Drawn Lots by Uprise Art
The exhibition, held at Cooler Gallery in Brooklyn, featured new works from printmaker Evan Bellantone and sculptor Fitzhugh Karol
Uprise Art is keeping true to its goal of being a gallery for the next generation of art collectors: earlier this month they presented Drawn Lots, an exhibition featuring new work by two young American artists.
Both printmaker Evan Bellantone (born in 1987) and sculptor Fitzhugh Karol (born in 1982) presented pieces focused on the strength of the line itself over color, modelling and form. The results are a set of drawing-like monoprints created from a single piece of oak and a group of perspective-bending wire sculptures.
“Bellantone’s and Karol’s works occupy a space of visual rhyme, repeating and recombining their chose elements without the pretence of conclusion,” said Ian Marshall, Uprise’s curatorial director. “For both artists, these themes are ongoing and open to radical revision.”
Two pieces stand out in the selection by Karol, who is currently working on an upcoming exhibition of large steel sculptures in Brooklyn’s popular Prospect Park: Blue Footed Bandit and Foothold, a pair of totem-like abstract sculptures carved out of Douglas fir and oak. Perhaps unwittingly, its forms seem to be reflected in Bellantone’s geometric water drops in Dip Drop Drip, a monoprint on Somerset paper. As an artist, Bellantone’s goal is to “find parallels and bring together concepts of drawing, nature, and ecology.” In Drawn Lots, through the conversation between his paper prints and Karol’s will to twist wood and steel back to nature, the parallels were definitely there.