Nocturnal Labyrinth is a group exhibition of drawings, paintings, photographs, and sculpture that evokes the mysterious psychological depth of nighttime. Some even suggest paranormal phenomena.  

 

Nightfall marks the beginning of our private and intimate hours, the solitude provoking contemplation of spiritual matters as well as unbridled imagination and fantasy.  In this exhibition, eleven international artists express their visions of nocturnal power. 

 

The nocturnal environment is familiar terrain for light-sensitive photography.  The dehumanized Los Angeles nightscapes of Bianca Sforni are haunted by the otherworldly glow of green traffic lights. From a boat's window at daybreak, Inbal Abergil captures an ephemeral reflection of lights floating like a constellation of UFO's over the ocean. Yojiro Imasaka's infrared film heightens the loneliness of a solitary figure walking on a rocky path under a dramatic cloudscape. Mayumi Lake utilizes "Rembrandt lighting" to intensify the sensuality of a woman's semi-nude body.  In Erika deVries's vision, flower petals and a tree stump are illuminated only by the intermittent light of a "Let it Shine" neon sign.

 

The artists, working in drawing, painting, and sculpture, explore myriad shades of nocturnal atmospheres.

 

Marc Lepson's set of four charcoal drawings of unsettling images (a hand gripping a hammer, a moth, an angel's wing in close-up) calls to mind the rituals of black mass. Using acrylic, pen, pencil, and sumi ink, Adoka Niitsu traces starry and feathery fragments against a shiny black surface. 

 

Rodney Dickson builds thick layers of oil paint until the sculptural surface becomes a shimmering cascade of nocturnal color - black, blue, purple, and more hidden beneath.  Seana Reilly applies charcoal and wax onto a drafting film creating layered stalactites of darkness.  Her organic, micro-cosmic abstract painting shares its spiritual quality with Jacek Maczynski's more rigidly composed abstractions. Until his untimely death in 2011, Maczynski devoted decades to the search for the ultimate black/white, shadow/light dichotomy in his Renaissance-style egg tempera paintings.  And in the field of sculpture, the ceramic artist Anders Ruhwald applies a primordial black glaze to an ambiguous rough-textured shape in which darkness threatens to spill over into waking consciousness.

 

The gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For more information and/or requests, please contact Miyako Yoshinaga,[email protected] tel. +1 212 268 7132.