SPRING GROUP SHOW

Featuring Helen Frankenthaler, Charlie Hewitt, Rashid Johnson, Jay Kelly, Christian Marclay, Pablo Picasso, James Siena, Kiki Smith, Jim Watt, and more!

Come join us for the IFPDA Print Fair at Park Ave Armory
February 15th - February 18th

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Faces & Figures

Thursday, February 8th - Sunday, March 10th

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THE MADNESS OF ART AND JEWELRY

OPENING RECEPTION 

November 14, 6pm-8pm

BREAKFAST WITH THE ARTISTS

November 17, 10-12pm

From November 14 - 19, we will collaborate with NYC Jewelry Week - https://nycjewelryweek.com/ - to celebrate the long, rich history of artists working across mediums and disciplines.  We will put jewelry in dialogue with paintings, sculptures and works on paper made by renown modern and contemporary artists. 

Like oil, graphite or marble, renown artists have often gravitated to jewelry as another medium to fully realize their creative expression. They showed as much vigor and experimentation in their jewelry design as they did in their monumental works.

Our installation will include the jewelry of artists Stephanie Dubsky, Heidi Abrahamson, Rocio Ines Marsyas, Jay Kelly and Boaz Vaadia in dialogue with art work from celebrated modern and contemporary artists such as Ed Ruscha, Wayne Thiebaud, Louise Nevelson, Boaz Vaadia, Louise Bourgeois and Robert Rauschenberg, Chris Beane, David Mitchell and Terry Winters.

November 14 - 19, T-Sat 10-6pm, Sun 12-5pm

Join us for our opening reception 6PM - 8PM, Thursday, November 2nd
With a musical performance from Johnny Nameless!

The show will be up until January 3rd.

Featuring photographs of:

Bob Dylan, Fugees, Dave Grohl, Cypress Hill, Big L, Fleetwood Mac, Metallica, Nas, Naughty By Nature, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Tom Petty, Radiohead, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Stipe, Tupac, Eddie Vedder, Tom Waits, Neil Young, & More!

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Opens Thursday, September, 28th

Christopher Beane, Louise Bourgeois, Charlie Hewitt, Jay Kelly, Don Kimes, Sol Lewitt, Rafa Macaron, Catherine Shuman Miller, Jerry Mischak, David Mitchell, Susan Oehme, Jacob Ouillette, Jenna Pirello, Fred Sandback, Chris Santa Maria, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, Jim Watt, Stanley Whitney

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KRAZY KEMPNER'S SUMMER SPECIALS

On View:

Tuesday, May 30th - Saturday, July 16th

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Snuff Box Magazine
Launching June 1st @ Jim Kempner Fine Art

Come & Get It!

$20 each

Jim Watt

ROME

April 20 - May 25, 2023

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Click here for full interview

After 3 decades in a private collection we are please to present 9 of Jay Kelly’s photo-realist paintings from the 1980s. 

ROAR!

Voices can be hushed, stifled, extinguished, ignored, persecuted, condemned, or falsified. Voices can also be liberating, therapeutic, powerful, paradigm shifting, life-saving, quieting.

This show is about the artistic voice, having a voice, finding a voice, specifically the voice of a group of female / femme artists the gallery has worked with or has been deeply affected by over the past 35 years.

May this show be a tiny addition to the great push forward to a more equal representation of artistic voices, in this gallery, and worldwide.*

*According to a recent Art Market report, women artists sell for less than men in every continent on earth but none worse than in North America where on average men sell their art for almost 50% more than women.

Featured Artists: Jennifer Bartlett, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Lin Emery, Judy Chicago, Petah Coyne, Lesley Dill, Helen Frankenthaler, Carole Freeman, Ellen Gallagher, Marianne Garnier, Francoise Gilot, Deborah Kass, Suzanne Levesque, Barbara Kruger, Elizabeth Murray, Louise Nevelson, Alice Neel, Susan Oehme, Yoko Ono, Eva Petric, Howardena Pindell, Liliana Porter, Jenna Pirello, Christie Ann Reynolds, Alison Saar, Betye Saar, Paula Scher, Susan Schwalb, Kiki Smith, Betty Woodman, Shanlin Ye, Lisa Yuskavage

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25 YEARS / 35 YEARS

This year, we celebrate 35 years in business and 25 years in Chelsea on the corner of 23rd and 10th. As I think back, I remember all the wonderful accidents that led us here, the paths chanced upon, the magical discoveries, the beautiful friendships, the art and artists, and the fascinating lives encountered, sometimes just for a fleeting moment. All of this has helped make JKFA the place it is today. It has been a lucky, exciting, endless thrill ride, and I want to thank everyone who has made this adventure possible.

We get one chance at life, which makes the twists and turns and unexpected connections so important. As Henry James put it in “The Middle Years”:

“We live in the dark. We do what we can.
We give what we have. Our doubt is our
passion, and our passion is our task.
The rest is the madness of art.”

Our little corner of the world continues to house “The Madness of Art” in all its many incarnation

For Charlie Hewitt's 13th solo exhibition with Jim Kempner Fine Art, we present a new body of work that includes large canvases, prints, light sculptures and drawings, all inspired by doodles Hewitt has unconsciously drawn on his daily calendar pages for years and years while conducting his daily business affairs. These pieces feel almost spring loaded, as pipes twist and time bombs threaten detonation, their elements about to burst from the walls.

What I like best about them is that they are funny. I think there is an element of humor that comes from my doodles. It is hard to find that in art, and it is a big part of what art is about, for me.

-Charlie Hewitt

This exhibition will also include Hewitt's Hopeful light sculpture and the works of art created around this piece - all the seeds for his inspiring Hopeful Project that is now expanding rapidly throughout the country.

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Including artists, Christiane Baumgartner, Christopher Beane, Mel Bochner, Long-Bin Chen, Jeff Chyatte, Lin Emery, Rinaldo Frattolillo, Charlie Hewitt, Jasper Johns, Jay Kelly, Manuel Knapp, Suzanne Levesque, Jerry Mischak, David Mitchell, Jacob Ouillette, Robert Petersen, Jenna Pirello, Robert Rauschenberg, Kevin Scott, Boaz Vaadia, Jim Watt, Stanley Whitney and more!

A Collaboration of Art, Music & Film

View Online Exhibition Here

Jenna Pirello received her MFA in Painting from Yale University in 2014 and her BFA from Boston University in 2011. For her newest body of work, “Inside Out” and “Operator”, Pirello transitions between acrylic paint, gouache and silkscreen to meditate on the concept of “home” and on what it is to be grounded in a foundation. The intimate practice of making and viewing - this includes the importance of the lyrics, the rhythms, the sounds she listens to while creating - continue to play a big role in Pirello’s creative process. In this new work, all created during this past year, she grounded her practice in repeated compositions, focusing on color relationships and tonal shifts. This was a deep dive into the process of image making. Also new to this body of work is Pirello’s self-made frames. These frames expand the surface on which she can play with material, color and mood. This carefully crafted element can also be said to contain the work, as barriers - whether a tarp or sheetrock - might create the walls that make up a home or a grouping of rocks might make up a foundation. Each piece in the exhibit dates from this past chaotic year.

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7 DECADES | 42 ARTISTS IS A SORT OF HOMAGE TO THE RICH, REWARDING WORLD OF PRINTMAKING

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent drawings and paintings by gallery artist Jay Kelly. Jay Kelly celebrates clean and fundamentally abstract forms, with a minimalist sensibility. This will be Kelly’s first show of abstract paintings, having worked in small scale sculpture and drawing for many years. Applying oil on linen stretched over 8 x 8” and 11 x 8” irregularly-shaped wood frames, Kelly creates rich, hazy-colored fields and translucent layers bisected by crisp abstract shapes. His recent sculptures, made of wire, nickel silver, wood, gesso, acrylic, and Japanese paper, are no larger than 10” tall. Loosely inspired by Modernist design, these works possess a quiet grace. Structural woven metal shapes, diaphanous Japanese paper nets, and smooth, nonreferential forms are aged with a patina which reflects Kelly’s love for weathered surfaces.

For more information, please email [email protected]

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of artist/architect, Jim Watt’s 20 newest paintings.

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Spring has always been about new beginnings, the smell of magnolias and lilacs, migrating birds, optimism, love, hope, youth and, of course, baseball. This spring, however, as the lilacs and magnolias gloriously bloom and the beautiful birds migrate north, we seem to desperately cling to love and hope and optimism, fearful of the unknown while socially distanced and isolated. And, there is no baseball.

The artist Jim Watt has taken his own optimism and is creating a visual record of our present time replete with love, hope and possibilities. This Spring, throughout the quarantine, as a kind of ritualistic exercise he is painting 100 dreamy, meditative watercolors as his contribution to our new collective psyche. Let these be a small but rich addition to the slow, steady return of our lives. The final painting will be completed on June 19th, the last official day of spring.

As Watt fills his studio walls with his 9 x 12" paintings, they will become available for sale. Each painting is $350 framed.

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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night." –Rainer Maria Rilke

Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of recent prints by Charlie Hewitt. These relief prints - blends of woodcut and linocut - are a colorful celebration of the regional geography of the coast of Maine, where Hewitt grew up and now lives. Since the resurgence of the woodcut in the 1980's, Hewitt has cut and gouged his way into the very soul of the medium. The physicality of this body of work reflects Hewitt’s emotional connection to the regional landscape, as well as his appreciation for the tactility of the medium. Recognizable shapes of buoys, waves, and lighthouses create a narrative throughout the show. This imagery is part of Hewitt’s personal iconography and references some of the New England industry Hewitt remembers from his childhood. The prints were printed by master printer David Wolfe, of David Wolfe Editions.

All prints in this show are priced for challenging times. Each is available for $800.

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Mischak’s fantastical, action-based images magnify the intricacies of daily life. Instead of depicting a realistic scene, Mischak amplifies moments of domestic turmoil and loss of control. Each scene embodies raw physicality and action, and abandons a sense of perspective and earth’s gravity. Objects spiral out of the composition in all directions, creating an elastic sense of space. Mischak’s cups spill disproportionate amounts of liquid, and his abstract shapes mingle with household appliances. These improbable factors, coupled with dramatic neon color, make ordinary problems feel surreal. By exacerbating small mishaps, Mischak allows the viewer to feel the frustration of the day-to-day and find humor in it.

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce Silk Roads, an exhibition of Charlie Hewitt’s recent paintings. The exhibition will open Thursday, November 14th and will continue through December 22nd. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, November 14th from 6-8pm. Silk Roads will feature Charlie Hewitt’s largest paintings to date. The 84 x 60” and 60 x 108” paintings engulf the viewer in abstraction. Hewitt gains freedom and mobility working on a large scale. The paintings themselves are physical, dimensional bodies of vibrant color, whose sweeping images engage in conversation within the canvas and with each other.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected]

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce Baroquecoco, a show of recent photographs and a site specific installation by Christopher Beane. The exhibition will be on view from September 26 - November 3.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected]

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce HERE, NOW, the first American show of contemporary German sculptor, Manuel Knapp. The exhibition will feature Knapp’s newest geometric wall sculptures and a site-specific installation in the gallery sculpture garden. The exhibition will be on view until October 20th, 2019. Opening reception with the artist will be held on September 19th, 2019 from 6pm-8pm.

Knapp’s limited materials –wood, nails, staples, cotton– offer him infinite compositional variations. His handcrafted compositions are based on logic and natural symmetries. As the artist describes, his work is, “on the edge of what is capable by the human eye; the appearance seems like an illusion...and makes the spectator question what he believes is fact.” Knapp’s work ranges in style, from architectural to fantastical, while retaining geometric order.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected]

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce Honey, Honey Hi, the first solo exhibition of paintings by contemporary American painter, Jenna Pirello. The exhibition will feature a series of new process-based paintings from 2018-19 that explore abstraction, surface texture, and color. The exhibition will be on view from June 15–July 21, 2019.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected]

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce 12 Chairs, a group exhibiton of prints, paintings, and works on paper by contemporary and modern masters. The exhibition will highlight the interpretation of the chair as an object of visual study and a subject of conceptual interest amongst a variety of artists across different mediums, throughout time. The exhibition will be on view from May 9–June 10, 2019.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected]

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce Paula Scher: The Art of Map Design, an exhibition of prints by internationally acclaimed, American-born artist Paula Scher. The exhibition will showcase a selection of the artist's earlier work from 2008 up to her newly released prints from this year. The exhibition will be on view from April 11–May 19, 2019.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected]

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Jim Kempner Fine Art is very pleased to announce the American debut of Time Fragment/Homage to the Masters by sculptor Henry Schiowitz. Colossal in scale, it is a multi-referential bronze sculpture that depicts an enlargement of the head of Michelanglo’s, David, lying on its side with its face towards the viewer, atop a raw 14-ton block of Carrara white marble. The overall measurements of the piece, which will be exhibited in the gallery’s sculpture garden from September 28 through December 31, are (D) 8 ft. x (L) 10 ft. x (H) 8 ft. In addition, the gallery will present a smaller version of Time Fragment/Homage to the Masters, in the actual dimensions of the head of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s David (D) 25 in. x (L) 34 in. x (H) 24 in.

Contact us for more information at i[email protected]

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