Robert Lobe and Neil Jenney Set for Inaugural Exhibition at The West Broadway Gallery

Metallic reliefs and prints by Robert Lobe and new paintings and prints by Neil Jenney will inaugurate The West Broadway Gallery, a new, Soho, pop-up art space. Located at 383 West Broadway, 4FL - 646-335-5155, the gallery will be open to the public Sundays and Mondays only from 11am - 8pm and by appointment. There will be a reception to celebrate the gallery's opening and the inaugural exhibition on Sunday, November 15 from 6-8pm.

The West Broadway Gallery's mission is to exhibit Realism and Abstraction of the Idealized sort. Idealism offers imagery achieved through intuitively adjusted line and surface and is created entirely by the mind and hand - foregoing the camera and computer as somehow needlessly distant from the human soul. Idealists generally believe that Vermeer and Degas and Ingres and Holbein and Phidias are timeless and therefore valid today.

The work in this exhibition shares a fundamental sentiment concerning imagery. Both Lobe and Jenney shun "The Grand" for "The Intimate." No images of Niagara, The Tetons or the Grand Canyon for them. Lobe and Jenney prefer "The Here" rather than "The There" as a source for poetically capturing nature.

Neil Jenney - born in 1945 at Torrington, Connecticut USA - moved to Boston in 1964, was rejected by all Boston dealers in 1966 and so removed to New York City. In February, 1967 Jenney was discovered by Richard Bellamy and first showed on Madison Avenue that spring with two other unknown Californians, Richard Serra and Bruce Nauman. Bellamy remained Jenney's dealer until his passing in 1998. In 1968 Jenney showed sculpture - in those days often described as - "Environmental or Theatrical" - consisting of found materials organized for effect in Cologne, West Germany with Rudolf Zwirner. In 1969 Jenney developed what became known as "Bad Painting" - First seen at the Whitney Annual. In November 1970 Jenney showed "Bad Painting" uptown at Goldowsky Bellamy Gallery and Environmental sculpture downtown at the David Whitney Gallery. In 1971 Jenney decided that "Good Painting" was the unavoidable mutation and that the game was a race for refinement. The quest continues. www.jenneyarchivellc.com

Robert Lobe is an American sculptor born Detroit, Michigan in 1945. Lobe grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Oberlin College and Hunter College. Lobe's early works were included in the "AntI-Illusion: Procedures and Materials" exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 1969. The focus of Lobe's work is the passage of time and regeneration of nature, forces of nature and how they're manifested visually, and random distribution. Lobe uses repoussé, a method of molding pieces of metal around an object, the same method used to create the Statue of Liberty. In Lobe's case, the metal sheets are "pushed and pulled" around outcroppings in the woods. His hammered metal sculptures, mostly in aluminum, have been represented by Willard, Blum Helman and Senior and Shopmaker galleries in New York. Currently Lobe's sculptures are on view along the Chicago Lakefront at Soldier Field at the Field Museum, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ (until January 17, 2016) and The Shirley Fiterman Art Center, "The City Lives", Nov. 24 through Jan16, 2016. www.robertlobe.com.

Pictured: Left: Robert Lobe, "Rock and Leaf Study", 2007. Hammered galvanized iron. 43"x39"x18". Right: Neil Jenney, "Ozarkia", 2014. Oil on wood. 28"x64"x3.25".