Black & White Gallery Opens In Southampton Featuring Works By The Late Shimon Okshteyn

Gallerist Tatyana Okshteyn has re-opened her beloved Black & White Gallery / Project Space in a new location in Southampton following the passing of her late husband, acclaimed artist Shimon Okshteyn, who was taken by the Covid-19 pandemic last year. The first two exhibitions at the new space are Shimon's first posthumous shows entitled Shimon Okshteyn: Natural Landscape and Shimon Okshteyn: Still-Lifes, currently on view online at http://www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com/ and through July 5, 2021 at the artist's former Southampton studio converted into exhibition space.

The new gallery space combines the bi-level barn with paint splattered on the first floor preserving the original marks made by the artist while working there and the sculpture garden surrounding the studio barn with the artist's sculptures scattered throughout the space.

"Shimon's creative shifts between genres have always been mysterious to me, especially his last shift from pop culture and nostalgia to poetic interpretation of the natural scenes of the East End of Long Island," said owner Tatyana Okshteyn. "The new gallery space, both indoor and outdoor will be a place of peace and perseverance, of creativity infused from nature."

Shimon Okshteyn: Natural Landscape features thirteen new paintings created in 2018 and 2019 installed on the first floor of the gallery where they were originally created by the artist, marking the artist's return from the world of manmade to the realm of the organic, the perishable and the swiftly passing. Influenced by his life in the Hamptons surrounded by nature, highlights in the exhibition include Hamptons Spring from 2019, Polo Hamptons from 2018, Save $50 from 2018/2019, and Lily from 2018.

The top floor of the gallery spotlights Shimon Okshteyn: Still-Lifes, showcasing Okshteyn's signature black and white graphite pieces with still life objects ranging from a bell and a hat to a bustle and a clasp. Highlighted works will include Stanley Knife from 2002, Zippo from 2007, Balducci Fetuccine from 1995 and Push Pin from 2004.

Okshteyn always expressed his evolving objective and imagined realities in his work balancing between the high and the low, public and private with a characteristic style that shifted between abstract and figurative. His practice came from the concept of difference and appropriation, and explored the varying relationships between popular culture and fine art. In the current climate where many believe history has no relevance, he found himself continually returning to those aspects that still strongly resonate with us today by meticulously preserving disappearing objects for posterity or reproducing excerpts of iconic works of art and inserting them into contemporary context. Okshteyn worked in a variety of different formats from drawings and sculptures to mixed media and installations.

His works were included in Approaching Objects: Works from the Whitney Museum Permanent Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Extra-Ordinary: Everyday Object in American Art, New York State Museum, New Acquisitions: Brooklyn Museum of Art, Leaded: The Materiality and Metamorphosis of Graphite, University of Richmond Museums and Here Is The Thing. Simple Thing: Katonah Museum of Art, He has been featured in solo exhibitions in such notable institutions as the George Walter Vincent Smith Museum, The State Russian Museum, Grinnell College Art Museum, and the University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery a companion show to Natura Morta: Still-Life Painting and the Medici Collections. In 2010 several of Okshteyn works were on view at the Galerie Rudolfinum and Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague in the Decadence Now! Visions of Excess exhibition curated by Otto M. Urban along with such notable artists as Jeff Koons, Gilbert and George and Chapman Brothers. In 2014 several of his installations from the permanent collection of the Nasher Museum at Duke University were on view at Duke in the summer blockbuster show Connecting and Curating organized by the Rauschenberg Foundation and curated by Kristine Stiles.

Black & White Gallery / Project Space is located at 55 Island Creek Road, Southampton, NY 11968. Exhibition hours: Open to the public on Saturday and Sunday, noon-5pm, but must be scheduled in advance and Monday-Friday by appointment only. If you are interested in checking out the exhibition, visitors must schedule the appointment by clicking on "Schedule Gallery Visit" button located on the home page of the gallery website www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com.

To post a comment, you must register and login.