Brett Angell
Other Voices
We are pleased to be exhibiting Brett Angell’s newest paintings, Other Voices. After seven years of making collages/paintings, Angell is now creating gouache paintings which reference his surroundings in Chelsea. Traveling daily from Chelsea to his place of work - The Museum of Fine Arts, Angell became fascinated with the environs - light, weather, ships, as they are transformed by the Chelsea River. These beautiful works are displayed in vintage boxes, drawers, and other found wooden pieces. Their contained mysteries seem simple and perfect.
The paintings are intended to slow life down. Extended concentration and healthy viewing times are suggested here to get the most out of the paintings. There is just enough information in the work to guide but also enough space for personal exploration and reflection. They are delicate without being precious. They are distractions for our hectic and full lives.
The paintings are contemporary but celebrate the hand-made rather than the polished minimal devices that have become such a part of our lives. Domestic scale is celebrated here rather than the gigantic institutional works we are so used to in our museums and galleries. Intimate size and one-on-one viewing is what these paintings call for. So put down your phone and disconnect for a while. -Brett Angell
Edie Bresler
We Sold a Winner
This is Edie Bresler’s first exhibit at Gallery Kayafas. We Sold a Winner, is a series of color photographs depicting the people and places of the small, family-run convenience and liquor stores that sell lottery tickets across the country; specifically those places which have sold a $1,000,000 or more winning ticket. Interested also in the actual paper talisman, Bresler has created one-of-a-kind collages using letters from the discarded losing lottery tickets, as in “If I won I wouldn’t have to struggle”… The viewer is privy to the inner workings of the small places and the structure of the system that provides the lottery players with their hopes and opportunity to be the next big winner.
With the help of Google alert, I follow this trail of winning jackpots ($1 million to $529 million) back to the small family stores where the ticket was sold. Road trips wind across many states, lasting one or two months, allowing multiple days at each location. I have witnessed first hand the hometown banter and fellowship that is the backbone of customer loyalty. Shop owners, managers, and clerks are well versed in the names and relationships of everyone who walks through their door. Regulars come for the conversation, counsel, and the comfort that accompanies familiarity. “When they leave they feel like someone and have a good feeling about the store”. On the walls, in between lottery tickets and signage, are family mementos and photographs along with flags from many countries. Owners and clerks represent working America: some are immigrants, making their way in a foreign land, while others are the second, third, and even fourth generation to live and work in the neighborhood.
Small family-run convenience and liquor stores are the largest retailers of lottery tickets across the country. Rather than raise taxes on those at the top, legislators in forty four states depend on lottery revenue to prop up shrinking state budgets. When I hear people call lottery players stupid or reference the lottery as a tax on the poor, I think about the many hard working Americans I’ve met, caught up in the conundrum that “you can’t win if you don’t play” and “the house always wins”. I seek to evoke greater empathy for the resilient, yet often invisible workers at the heart of lottery America. -Edie Bresler
Yorgos Efthymiadis
Letting My Guard Down
Yorgos Efthymiadis is a fine art and architectural photographer. Originally from Greece, he is currently living in Somerville. Efthymiadis’ love of architecture and shapes of buildings is evident in the color images, Letting My Guard Down, a project he began in 2014. These photographs show us the “scapes” Efthymiadis is attracted to when he travels, where he feels comfortable when he is away from home. There is a meditative aspect to his compositions, a balance, a sense of peace and safety…the viewer accompanies Efthymiadis on his journey, a window to his identity.
It took me over a year of collecting pieces from different countries that I’ve visited to come to the realization that no matter the place, I will always find myself drawn to serene and solitary scapes. Surrounded by buildings and overwhelming skylines, feeling lost in the chaos that public life creates, I’m continuously on the move to catch up with the frenetic rhythms of reality; yet again, I remain static. I’m constantly in search of an escape, trying to free myself from holding on to the past, to an idea, a person or a thought and yet I’m constrained, bound.
These images are a mirror of myself, not a window to the world outside. These solitary subjects are nothing but self-portraits, scattered glimmers of my soul; a wry representation of the weight that I carry , the anchor that holds me down. -Yorgos Efthymiadis
Frank Armstrong
Trees
Frank Armstrong’s forte is the landscape. Photographing for over 50 years, Armstrong began his career as a photojournalist working at the University of Texas. This past summer, he drove for months from Massachusetts to Alaska, photographing as he travelled. His work is truthful and direct, framed with an intimation of what lies beyond the simple edges. We are exhibiting six of his black and white photographs of Trees, which span several years. There is a quietness in his work—and a rewarding rich description and celebration of looking.
Armstrong’s work is in many permanent collections, including: National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth Texan, New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; and University of Michigan Museum of Art. Armstrong lives in West Boylston and teaches at Clark University in Worcester.