Male / Female
Older / Younger
Renowned / Emerging
Abstract / Representational
Alexander/Heath Contemporary
is proud to announce an exhibition of two
distinctly opposite contemporary artists:
Robert Huot & Isha Devine.
October 5th through October 27th, 2018
OPENING
Art-by-Night Friday, October 5th, 6-10 pm
Open Friday, October 26th – 7:00 to 8:30 pm
Images from the opening exhibition!
”OPPOSITES” featuring Robert Huot and Isha Devine is co-curated by Alexander/Heath Contemporary, LLC co-founders Robert Alexander Huot and Edward Heath Hettig with the intention of showing a broad brush stroke of contemporary art. Robert Huot will be showing a sampling of various work and projects created through 65 years, including his very early work from the 1950’s. On the other hand, Isha Devine, a locally homegrown talent, will be exhibiting brand new paintings about her life, the people around her and other earthly surroundings. Both artists will be at the opening and there will be a short interval when Huot will provide insight to his journey as a visual artist.
ROBERT HUOT and his involvement with painting began in the mid-1950’s, when he was a student (and chemistry major) at Wagner College on Staten Island. As result of the influence of Wagner teacher/artist, Tom Young, Huot, still a teenager, found his way to the Cedar Bar on University Place off 8th Street, in New York, where a vital art scene had developed around abstract expressionism. Huot hung out with Franz Kline and other important artists. After graduation from Wagner, and two-year stint in the army (1958-1960), Huot moved into Manhattan, where he supported himself by working as a pigment chemist, and studied for a time at Hunter College with Fritz Bultman and George Sugarman. By 1964, he had several significant one-man shows, first at Stephan Radich Gallery and subsequently at Paula Cooper, as well as in West Germany and Switzerland.
During the 1960’s, Huot’s art practice underwent continual evolution. Beginning as an abstract expressionist (from 1956-1961), Huot soon began to react “to the idiosyncratic gestures of our art fathers.” By the mid 1960’s, he was questioning the conventional shape of painting in a variety of rigorously formal ways. For the Spring Line series, e.g., Huot used the module of the square to structure paintings that stretch into long, narrow, horizontal, subtly-balanced two-and-three part canvases-premonitions of his later work with 16mm film strip. His work became increasingly minimal until, at the end of the decade, political concerned-a revulsion to the Vietnam War in particular, and accumulating doubts about the way art-making functioned in society – led to his involvement with the Art Workers Coalition and to conceptual pieces that abjured the discreet, saleable artwork altogether. Working with strips of tape, slightly modifying architectural details in the living spaces of friends, making sand paintings at night and sweeping them up before anyone saw them, painting two walls of the Paula Cooper gallery blue and coating the sanded floor with polyurethane, Huot searched for ways to work as an artist without participating in the commerce of art, which seemed to continue oblivious of larger political developments.
On October 9th he will be a participant in the 50th anniversary of the venerable Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City, celebrating the inaugural exhibition in which he showed his work along with Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Mangold, Sol Lewitt and others. Here are the details. / Edited Exhibition catalog.
For complete information about the work of Robert Huot, visit http://www.roberthuot.com
ISHA DEVINE was born and raised in Roanoke Virginia. She spent her childhood home-schooled in her mother’s art studio (Katherine Devine) where she had access to every art material imaginable. Devine went to Community High School where she settled on painting. She attended a year at Cornell College where she found that the only classes she felt truly engaged in were her art classes. Devine has been self-taught for the last seven years.
Devine has had the opportunity to be showcased in galleries and restaurants across the Roanoke Valley including The Aurora Studio Center, Alexander/Heath Contemporary, Bent Mountain Bistro, and Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea. Devine participated in two Art Deck Co. shows during her time in Portland Oregon from 2012-2015.
In April 2018 Devine decided to do art full-time and embarked on creating a collection for a show with Robert Huot at the Alexander/Heath Contemporary. Her work for the show ranges from portraits to botanical paintings.
Find out more about Isha Devine at instagram.com/Ishadevineart