SURFACES: RECENT PAINTINGS BY B. MILLNER AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEE SALOUTOS AT PAGE BOND GALLERY, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2014.
The Page Bond Gallery is pleased to present Surfaces: Paintings by B. Millner and Photography by Lee Saloutos. The Exhibition will be on view September 5 through September 27, 2014. A reception for the artists will take place Friday, September 5, 2014 from 7 to 9 PM.
B. Millner is known for his quiet landscapes of coastal tidal flats and abandoned structures throughout the East Coast. His newest series depicts the effects of weather and time on various surfaces: bright orange rust borders the verdigris of oxidized metal, paint clings to eroded wood, and patches of lichen bleach and envelope a rock. The result of intense, meticulous study, each painting is a close-up, magnified and absorbing. Time has given these surfaces their richness, and the artist has captured one moment in their evolving chemistry. Millner’s paintings invite the viewer to be conscious of unexpected beauty in everyday life.
Lee Saloutos is known for his arresting color photographs of the American west. Devoid of human life, almost every image contains the marks of it: abandoned ranches, prisons, and industrial spaces evoke their distant pasts. Saloutos is fascinated by the ongoing consumption and abandonment of the landscape, and his images are as expansive as their setting. His newest series, Surfaces, documents the often-beautiful visual effect of the environment and use on abandoned objects. “I regard the ‘Surfaces’ I shoot as close to abstract paintings. They are all about composition and color and texture and form. In these I do as much as I can to obliterate the actual subject matter,” says Saloutos. The corrosive power of the elements is evident in his studies of oxidized metal and rusted rail cars. Magnified to the point that the viewer is denied all points of reference, the images become landscapes themselves. Observing these works, our field of vision is narrowed, and the familiar becomes beautiful and strange.
