Brian Calvin
Holly Coulis
Dalton Gata
Ridley Howard
Raffi Kalenderian
Becky Kolsrud
Mimi Lauter
Nikki Maloof
Joel Mesler
Danielle Orchard
Nicolas Party
Eleanor Ray
Nora Riggs
Ellen Siebers

Eau de Vallotton
 
Tif Sigfrids is happy to present a group show in our New York location entitled Eau de Vallotton.  The show will open Saturday, September 11th, with an opening reception from 4 – 6 PM at 75 E. Broadway.  It will remain on view through October 19th.  The exhibition features a group of fourteen Felix Vallotton enthusiasts. While some of the pieces directly reference individual works of the Swiss painter, others display a general admiration.
 
Felix Vallotton is an art historical anomaly in many ways. Though he is lesser known that many of his contemporaries,  he is often called underrated by young painters who love him. His life's work varies broadly in style and theme. Paintings range from early Ingres inspired portraits to flat colorful tableaus influenced by Japanese prints; later shifting away from Modernisms, he painted relatively simple still lives, bathers, landscapes, and nudes with an uncanny clarity. His stark woodcuts were groundbreaking at the turn of the 20th century, and a graphic sensibility underlies all of his work.
 
The visual and erotic tension of his late nudes are reflected in the pieces by Danielle Orchard, Ridley Howard, and Ellen Siebers, who use bold color and empty space to great effect. Holly Coulis, Nikki Maloof, and Dalton Gata echo his unexpected still life paintings, elevating the everyday with patterns, reflections, and optical rhythm. Brian Calvin and Becky Kolsrud hint at the dreamy realism of his bather paintings, and Eleanor Ray captures the strange simplicity of his landscapes with a distant mountain range and bold rocks reflected in water. Mimi Lauter's small garden hints at the flickering color and light of his early Nabis paintings. Joel Mesler and Nicolas Party's graphic works nod to the celebrated black and white woodcuts; and Nora Riggs and Raffi Kalenderian mirror the quiet drama of his narrative domestic scenes with opulent detail.  
 
Vallotton's appeal to contemporary painters may come from the way he rethinks classical motifs, intertwined with the intimacy of his life and imagination. He embraces genre and common art historical models, teasing the mundane- but there is always a subtle strangeness to the world he creates.

For a preview of the exhibition, please write info@tifsigfrids.com