Press Release February 8, 2016

For Immediate release
New exhibition opens on February 20, 2016

Reception: Saturday evening, February 20, 6:30 – 8:00, Public Invited

Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10 – 5:30
P H O T O ‘ 1 6

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to present our annual photography exhibition:
P H O T O ’1 6. This year’s edition welcomes two new artists to the gallery in addition to Roger Ricco, a gallery veteran and a favorite among our collectors. We are thrilled to debut Marisa Scheinfeld and Jeffrey Sturges in this show.

Roger Ricco’s background as a painter has an enormous influence on his photographic vision. Working in rural Woodstock, NY, Ricco finds sources for his work in his own backyard. Bits of nature, stones, shells, flora, feathers and the like are paired with found relics and new objects, and assembled onto tabletop sets. Further transformations are orchestrated by Ricco’s use of painted backdrops, dramatic lighting, and by shooting film through a variety of transparent screens. His humble subjects are reborn in ethereal and dramatic compositions.

Ricco was selected to be the Diane Marek Visiting Artist (with exhibition) at the Cress Gallery of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. He was awarded The Rome Prize in painting by The American Academy in Rome. His work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego, CA.

Marisa Scheinfeld’s large format color photographs chronicle the transformed “Borscht Belt” region in Sullivan County, NY. Just outside New York City, this region was internationally known for its food, recreation, and entertainment, a haven for thousands of mostly Jewish tourists who vacationed in the mountains. At its peak, more than five hundred year-round hotels and fifty thousand bungalows were in operation, offering the American Dream with a sense of style and glitz. Scheinfeld’s work uncovers both relic and ruin revealing the now entropic and ghostlike remains of the resort region. In this series, the artist addresses the persistence of time, growth, the flowering, and the exhaustion of things, and the subsequent regeneration; a metaphor for life cycle itself.

Scheinfeld has an MFA from San Diego State University. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and Hadassah Magazine are among the may publications that have featured Scheinfeld’s work. She is a frequent guest lecturer and her photographs have been exhibited widely throughout the United Sates. Her book The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland, Cornell University Press is due out in the fall of 2016.

Jeffrey Sturges’ photographs focus attention on the singular presence and the verity of familiar objects. Sturges arranges natural and man-made objects in a still life with a decidedly minimalist aesthetic. The familiar objects are depicted at a life-size scale, the 1:1 ratio amplifies their presence and affirms their connection to our lives. This new series of still life compositions parallel Sturges’ past landscape photographs. For example, a florescent light suspended over a shelf might equate the sun illuminating a suburban parking lot. His photographic prints are technically masterful and their clarity bestow a cool and rational lucidity to the work.

Additional space in our project room is reserved for framed drawings and our flat files which house hundreds of unframed works on paper. We always have a wide selection of paintings, drawings, prints, monoprints and photographs to offer collectors. We maintain an extensive inventory in our warehouse that includes a private presentation room.

In-home or office consultations are complimentary.

Please contact the gallery for images, information or to arrange a preview of our exhibitions.

Kenise Barnes, director: [email protected]
Lani Holloway, gallery manager: [email protected]
S. Avery Syrig, sales support and admin. assistant: [email protected]