Black & White

Our third Art competition “Black & White” started in April 2020 and concluded on May 04, 2020. Art Room Gallery received entries from many countries around the world: USA, Germany, Canada, Italy, France, Australia, Ukraine, Serbia, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Korea. The Black and White theme in this competition included a diversity in types, styles and mediums (oil on canvas, acrylic, photography, charcoal, graphite, pastel, mixed media, digital, installation, pencil, ink, watercolor). The following evaluation criteria has been used for judging the artwork: creativity, interpretation of the theme, originality and quality of art, overall design, demonstration of artistic ability, and usage of medium. Jury decided to select 90 artworks for inclusion in the exhibition. Aside from First, Second, and Third place Jury also presented Merit awards and Honorable Mention awards.

Thank you, and enjoy the exhibition!

First place

Statement:

Basha Maryanska is an internationally recognized artist and has been exhibiting her art around the world since obtaining her MFA at Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland in 1979. She has received awards for her numerous groups and solo shows in media ranging from painting, sculpture, installation fiber art, assemblage, performance, photography and graphics. She is holding MFA (Painting, Sculpture, History of Art and Culture, Design) from the Academy of Fine Arts, Gdansk, Poland, she studied at the Ecole du Louvre, Paris and received a Fellowship in 1986 from the Kosciusko Foundation, NYC. Basha Maryanska’s artworks are found in the permanent collection of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; National Museum of Gdansk, Poland; and Museum of Casimir Pulaski (near Warsaw, Poland), and many private collections in:Poland - Warsaw, Krakow and Gdansk; France - Paris, Grenoble, Aix-en- Provence, Limoges, Montpelier and Metz; Germany - Munich, Berlin; Holland - Amsterdam, Hilversum; Czech Republic – Prague; Canada – Montreal. Quebec; UK – London; Sweden – Stockholm, Umea; Lithuania – Vilnius; Japan – Tokyo, Osaka; Mexico – Mexico City, New York – NYC, Queens, Brooklyn, and many places in Upstate NY; Washington DC; Chicago, IL; Bloomington, IN; Boston, MA; and all over the U.S. Most recently, she received the distinction of the Statuette of Golden Owl from Vienna, Austria for her artistic achievement and international artists promotion in Europe and the US. She is a Finalist in National Biennale North Carolina 2015, Hilton Head, and Award Winner in IEWAAC International Show 2015, London, UK.

Statement:

Born: London. Studied: Northampton School of Art, Maidstone College of Art, Kent and Slade School of Fine Art. Exhibited include the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; Arts Council Gallery, Belfast; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; Taipei Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan; Pittville Gallery, University of Gloucestershire. Work is held in number of permanent collections including the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield; Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt; Oxigen Foundation, Hungary; Lódź Municipal Art Gallery, Poland; Xantos Janos Museum, Gyor and Rank Xerox. Since the early 1990s I have continued to make two-dimensional works that I describe broadly as an exploration of issues related to spatiality and dark/light. One specific concern with space has been an ongoing consideration of what is often referred to as negative space (as opposed to positive space) which many oriental artists and designers refer to as ‘Ma’. For them this space has been a long held essential element in painting and garden design and roughly translates as a gap, pause or space in a painting – like an interval between musical notes. Linked to ‘form’ and ‘ground’ has been a concern with flatness and illusion and how, in a non-figurative way, it could sometimes hover between, and thus leave unclear what is figure and what is ground. My intention throughout my mature practice has been to encourage the viewer to ‘see’ something themselves that I have not prescribed; ‘a space open to becoming’, an equivocal or ambiguous space, both within and beyond, and, where what is seen transcends objectness. In essence an abstract field that reflects structures within the objective world, but which exists outside and/or beyond it.

Statement:

Ed Tomney is a Brooklyn based artist who studied fine art at Pratt Institute and has exhibited works in galleries primarily in New York and Los Angeles. He works mostly in representational painting and drawing from observed experiences and researched topics. This produces suites of works based on specific themes and investigated images such as abandoned urban and industrial sites, turn of the century theater spaces, predawn and twilight landscapes and nature-based phenomenon such as dust storms, maelstroms and various atmospheric anomalies. Many of the landscape and urban spaces he depicts are void of human figures yet resonate a sense of occupation. A main interest in his pictorial works is how time is stretched due to the process of manufacturing-painting by hand a briefly visualized subject as an instant in time and how this progression adds to the depth and resonance of the image. My work uses the visual medium to render images inspired by a combination of direct observation, memory and photographic research material. I use variations of painting-drawing technique in which combinations of carbon, charcoal, graphite, oil paint, glue and ink are applied in multiple, sequential layers that create richly worked surfaces of subdued monochromatic tonality that balance a thin line between photographic depiction and the work of the hand. The completed artworks depict instances of time in places and events that no longer exist but are regenerated in paintings. These works emphasize muted and dark renderings of spaces and locations that speak to time passage, mortality and a sense of an ephemeral moment with a fleeting impression.