John Guthrie's paintings seduce and challenge us with their sparkling interplay of bold, unexpected color harmonies and high intensity formal designs. In his new work, our perceptions of the nature of figure/ground relationships are altered, as pulsating patterns stretch up, down and sideways, appearing to transform these works from inert matter into animate objects with the breath and energy of life.

Guthrie, a former aerospace engineer, makes paintings informed by his continuing interest in the laws of mathematics and the principles of optics. Inspired in part by the structure of crystals, rocks and astronomical formations, as well as the graphic work of Josef Albers, Guthrie’s images reject any reference to narrative or illusionistic space, preferring dense designs of compelling repetitive forms, whose flawlessly rendered highly finished surfaces insist on the integrity of the picture plane. The intensity and direct simplicity of Guthrie’s abstractions have the hypnotic allure of modernist icons, simultaneously suggesting a variety of interpretations and responses depending on the time of day and lighting conditions when being observed. John Guthrie’s paintings will be featured in the film “The Devil Wears Prada” scheduled for release this fall. This is his first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Marina Berio: Darkness Visible

In a new series of works, Marina Berio recreates her own photographic images of fireworks and other nighttime observations as large-scale charcoal drawings. Reversing the tonalities of her subjects from light to dark and dark to light, she suggests that representation can occur dialectically. Though, as she states photography has been her primary medium for 14 years, the focus of her interest has been in issues of layering –and transparency, of observing the primary subject through a physical barrier that adds metaphysical and psychological dimension to an image.

In describing her inspiration she says...”I am interested in the paradox and poetry of commenting upon the physical and formal imperatives of the photographic medium by reproducing it through drawings: of exploring visual traces of shutter speed, focus, glare and the way light behaves when it traverses the negative. Charcoal, a dusty, burned substance, echoes the chemically transformed molecules of silver that make up a photographic image; I use it to represent light in a way that brings attention to its emotional dimension and to the phenomena of its perception.”