Hatch, oil on panel, 16″ x 20″, 2016 – 2017
ROBERT EGERT
BONSAI GARDEN
April 7 – April 30
Gallery Hours: Saturdays and Sundays 1-5PM
Holland Tunnel Gallery
61 and 59 South 3rd Street
Between Berry St. and Wythe Ave.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Bonsai Garden features intimate paintings begun between 2011 and 2013 and completed in 2016 – 2017. Each piece represents part of my ongoing interest in biological processes found in nature and in our bodies.
Bonsai Garden takes its title from the fact that these paintings are small and concentrated. And, like bonsai, these paintings take a long time to mature. It’s also appropriate that Holland Tunnel Gallery is located in a real garden in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
In the painting, Repro I was inspired by the human figure as well as scientific diagrams. The specific subject is parthenogenesis (a form of reproduction that doesn’t require fertilization). Repro illustrates this process while also occupying an intermediate space where the viewer’s cultural and visual associations with the forms play a critical role. Hatch alludes to both the egg, but also the protective instinct of the mother and as a metaphor for recent political events.
The miniature scale of these works influences both their production and consumption. The scale reduces the role of gesture and results in images that are more decisively delineated, contemplative in nature, and formally idealized. From the viewer’s perspective, the miniature scale demands proximity and elevates details of surface, edges and other formal qualities of finish.
For further inquiries please contact the gallery at 1.718.384.5738 or the artist at robert.egert@gmail.com
Press Release: Bonsai-Garden-2017-03-13