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Artists: Joseph Hart - Johannes VanDerBeek

Halsey McKay Gallery presents Bone Pedals, a two-person exhibition of new works on paper by Joseph Hart and sculpture by Johannes VanDerBeek.

In these most recent bodies of work, both artists extrapolate flora and fauna from the natural world into formal explorations of line, shape and color. Their works lightly dance throughout the room, fllickering between positive and negative space, abstraction and recongnizable imagery. In dialogue thoroughout the creation of their works for the exhibition, on the occasion of Bone Pedals, each artist has written about the other’s work here.

Johannes VanDerBeek:
According to Joe it started with space ships. As a kid, that’s what he would draw to bring on a certain type of joy. When I picture that, I can recall the feeling of discovering the entrance to art. Where a new world appears or disappears at the speed of a pencil.

Many of us forget when we’re young we are the architects of our own symbols. But I think Joe still channels his youthful self, a curious shape shifter from New Hampshire, happily making space for himself through drawing.

He may have always been looking for depth within the flatness of a page and the passing years has evolved his search. Where there used to be colliding stars, now there is the aftermath of imagery dispersing and merging. These masses appear to have moved around the trails of Joseph’s inner world, collecting the bones and traces of thoughts.

The way the pencil marks track along the surface in unpredictable ways, suggest an entangled armature of ideas underneath. Whatever pathos is fueling them causes the lines to jitter and crackle. Much like lightning spreading across an open sky, the freeness in their jagged inertia is tempered by the sense they are on a predetermined course.

This tension of inner movement is how the drawings capture a state of energy between lifting off and landing. Where they go to or come from, has a lot do with your own approach to looking for signs in their contours.

Often what I see, are futuristic flowers on the wind.

Joseph Hart:
When I’m with Johannes’ sculptures, I imagine wandering a trail through layers of creamy clay and sandy surfaces, jagged curves and rounded points, shrubs of aromatic lilac, bursts of sage, and aqua gems. I’m wearing a mask as I walk this trail. I made the mask in my youth–the facial proportions are wonderfully off and full of feeling. I see our mothers. Rock cairns pepper the path, their delicate leans letting me know that industrious hands have been here before. They keep me from feeling lost in the wilderness of form and space. The guts and bones of the trail are arcs of bramble that operate like a stop-motion armature. They shift between echoes and outlines, cradling my rapid thoughts and wobbly ideas like a parent holding an anxious child. The light has a certain magic to it: hot pinks, punchy peaches, deep blues, and dusty violets of a Valentino Pier sunset. Shadows are sharp. Salt is in the air. Sand and broken glass. Our families are with us.

Joseph Hart is a New York-based visual artist that makes drawings and paintings. He is also the founder and producer of Deep Color, the celebrated oral history project and podcast that features artists and arts professionals discussing their work, ideas, and lives. Hart’s artwork can be found in the public collections of the RISD Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Davis Museum at Wellesley College, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Penland School of Craft and The City College of New York. Hart received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his partner and two children.

Johannes VanDerBeek (born 1982, Baltimore MD) earned a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and Science, New York, NY. He was the subject of solo exhibitions at Marinaro, New York, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, Halsey McKay Gallery, New York and Brand New Gallery, Milan. VanDerBeek participated in numerous group shows at the Oakland University Art Gallery, Rochester, MI, CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France, Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, among many others. His works are included in the permanent collections of Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS. VanDerBeek lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.