October 2022 Exhibition

Fall is the season for reflection. Reflecting on our nation’s identity is on a lot of minds in America nowadays. Writers, painters, musicians, and all artists, draw on reflection to incite our imaginations to see differently. They evoke places we thought we knew but discover that there is an essence which we never saw before. It is through experiencing their creative work that ordinary people often taste the unknown. Juko Gallery is proud to present a series of paintings by Jim Gingerich, a Texan born artist, currently living in Long Island, New York. His art transports us to a vision of the American West that is rich in colors, possibilities, and dreams. It is a vision uniquely created by Jim Gingerich.

We have sequenced this series like story boards for a movie. Each painting feels related to the prior one. They all resonate with ambiguity, unfolding tension, and conflict. Characters burst into life with physical actions, moving to ever widening landscapes, that dynamically suggest the widening possibilities and choices which the myth of the West embodies. In Jim’s paintings, we don’t know who is the hero or the villain, and that ambiguity reminds us that there is a bit of both in everyone, just as we learned so often from watching western movies.

As one film critic describes, people like legends more than the truth. We have a fascination with the great American West and it's mythic hero - the cowboy. As we face the trials of today, we often look to our myths for guidance. The West, its dramatic landscapes, and its cowboys, represent a unique American vision of freedom, and unlimited possibility. It is the home of the rugged individual inside each of us and it continues to inspire our imagination. Jim Gingrich expresses the spirit of the American West in his paintings. He is a painter of the great American Myth. His love of the medium, with thick impasto surfaces on his paintings, brings the magic of the cowboy archetype to life. Gingrich's paintings depict a wild landscape as much of the mind as of the earth. He is a painter of spirit, myth, and magic.

In conjunction with the Art on Paper Fair in NYC September 2022, Juko Gallery mounts a special presentation of works on paper by Mark Seidenfeld. The viewer’s experience of his works on paper is musical, like experiencing jazz. The forms and colors reflect, absorb, and riff off one another. It is a language of emotion, weaving songs of sweetness and complexity. Seidenfeld began working on paper in 2019 while traveling Indonesia. This exhibition includes rarely seen and illuminating selections of the artist’s oeuvre.

Mark had an established international law practice when he met Elisa Breton in Paris in 1992. They attended exhibitions of surrealist art, which Mark was collecting. Ms. Breton, in her late 80’s and the widow of Andre Breton, who founded the Surrealist Movement, challenged Mark to paint.  She dared him to direct his passion for artistic voices into attempting  to find his own.  Mark accepted and, in his own words, ‘unlocked an inner volcano that has never stopped erupting.’

Mark is a self taught painter and photographer, who stages, directs, shoots, and prints dark fantasy, cinematic photo images. His work has been shown in galleries in New York and around the world, including Japan, Korea, Belgium, Haiti, and the United Kingdom. He is working on an upcoming solo exhibition, for a gallery in Rome, Italy.

Mark seeks depth and an expression of inner truths in his painting. Like every artist whose goal is to develop the uniqueness of their own voice, his work changes and mutates, constantly breaking prior boundaries.  With 29 years of experience, Mark’s work brims with the emotional vision and intelligence that come from experience and understanding.