PRESS RELEASE
Boston, August 15th, 2022 - LaiSun Keane is pleased to return for our second year participating in Art On Paper New York, to be held at Pier 36, Downtown Manhattan, 299 South Street, New York, 10002, September 8 to 11, 2022. We will be showing the works of three artists and are proud to introduce a new body of work by Michael C. Thorpe, who sold out his works at last year’s iteration of this fair. In addition, we are presenting works by Charles Yuen, a New York artist we showed in 2021 in Home Cooking, a group exhibition curated by John Yau. We are also exhibiting the work Buket Savci for the first time, and she has created three works specifically for this art fair. The VIP Preview night will take place from 5:00 to 9:00pm on Thursday, September 8th.
We are excited to be showing fifteen paper collages completed by Michael C. Thorpe at the Manship Artists Residency in Gloucester, MA, earlier this year. This body of work focuses on his interpretation of landscapes and figurations through paper collage. The Manship Artists Residency provided a peaceful, art and history rich setting which allowed for a whole new way of seeing the world, particularly evident in his more abstract landscape works. Michael C. Thorpe is a self-taught artist who works primarily in the medium of textile and paper. He is currently included in STITCH!, a group show at our gallery on view through August 21. He was the subject of two solo exhibitions at our gallery (virtual in 2020 and IRL in 2021), and at Luis Buhl, Detroit, Michigan. He was in group exhibitions at the MFA, Boston, and Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA. He has participated in a number of art fairs including Spring/Break NYC, 2021; Art On Paper NY, 2021; UNTITLED Miami 2021; Art Miami 2021; and Expo Chicago 2022. His forthcoming projects include a solo exhibition this Fall at Forum Gallery, NY; Paul R Jones Museum, AL in 2023; and Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA, in 2024, as well as group exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, VA, in Fall 2022; The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, DC, in 2023; and Everson Museum, NY, in 2023. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
We first worked with Charles Yuen when he was included in Home Cooking, curated by writer and art critic John Yau for the gallery in late 2021. We are thrilled to include Yuen’s works on paper which bear the hallmarks of his whimsical and unique painting style. The majority of the small works were completed during Covid, while Yuen was looking after his parents in Hawaii. He received his BFA from the University of Hawaii and MFA from Rutgers University, and he was the recipient of many awards including both a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and Gottlieb Foundation Grant, as well as being named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow. Yuen is scheduled for a solo exhibition with us in Spring of 2023.
Buket Savci is a hyperrealist painter who was born in Turkey, and lives and works in Brooklyn. Savci uses tropes from childhood to discuss serious issues such as the refugee crisis. She includes swimming pool inflatables, and young attractive human subjects in her paintings as a metaphor for more sinister subject matters. The audience is captivated by her signature cheerful, bright, neon colors and joyful setting which she uses as a strategy to bring to the fore issues like isolation, excess, and global consumerism within the context of community and togetherness. Savci received her BFA from Pratt Institute, New York, and MFA from the New York Academy of Art, New York.
For more details and the exhibition checklist, please contact us at info@laisunkeane.com.