New York, September 24, 2009 – Forum Gallery presents The Platonic Ideal, an exhibition featuring the work of twenty-eight painters and sculptors exploring the essence of subject and form in the human figure, the imaginary landscape, and perceived objects.
The Greek Philosopher Plato held that objects in the known world exist on two consciously understood levels. The first is the physical object, concrete but imperfect in its physicality. The second is the perceived object, an idea that is both perfect and symbolic; an ideal, stored and understood in the general subconscious.
Forum Gallery’s new exhibition, The Platonic Ideal, takes Plato’s concept of the object one step further, exploring the possibility that beyond the physical imperfect and the abstract perfect, artistic invention offers a third level of the object, created by the imaginative and unique eye of the artist. This exhibition presents artworks that are perfected interpretations of objects, people or landscapes, conceived, enhanced and transformed.
The exhibition will explore the human figure with sculptures by Alexander Archipenko, Chaim Gross, Igor Mitoraj, Elie Nadelman, Hugo Robus and Medardo Rosso; and in paintings and drawings by William Bailey, Philip Evergood, Alan Feltus, John Graham, Julie Heffernan, Bernard Karfiol, Carlo Maria Mariani, Guillermo Muñoz Vera, Odd Nerdrum and Maria Tomasula. The paradigmatic majesty of the landscape is examined in paintings by Charles Burchfield, Peter Greaves, Ben Shahn and Tula Telfair, and in sculpture by Holly Lane. Uncanny objects are invented and depicted by Robert Cottingham, Gregory Gillespie, Alan Magee, Charles Matton, Paul Suttman, and Cybèle Young.
Location: New York 5th Floor