Joe Letitia
Solid Ground

Optikats

Christopher Bogia
Phong Bui
Glenn Goldberg
Douglas Kelley
Bruce Pearson

Cynthia Broan Gallery is pleased to announce Solid Ground, a solo exhibition of profile vessels by Joe Letitia, and Optikats, a group show of visually engaging works by six New York artists. Both exhibitions formally address issues of how we look at things, and offer the optical experience. Joe Letitia and the Optikats artists, however, are also interested in making things, and the significance of their hand in the work holds them beyond the traditional realm of Optical Art.

Solid Ground features Joe Letitia's new series of sculptural works congruent to the profiles of influential artists, the vessel-shaped objects made in turned wood or materials cast from the wood forms. Letitia inverts the figure/ground relationship, solidifying the negative space that surrounds the subject.. In a statement about his earlier paintings, he wrote "I resolve not to make images, but rather engage the circumstances that surround their Identity." The sculptures are abstract; the silhouettes prominently remain outside the form. Letitia fittingly chose artists such as Jasper Johns, Chuck Close, Ad Reinhardt and Constantin Brancusi as his subjects. Each piece is treated in a manner that relates to the artist's work: Brancusi is a column of wood vessels, Johns is a cast bronze pair of vessels similar to his Ale Cans and Beuys is surfaced in grey felt.. There is a handmade quality to the work, the use of a lathe and the variations in the cast ceramics are almost reminiscent of school projects. Like the figure/ground relationship, the earnesty and tangibility of his endeavor is congruent to the profound abstraction of self formally represented in the work.

Optikats features works which inspire active viewing, each artist taking a unique approach to making an image that makes us look. Christopher Bogia addresses issues of interior design and visual appeal. His disc of yarn flowers appears
convex, the mirror in the center gazes upon a precious vase. In Phong Bui's Meditations, drifting marks are amplified into an endless weave of color. Glenn Goldberg's flower forms also suggest a meditative gaze. His simple patterns of dots, lines and circles and an equally refined palette, are layered to effect exquisite mutations held in tension with the field. Douglas Kelley demonstrates the allure of the image by digitally manipulating a photograph into layered swirls of vibrant color. The psychedelic pattern shifts into unique shapes, and the detail of the print draws the viewer into its inner depths. In Bruce Peason's Disclosure, text is mirrored into the abstraction of a Rorschach test, the deeply carved relief and intense colors directly confronting viewers with their own perception. Adrian Ting has zoomed in on his animal shapes to near abstraction, distilling his images to primary issues of shape, color and surface. Each artist offers a new shift of the eye, yet deliberately creates this enticing effect without sleight of hand.

Joe Letitia lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee. He received his MFA at Yale in 1989 and exhibited extensively throughout the 1990s, including solo exhibitions at Richard Anderson and Casey Kaplan Galleries in New York.

For further information about the exhibition or the gallery, go to www.cynthiabroan.com or call (212) 760 0809.