Nicholas Buffon

Callicoon Fine Arts is very pleased to present an exhibition of paintings, drawings and a performance by Nicholas Buffon. The performance will take place at 6pm during the opening reception on Saturday, September 4, 2010. The reception will run from 5 to 7pm. The gallery is located at 27 Lower Main Street, Upstairs, in Callicoon, NY.

For his first solo exhibition, titled Lily Pad Paintings, Buffon has created his largest works to date, one measuring over 12 feet in length. In many-hued blues and greens, the paintings are amalgams of a variety of abstract styles and techniques, suffused with detail, experiment and narrative. They will be joined by small-scale works on paper of geometric forms that interlace densely constellated fields. Completed over months, the drawings are built up from innumerable marks of ball point pen. The primary motif is circular and evokes the lily pad; the scene, the lily pad’s fertile environment, crisscrossed with activity and occupied by a full cast of pond residents.

As Buffon writes, “At the edge of a pond Mr. Frog sits on a rock gazing. It's snack time. He looks at his lover some distance away perched just so on a lily pad. The second frog looks discontentedly at a snake swimming sideways in the direction of the lily pad. Its forked pink tongue glints in the sun. The snake has no interest in the frog, intent instead on a yellow duckling recently alighted on the water. The duckling rummages for a lily pad stalk, his favorite. A turtle paddles lazily next to the lily pad, content on watching the sky. He dreams of a shell with many colors and ridges. On the shore near Mr. Frog sit two rocks not saying much, while a group of mosquitoes hover above, conspiring for blood. One drops too low and is snapped out of the air by little Mister's long tongue. A fish jumps; soon it will be dusk.”

Nicholas Buffon, b. 1987, lives and works in Seattle and is currently enrolled in the MFA program at Bard's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. His work will be included in the 2010 Art on Paper Biennial at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensborough, NC. An artist book combining performance scores, instructions, photographs, drawings and a manifesto in the guise of a self-help book titled Manual of Applied Flesh is forthcoming from One Star Press, Paris.

For further information and images please contact Photi Giovanis at 845-887-4202 or preferably by email at info@callicoonfinearts.com.

Callicoon Fine Arts, founded in May 2009 by Photi Giovanis, is a gallery bringing an idiosyncratic mix of regional and international contemporary art to the Upper Delaware River Valley. The gallery was awarded the Best Booth Prize of the 2009 edition of the NADA Art Fair Miami by a team of three museum curators. Callicoon Fine Arts acts in partnership with Nightboat Books, www.nightboat.org.