Current Arts NYC @ 17 essex st. New York, NY

“SAy To Wisdom, Thou Art My Sister,” solo show — Samuel Abelow

Installation Views:

Opening Night Speech by Samuel Abelow

The show is about vases & faces. I’ve long since had a gravitation towards these images as psychological symbols, worth meditating on — personality, color, brushwork, etc.

This show captures the latest approach to these subjects. The vases represent qualities of the feminine which I know and wish to know more about. And the new faces here are a new idea! The subject of the “rebbe.” This is a spiritual leader. So the backstory…

A psychoanalyst I know worked on the idea of “merging” — is it possible? is it fantasy? is it healthy? Limited, fleeting, or mature? We most often determined in our discussions that it was a fantasy or fleeting experience. However, that is in the psychological domain. In the spiritual domain, there is such a possibility of true merging.

When reading biographies about the rebbe and previous rebbes, I saw how these leaders experienced their students as merged — totally one — with them, as if a “limb of their own body.” 

So the painting reflects on this theme. I utilized a photo  I took of a framed rebbe picture, where I saw myself reflected in the glass. So-called “cubist” techniques, or automatic surrealism, as per Picasso, were employed in the painting approach. Eyes within eyes, faces within faces, and brushwork that implies a beard or bird, as part of symbolic play. The experience of painting was profoundly joyful and spontaneous, improvised in the quiet of a painting studio in a short duration of time — much like jazz, with a brush, in silence. My body knew the answers, my mind catches up with you now.

The presentation of the works with the “limited time offer” reduced prices is a performance art — it is an extension of the concept into the relationship with you: the community. I want to reach out joyfully and encourage you to take these vases & faces home. The affordable prices stretch my attachment to the work and bring me into care and love with the collectors. I want the vases, painted from inner light, to illuminate your walls; and I want the meditation of the rebbe-student relationship to be a part of your inner domain. From me to you, with love.

Special thanks to Ashley Frey, founder of Current Arts, who is at a wedding in Florida tonight; may that be a beautiful time. And thanks to Lesny Jean Felix for all his work on this gallery space. 

Event Photos: