OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

New Year / New Work

New work by: Thaddeus Beal, Mary Bucci McCoy, John Obuck, Carolanna Parlato, Marilu Swett

January 10 - February 1, 2003
Reception: Friday, January 10, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Thaddeus Beal's paintings and prints continue to explore issues of order, chaos, and randomness as he pushes the limits of process and materials. The new paintings are more atmospheric than previously exhibited work, incorporating a white rubber frame which visually and physically surrounds the fluid and shifting imagery. Beal¹s new prints, made while he was in Morocco, further investigate pattern, with references to Islamic design.

Although Mary Bucci McCoy's work is non-representational, it refers directly to landscape and the relationships between natural and manmade elements found there. McCoy, who was originally trained as a sculptor, now paints plywood assemblages. These largely horizontal constructions allude to the rationale of geometry and architecture, while using the natural grain of the wood to create a lyrical sense of movement and to suggest water, wind, and shifting sand.

John Obuck is a New York painter who will be teaching at Harvard this semester. His paintings, which range in size from large (6 feet square) to small (5 inches square), appear, at first glance, to be monochromatic fields of cut and reassembled fragments. Closer viewing of the paintings reveals Obuck's unique painting process and subtle color relationships. "I see them in the tradition of the Impressionists and the Pointillists. In that, I mean, that they are about color and that they are retinal paintings."

In her recent paintings, Carolanna Parlato takes her fluid pourings in a new direction. Moving towards simplification, her latest work is less suggestive of land formations than work than work seen at OHT last spring. As she modifies her pouring technique, odd bio-morphic shapes emerge. Referring to her painting surface as a "skin," she continues to emphasize the importance of her process: twisting, tilting, and shaking the canvas in order to move and blend paint.

Marilu Swett's latest bronze castings fall somewhere between the abstract and familiar. Collar, suggests a discarded piece of farm equipment or perhaps a skirt or cuff. The mystery of this object's identity is furthered by the odd perforations along its edge and by its acidic ochre patina. As with Swett's more organic pieces (the new ones suggest oversized tongues lying slab-like on the wall) this work has the feel of a primal icon, seeming to have evolved over time.