The Bigger Picture

Works by

Illia Barger,

Malcolm Bray,

Jacques Fabert,

Christoph Spath

Joan Ireland, curator

March 3 – April 29, 2018

Conversation with the Artists

March 25, 2018

2 PM

The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie opens the The Bigger Picture, an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by four recognized local artists that have combined forces to make a statement that supports the relationship between larger paintings, sculpture and the timely celebration of cultural differences.

For the museum this exhibition is the convergence of a curatorial concept born two years ago and the current social climate.

Illia Barger is debuting her celebration of Trenton’s Industrial Age with murals and paintings honoring workers during this incredibly productive time when the sheer output of their hands, heads and hearts was astounding. Raw materials in and highly finished products out via trains, river and canals rightfully earned the city it famous motto – “Trenton Makes the World Takes.”  Inside cavernous rooms with daylight streaming through big windows, factory workers labored to the chugging of machines run by steam power. Outside, men dug canals, rode log rafts down river, built bridges, loaded trains and barges, operated locks and fire pumps all with the backdrop of the flowing Delaware.

Malcolm Bray offers a selection of recent work from 2015 to 2018 that confronts the danger of rapid art and it’s inevitable consequences on modern painting and art history. Bray experiments with a personal non-conforming style of abstraction, which includes the use of spray-paint. The larger canvases offer best evidence in this endeavor as semi-awkward and vulnerable compositions coexist with Brau – an invented condition – a kind of graceful graffiti.

Jacques Fabert, (1925-2013), arriving from Paris in 1957 was a painter, sculptor and educator. His iconic figurative painting left a legacy from California to the Delaware River region.  His work celebrates the power of women, as standard bearers. He felt that paintings regardless of style or artistic intention are at first “motor images for the mind.” The female form represented in images of art “confronts and expresses a universal mystery and conveys intuitive messages where the unexpected is revealed – ultimately to celebrate the superb quality of existence and gift of life.”

Christoph Spath, is a veteran sculptor who creates elegant, contemporary works. His work reflects his interest in architecture and forms of ancient civilizations. Glass and stone are his primary materials and his sculptures represent the balance of the natural stone vs the man-made glass.

A conversation with the artists will take place on March 25, 2pm at the Museum.

Read Janet Purcell’s review here.