component in the quest for personal meaning via their choice of imagery, their tactile engagement with materials, or their painterly style. Many of the artists in the exhibition use fiber-based materials that, literally, soften geometry. This emphasis on painting “fabric” leads to new associations with the world of the home. The desire to fuse the comforting domestic with the impartiality of geometry raises new ideas about the artist’s sense of themselves, their surroundings, and the world.

When Geometry Smiles includes work by Samantha Bittman, Chris Bogia, Corydon Cowansage, Leah Guadagnoli, Charlotte Hallberg, Fawn Krieger, Kerry Law, Gary Stephan, Anne Thompson, Nichole Van Beek, Paul Wackers, and B. Wurtz.

Eric Hibit is a visual artist based in New York. 

For more information please contact: erichibit@gmail.com

November 9 - December 2

Opening Reception:  Thursday November 9, 6-9PM

CRUSH CURATORIAL is pleased to present a two person show with New York artists,  Charlotte Hallberg and Taro Suzuki who each share a desire to aggress the eye optically.  Charlotte’s  work is born from observation; watching someone take a selfie with the sunset, or the way car lights move through a puddle. Taro’s palette, however,  is entirely artificial, using fluorescents and a printer’s palette of cyan, yellow and magenta.  

Starting a conversation via email, they pondered Goethe’s quote: “Every decided color does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ into opposition.” “Something about this idea resonates with me”, commented Charlotte, “even if its slightly hyperbolic.  As a painter of highly saturated and sometimes extreme palette, I find there is a kind of visual obstacle in looking at the paintings, even as their maker.” “I consider my work phenomenological” adds Taro, “I definitely consider the viewer’s retinal action as part of the content.  I consider aggressing the eye optically, a form of transgressive narrative.”  Their conversation continues at the gallery. 

Charlotte Hallberg is a painter who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  In 2010 she received an MFA in painting from Yale University.  She was an Annenberg Fellow of Visual Arts from 2010-2012, and recently completed a residency at The Corporation of Yaddo.  Her work has been shown at TSA NY, CRUSH CURATORIAL and most recently MASS Gallery in Austin, TX.

Taro Suzuki has been showing his work since the 1970’s and credits being schooled by light show companies in the 60’s for giving him an affinity for assaultive color.   At 13 he did the liquid projections for the first Grateful Dead concert in New York City.   While he was lead singer for the punk band "Youthinasia," he gained notoriety for his light installations.  Harnessing the power of questions and contrasts in traditional optics, he has used painting and sculpture to further pursue his interest in visual dissonance. A two time Pollack-Krasner Grant recipient, Taro Suzuki works have been exhibited at MoMA, NY and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

C R U S H C U R A T O R I A L 

an artist-run curatorial project  

526 West 26th Street, Suite 709, NY, NY  10001

for information or inquiries contact:  info@crush-curatorial.com 

Hours:  Thursday - Saturday 12-6PM

PRESS RELEASE 

ROMANTIC DESTINATIONS

 July 13 – August 5

Opening Reception: Thursday July 13 6-8 PM

Leah Beeferman/  Andrew Gorin/  Meredith Hoffheins/  Dan Perkins/  Alan Prazniak

CRUSH CURATORIAL/Chelsea is pleased to present ROMANTIC DESTINATIONS, opening July 13, from 6 – 8 PMand running through August 5, 2017.  

Parallel vistas, soupy knolls in dimmed half-light, the acid color of an infinite gaze, the celestial lawn. ROMANTIC DESTINATIONS presents a vision of the natural world pressed through the custom filter of each artist’s observations.  The land is a perennial subject, and our current landscape is mirrored, magnified, and enhanced through a growing gaggle of interfaces. A kind of simulated romanticism is woven through our everyday observations and influences the way we understand physical space, image quality, and the limits of imagination. 

Leah Beeferman’s work shortens the field between that which is visible, and that which is not.  Scanning the similarities between immersive observations and the science of observation on an atomic level her work treats light as a physical substance, suggesting that the blank and barren lands where she resides are actually quite full.

Andrew Gorin’s poems are based on digitally mediated encounters with the landscape, both natural and constructed. Each subject is a location that Gorin has never visited, and which may not continue to exist in the coming century. 

Meredith Hoffheins’ paintings take great care in showing us discreet collections of domesticated elements.  These places are familiar enough so that we wonder where the architects of these views have gone. Instead we are left with the touch of the artist and the vision of a halted traveler. 

Dan Perkins’ paintings fold and twist the familiar phenomena of the sky into the familiar language of our devices. Or is it the other way around? The Mobius strip quality of this relationship is made more mysterious by the tangibility of both the painted and depicted surface. Our eyes search and reach out, as if to touch the sky just by looking.  

Alan Prazniak’s landscapes exist in our dreams, where a place is that place, but not quite that place, and it has a different name, but it’s the same.  Natural formations are strangers who we instantly trust, and we let them lead us on a long expedition. The longer it takes, the more rewarding it is. 

Curated by Charlotte Hallberg in collaboration with Karen Hesse Flatow, CRUSH CURATORIAL. 

Charlotte Hallberg is a painter who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  In 2010 she received an MFA in painting from Yale University.  She was an Annenberg Fellow of Visual Arts from 2010-2012, and recently completed a residency at The Corporation of Yaddo.  Her work has been shown at TSA NY, Crush Curatorial, and most recently MASS Gallery in Austin, TX.

Karen Hesse Flatow is an artist and curator who currently lives and works in New York, NY.   She received an MFA from Columbia University in 1996 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1994.    She is the founder of CRUSH CURATORIAL which collaborates with artists and curators in New York and Amagansett Long Island.  Her exhibitions include: Dinter Fine Art, The James Graham Gallery, BAM, and The Wassaic Project.  Press includes:  New York Magazine, Art News and The New York Times.  Flatow is an abstract painter and installation artist. CRUSH is a part of her current project. 

SHAMPOO EFFECT

MASS GALLERY

AUSTIN, TX

Opening Reception Friday, June 16 7-10pm.

MASS Gallery is pleased to present Shampoo Effect, featuring work by Yevgeniya Baras, Morgan Blair, Kari Cholnoky, Scott Eastwood, Charlotte Hallberg, Christian Newby, Lauren Silva, Jennifer Sullivan, and Rachel Williams. Utilizing fabric, jewelry, paper maché, airbrush, fur, collage, prints, and rope, these nine artists continuously work beyond the limits of traditional painting through their wide interpretations of media, format and substrate. Shampoo Effect will be on view from June 16 – July 22.

CRUSH CURATORIAL is pleased to present Short Sight Soft Touch, new paintings by Charlotte Hallberg, opening June 2nd, 6-8pm, and open by appointment through June 30th.

 “And the students asked me what I was going to do. I said, and stuttered, ‘To open eyes.’ And this became the rule for my life. I have taught to learn to see. In my color book there is no new theory of color. But in it there is a way how to learn to see.”[i]  So recounted Josef Albers in 1968. Charlotte Hallberg, a generation removed, still lives with this teacher’s ghost. Albers’s contributions to the fields of art and graphic design are encapsulated in the publication mentioned above, Interaction of Color. Albers and his students carried out the corresponding experiments in paper, more expedient and consistent in texture than other materials. Hallberg moves the experiments forward in labor-intensive, complete paintings. Albers haunts, Hallberg exorcises. The concise exhibit Short Sight, Soft Touch offers four moments in which the artist, vigilant inheritor of a long line of color theories and this thing called painting, recasts Albers’s layer-and-juxtapose lessons through her own evolving geometry of wave-and-radiate, a muscular psychedelia all her own.

SHORT SIGHT

“Asleep with the lights on again” and “So much time, not even tired,” as their titles hint, speak most directly to Hallberg’s source material: an historically unprecedented oscillation of electronic and “natural” light, electrically illuminated nightscapes, and fulgid handheld tools. Another Albers subheading comes to mind: “color recollection – visual memory.” Hallberg recalls the light of computerized screens: Netflix left running while we fall to sleep; the last semi-conscious Scruff woofs and Tinder swipes at the true end of the waking day; mindless online shopping. These realms of light and color were unknown to Albers, leaving it to Hallberg to pose both their problems and these paintings as answers. The thick concentric bands of color echo the shape of the panel on which they sit and stand in for the deep shallowness of every iPhone screen; the pairs of waved forms laid over this in both paintings,—contoured by thin, Thiebaudesque contrasts—the luminous and spectral trace of oily finger tips sliding down the surface, continuing invisibly beyond.

SOFT TOUCH

Here is the exorcism, the final extraction of Albers’s ghost, the spectacular remnants of which Hallberg has wrought into paintings. Albers’s instruction invites manipulation over and over again by the student, containing moments like the following when regarding its own color plates: “…turn the book so that the left page with the 2 green grids appears above the study with the 2 small dark rectangles at the center.” But these paintings are not a pause in a workshop where we can pick up and rearrange. They are worked out. Hallberg has considered every orientation and placement of these panels and concluded this is how they are best seen. An excellent student, she already asked the questions, finding resolution in fingerwaves and circles, near-flush panels, and this place on the wall.

Albers is certainly not the only ghost here. In their mesmerizing way, Hallberg’s paintings coax long, long looking, so you should have plenty of time to seek out the others.

-- Josh T. Franco

[i] Oral history interview with Josef Albers, 1968 June 22-July 5, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Charlotte Hallberg lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from Yale University, and her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She was an Annenberg Visual Arts Fellow from 2010-2012, and has recently shown her work at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Trestle Projects, and the Parlour Bushwick.  This is her first solo exhibition in New York. 

Josh T Franco is the Latino Collections Specialist, Archives of American Art, at the Smithsonian Institution.

Crush Curatorial is an artist-run curatorial project founded by Karen Hesse Flatow in 2013. Crush Curatorial collaborates with artists and guest curators to host exhibitions in New York City’s Chelsea Gallery district and Amagansett, NY.

CRUSH CURATORIAL 526 W 26th St #709 NY,NY

WWW.CRUSH-CURATORIAL.COM

info@crush-curatorial.com

SAVE THE DATE : SEPTEMBER 19, small group show  @ The Parlour Bushwick

http://theparlourbushwick.com/