Hot Destinations | Julia Clift | Jay Hartmann | and Lina Puerta
JUNE 17 - JULY 23, 2022
JULIA CLIFT | JAY HARTMANN | LINA PUERTA
HOT DESTINATIONS
MEET THE ARTISTS: Friday, June 17 | 5 PM - 7:30 PM
Pentimenti Gallery welcomes summer with a group exhibition of the work of Julia Clift, Jay Hartmann, and Lina Puerta. This is each of the artists’ debut at Pentimenti Gallery.
Hot Destinations presents the natural world as tangible, accessible, immediate, and inviting. The artists featured in this group exhibition arrive in the great outdoors from wildly different modes of depiction, from innovative representation to pure abstraction of the colors and textures of Earth’s sun-dappled summer scapes. The built and natural environments collide, or perhaps it is revealed that there is not such a firm distinction between them.
JULIA CLIFT presents fragments of landscape contextualized and expanded by their presentation as large-scale collage-like paintings. In these works, Clift references her collaged sketches created from photographs of places she has been, synthesizing representational and abstract techniques to generate a view of the natural world integrated into and juxtaposing the built environment, technology, and human interaction with the environment.
Julia Clift received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. She has exhibited at such venues as Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; Artspace, Raleigh, NC; The Halpert Biennial ’11 at Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Boone, NC; Green Hill Center for NC Art, Greensboro, NC; and many other national and international institutions. Her most recent awards and residencies include the Fred and Naomi Hazell Faculty Fellowship from Fleisher Art Memorial, a Visual Arts Grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and a residency at the Vermont Studio Center among many other honors and residencies.
JAY HARTMANN’s impasto paintings on shaped panels are almost entirely abstract, referencing the natural world only in analogies of texture and color. The topographical works are packed with rough applications of paint, evocative of the Impressionist technique. Mossy green, dusty pink, gold, and vermillion recur throughout the work, lending the paintings a thematic overture of seasonality or the fleeting aspect of time.
Hartmann received his BA from Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA and his MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. He has exhibited at Atelier Art Gallery, Temple Contemporary in Philadelphia, PA; Massey Klein Gallery, New York, NY, Weisman Museum, Malibu, CA and more.
LINA PUERTA creates multimedia work on handmade paper from such materials as lace, velvet, sequins, feathers, discarded food netting, googly eyes, and gouache. Her whimsical collages look at the natural world and her Columbian-American culture with joy and wonder, blending organic and handmade elements with found and recycled media. Ultra-saturated colors and repeating patterns feature frequently, combining to depict vibrant scenes of plant life and the artist’s literal hand.
Lina Puerta received her BA from Wells College, Aurora, NY, and her MA in Art Education from Queens College, NY. She has exhibited at numerous institutions, including New York Botanical Garden, New York, NY; Sugarhill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, New York, NY; The National Arts Club, New York, NY; Ogden Contemporary Arts, Ogden, UT; Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, TX; El Museo del Barrio, NY; Museum of Biblical Art, NY; and many others. She has received both a grant and residency from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and has recently been awarded residencies at KODA Lab, SugarHill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as many other residencies and awards. A survey show, expanding 18 years of her career, was on view at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery in NYC, through March 5, 2022.
For all inquiries, please contact us at [email protected] or +1 215.625.9990.
