Opening Reception: November 4, 6 - 8 pm
Prospect Art Walk: November 17, 4-6pm
Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present David Row & Carole Eisner: The Shape of Things. This exhibition features two accomplished New York artists, with oil paintings by David Row and steel sculptures by Carole Eisner.
David Row’s work unfolds from the intersection of object, symbol and abstract image. From the trajectory of Modernism to the influence of Semiotics, Row searches for imagery that is open and reflexive. The focus is on simple compositions that use fracture to examine the tension between the wholeness we desire, and the sliver of reality that we experience.
Carole Eisner launched a career in New York's fashion industry, winning distinction as one of Mademoiselle magazine's 10 outstanding young women in 1961. Over the last 50 years, she has worked with recycled metal creating elegant, abstract forms welded in steel. As evident in this exhibition, the artist's compositions reflect the surprising malleability she finds with metal. Her longevity as an artist is a testament to the natural marriage between her monumental outdoor sculptures and the climate of public spaces.
David Row was born in Portland, Maine and currently lives in New York City. He studied at Yale University with Al Held who became a lifelong friend and mentor. One-person museum shows include Ennead, originating at the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas (2000), and traveling to The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas (2001). His works are in the permanent collections of museums worldwide including The Brooklyn Museum, The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Painting (1987). He received the Isaac N. Maynard Prize for Painting from the National Academy Museum, in New York, in May 2008.
Carole Eisner is a life-long New Yorker who splits her time between New York City and Weston, Connecticut. She has temporary and permanent works in public parks, corporate plazas, cultural centers, museums, and waterfronts throughout the US, as well as in Belgium and France. Eisner has undertaken three major public art exhibitions in New York City in the past eight years, including the installation of nine sculptures along the medians of Broadway in 2009. Her sculpture, entitled Hosea, was installed at the Tramway Plaza in 2012, and most recently, four monumental sculptures were exhibited in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park from 2016-2017. All three exhibitions were organized by the NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program, with the Broadway Mall Association and the Lincoln Square BID co-organizers on the Broadway exhibit. Eisner has works in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, NY; National Associates, Inc; Southeast Banking Corp; Northstar Reinsurance Company; Knoll International; FMC Corporation; Skadden, Arps, Meagher & Flom; Orion Bank, Ltd.; Goldmark Partners Inc.; and Bill Silver Associates.