Town and Country reviews Richard Finkelstein Exhibition

According to the artist Richard Finkelstein, diorama building brings with it certain hazards. Aside from the potential disasters that can come with those tiny jars of Testor's hobby paint, the major time-wastage involved in trolling online offerings of Preiser and Arttista miniature figures, and the brain-twisting specifics of scales and gauges, there's a track record, if you will, of going off the deep end into an alternate, Lilliputian universe, one dominated, Finkelstein says, by "demented model-train addicts."

But Finkelstein, a former trial lawyer, has maintained a firm grip on his rationality, and his striking photographic images—of elaborately constructed tableaux that ingeniously incorporate ready-made elements you might find at a hobby shop—hum with precision, not to mention the kind of luscious, slightly bruised palette you might find in an Edward Hopper painting. His debut show at New York's Robert Mann Gallery, "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" (May 16-June 29), comprises a dozen or so photographs of these tiny worlds, some printed at colossal size. Each one—whether of a solitary figure throwing an impossibly long shadow on a sidewalk or of an intricately brocaded interior—is like a still from half-remembered movie, and their unabashed artificiality never fails to suggest something achingly real.

Read the article and view the slideshow online here.

Knight Foundation Awards Grant to Mary Mattingly

Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to announce that artist Mary Mattingly's Wetland project has recently received a grant from the Knight Foundation, an organization dedicated to environmental conservation and to fostering community art projects. In 2009, Mattingly designed and engineered a 3,000 sq. ft. barge-like structure, The Waterpod Project, in order to explore issues of global environmental politics in the current postindustrial age while investigating the efficacy of a self-sustaining mobile community. Her on-going projects serve as part of a larger initiative on behalf of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs called smARTpower, which seeks to engage youths by creating a broader cultural and environmental awareness through its unique projects. To honor the program's achievements, the Bronx Museum of the Arts is hosting an upcoming celebration on Friday, May 3rd showcasing documentary films which track 15 artists in 18 countries around the world including Mattingly herself. On the heels of this tremendous accolade, the gallery will be exhibiting new works by Mary Mattingly this coming Fall.

The New Yorker reviews Margaret Watkins Exhibition

As both a teacher and a photographer, Watkins (1884-1969) was a key, if little known, figure in photography's transition, in the early twentieth century, from painterly pictorialism to a tougher, sleeker modernism. This excellent overview of her career, which petered out in the mid-nineteen-thirties, includes portraits, landscapes, and two terrific female nudes. But Watkins's still-lifes, a number of which were made as advertisements, are her most distinctive work. Whether her subjects are poppies, gourds, glassware, or dishes in a sink, she frames them with striking clarity and warmth, casting a fond and thoroughly engaging eye on ordinary domesticity. 

The Wall Street Journal reviews Margaret Watkins Exhibition

This is a strange tale: Margaret Watkins, born in Canada in 1884, by 1920 was a full-time instructor at the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York. Besides teaching such talented photographers as Doris Ulmann, Ralph Steiner and Paul Outerbridge, Ms. Watkins was a successful photographer who had commercial assignments from Macy's and J. Walter Thompson, a portfolio published in Vanity Fair and was recognized as a leader in the movement from soft- focus Pictorialism to a modernist idiom. Then in 1929, she went to Glasgow, Scotland, to care for two sick relatives and never came back; her career was over. She died in obscurity in 1969 and it was only because of the tenacity of a neighbor to whom she left a trunk of prints that her reputation has revived. The National Gallery of Canada had a retrospective exhibition in 2012 with an accompanying catalog.

Mann is showing 20 of her pictures and 10 by her students. Almost all of hers are platinum/palladium prints, including a 1925 portrait of composer Sergei Rachmaninov and a 1919 self- portrait that shows a certain hauteur and an elegant neck. There are nudes in the Clarence White mode, and wonderful still-lifes. "The Kitchen Sink" (1919) is a fine example of modernism with its emphasis on simple shapes: a milk bottle, a cup, a creamer, a bowl, a faucet, a teakettle spout, and their shadows on the sink's white enamel.

Robert Mann Gallery at the AIPAD Photography Show

We look forward to seeing you at booth 214 at the AIPAD Photography Show from April 4 - 7 at the Park Avenue Armory located at Park Avenue and 67th Street. The gallery will present new works by many of our contemporary artists including Julie Blackmon, Richard Finkelstein, and Mary Mattingly all of whose colorful compositions delicately balance the whimsical with the artful.

Robert Mann Gallery is especially pleased to present work by seminal 1970s photographer Mike Mandel. On display at AIPAD will be Mandel's elegantly crafted People in Cars which provides a humorous and honest documentary glimpse into the ubiquity of California car culture, and the ordinary individuals that comprise it.

In addition, alongside the work of our contemporary artists will be a well curated selection of vintage works by several modern masters including works by Harry Callahan, Fred Stein, Aaron Siskind, and David Vestal, among others.

Our display will also include photographs by artist Margaret Watkins whose work contributed heavily to the pivotal shift from Pictorialism to Modernism in the United States during the 1920s. Through her compositions, Watkins draws our attention to the beauty inherent in everyday objects. A larger selection of her work can be viewed in the gallery's current exhibition Margaret Watkins: Domestic Symphony up through May 11.

We invite you to attend the opening night gala to benefit inMotion, an organization dedicated to helping low-income women obtain legal services. For more information or to purchase tickets please click here.

We look forward to seeing you at AIPAD!

Margaret Watkins Honored with Canada Postage Stamp

Canadian born photographer Margaret Watkins — a vanguard artist whose work bridged the gap between Pictorialist to Modernist Photography in the United States during the 1920s — will be honored with a postage stamp depicting one of her iconic works, The Kitchen Sink, 1919, which will be issued by Canada's Post on Friday, March 22nd.

Read the article online here.

Margaret Watkins Featured on Artnet Insights

This week Artnet is celebrating female artists who have made a mark on their craft. From photography to paintings and prints, these artists explore the detail in their surroundings, and play with pattern, color, and technique to create inspiring works of art. In New York, Robert Mann Gallery presents a series of images by Margaret Watkins (Canadian, 1884-1969), an early talent in the study of photography.

Read the article online here.

Various Small Books Features Text by Phil Taylor

The recent publication "Various Small Books" from MIT Press features text by former Robert Mann Gallery employee Phil Taylor. The book, which pays homage to the photo-conceptualist artist book pioneered by Ed Ruscha in the 1960s, was also co-edited by gallery artist Jeff Brouws, whose two portfolios, Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations and Twentynine Palms, appear in the current Gagosian Gallery exhibition Ed Ruscha: Books & Co. through April 27th.

The New Yorker reviews Paulette Tavormina Exhibition

The artist constructs and photographs still-life arrangements inspired by such art-historical precedents as paintings by Francisco de Zurbarán and Giovanna Garzoni. Fruits, vegetables, and flowers spill from their containers in an almost obscene display of abundance; many of them are overripe, splitting open, or bruised; ladybugs, butterflies, and bees hover. In two of the more over-the-top images, goldfish have escaped small bowls, landing on a bare wooden table with a spray of tiny droplets. Everything seems poised between voluptuousness and rot, at once gorgeous and doomed.