September 8 - October 10, 2021. Reception Saturday, September 11, 4 - 7 PM

Brooklyn, NY - 440 Gallery is proud to present, Burnt Offerings, an installation of hundreds of connected, small paper squares, suspended from the gallery's ceiling. Amy Weil's hanging installation creates a floating, ethereal grid that plays with light and shadow. The artist will also be showing her signature encaustic grid paintings, as well as whimsical paper wall sculptures.

This is Weil’s second solo show at 440 Gallery. In Burnt Offerings, Weil is giving expression to the trauma that many of us experienced during quarantine. She states, “It still seems so inconceivable that we are now up to 600,000 deaths in this country alone.” In response to this tragedy, Weil created over 600 small collages and drawings that represent the 600,000 people who have died. Weil remarks, “Like every individual, every square has its own personality.”

The artist’s process of burning paper with a torch, soaking it in wax, and stitching each piece together becomes a meditative and healing act for the artist and viewer. It can be perceived as a metaphor for the human condition. For Weil, paper is very fragile but becomes strong when it is soaked in an encaustic medium. In her artist statement, she writes, “It has the feel of human skin. Both paper and skin are transparent and transform, the way skin transforms as we age.” For Weil, there is making of history through the burns and mark-making that gives each piece a memory of a time and place.

Burnt Offerings is a play on offering a sacrifice to the gods. These pieces are an offering of peace and healing. Weil wants the viewer to enter a space that feels tranquil as one might when walking through a sunlit forest.

Weil has shown extensively in New York, Brooklyn, and New England. In 2020, Weil had a solo show at Established Gallery in Brooklyn, titled Dancing in the Dark. Weil was recently interviewed on the podcast Authentic Obsessions, and her work from her diary series was included in the tenth-anniversary issue of A-Minor Magazine. Weil’s work is in many collections in the United States and Europe.

Project Space: “For the Love of Nature”

A three-person exhibition that explores the essential qualities of nature, but on a personal level. Featuring the work of painters Joy Makon, Janet Pedersen and Robin Roi, this show highlights the dynamic interplay that subject and process demonstrates for each artist.

Joy Makon's watercolors of plants and scenes of nature are of subjects that are near and dear to her. Magnolias from April, 2021, is a forceful response to the end of winter and the easing up of the pandemic lockdown. The artist explains, “I began painting it in early March when it was still snowy and freezing out. I took my time with the painting because, really, what else was there to do, where else was there to go, during this pandemic lockdown? In the interim, the winter weather gradually eased up and I received two doses of a vaccine. The world began to look a little brighter overall. Today, as I finished this image from Central Park’s Conservatory Garden, the spring day was warm and sunny and the magnolias are once again coming into full bloom. Not a moment too soon.” Before & After was completed in August while Joy was recovering from orthopedic surgery. “I needed to have beautiful things around me and my garden’s lilies and daisies were just the thing to carry me through this summer’s challenges. I left some of the painting unfinished because I decided that it was time to move on to other things.”

Janet Pedersen’s recent series of still lives continues with the subject of seashells. Pedersen notes, “I was inspired by a Jane Freilicher painting of oysters I recently saw. I love how she celebrated and arranged her subject, an overhead view of open shells. There are many subtle shifts in tone and structure in a seashell, an exquisite design that called on me to slow down, and look more closely. This is something I have been trying to do in my own daily life.”

Robin Roi’s still life oil paintings are a departure from her densely packed “narrative patterns”, as she refers to her mixed-media works on paper. These oil paintings represent time spent close to home during the pandemic when on-line Zoom classes were abundant. At the urging of an artist friend, Roi registered for a Zoom oil painting class. Never having worked in oil, Robin says she was excited to try a new medium. She elaborates, “I loved being a novice again. It always brings such a fresh perspective and jolts me out of my ‘groove’.