Gallery at The Boca Raton

Our art projects originated in 2009 with the installation of 15 monumental sculptures placed throughout the grounds of The Boca Raton & Beach Club. A project at The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne was added in 2012, The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove in 2016, The Waterstone Resort and Marina in 2022, and The W Fort Lauderdale in 2025. Artists on view have included Fernando Botero, Peter Busby, Aurora Canero, Lynn Chadwick, Johan Creten, Carole Feuerman, Patrick Hughes, Jun Kaneko, Javier Marin, Julien Marinetti, Jedd Novatt, Dennis Oppenheim, Mauro Perucchetti, Henry Richardson, Sophie Ryder, and Hans Van de Bovenkamp.

Works on view at The Boca Raton & Beach Club currently include Harry Benson, Stanley Boxer, Dan Christensen, Max-Steven Grossman, Paul Jenkins, Scarlett Kanistaneaux, Alex Katz, Wendy Klemperer, Kx2, Donald Martiny, Jane Manus, Gino Miles, Donald Sultan, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson, Tigran Tsitoghdzyan, Boaz Vaadia, and Manolo Valdes. This venue provides museum-quality works for acquisition while adding an educational, aesthetic and cultural enhancement to the property.

Scarlett Kanistanaux’s “Sacred Breath” striking bronze sculpture is a testament to the artist’s profound engagement with themes of serenity and spiritual introspection. Rendered in a minimalist form, this work echoes the peaceful countenance found in historical Buddhist sculptures, yet Kanistanaux reinterprets these ancient motifs with a distinctly contemporary sensibility. The closed eyes and subtly upturned lips of the figure suggest a state of deep meditation, inviting viewers into a quiet, contemplative space. The simplified facial structure eschews elaborate detail, allowing the viewer’s focus to rest on the essence of peace embodied within the form. The smooth surface and subtle curves reflect her commitment to capturing the purity of the subject’s inner world rather than an ethnographic likeness, positioning the piece as a universal symbol of tranquility and self-awareness rather than a direct cultural representation.

From candid behind-the-scenes images of The Beatles during their first U.S. tour, to striking portraits of political figures, Hollywood royalty, and the private sides of public icons such as Princess Diana, Jackie Kennedy, and Frank Sinatra, Benson’s work is not only documentary but deeply intimate. He captures the sublime tension between visibility and vulnerability: between myth and personhood.

This collection brings together some of Benson’s most celebrated, revealing, and historically resonant works, images that have not only chronicled cultural shifts but have often shaped how they are remembered. With his camera as a passport to the corridors of fame, glamour, and power, Benson has documented some of the most recognizable faces and pivotal moments of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1929, Harry Benson began his career as a photographer for the Daily Sketch in London. His transatlantic trajectory was cemented when he was assigned to cover The Beatles in Paris in 1964. That assignment would lead to an invitation to join the band on their inaugural trip to America. Benson’s photograph of the band in a playful pillow fight at the George V Hotel has since become one of the most iconic images in the history of music photography.

Benson’s career blossomed during the golden age of print journalism. He became a trusted contributor to LIFE, Vanity Fair, People, and The New Yorker. Unlike many celebrity photographers, Benson did not rely on staged studio shots, his genius lies in his ability to enter the room, gain trust, and bear witness. He was there for moments of triumph and trauma alike: he was standing next to Robert F. Kennedy when the senator was assassinated, and he documented the civil rights movement, the rise and fall of presidencies, and the shifting fashions of fame.

Together, these images are not only visual time capsules, they are psychological studies. Benson’s camera never condescends or intrudes; it communes.

Zimtsterne by Donald Matiny is a sculptural painting of polymer and pigment on aluminum that introduces the gestural abstraction of post-war American painting to The Boca Raton Beachclub’s otherwise representational matrix.   Suspended from the wall, the piece captures a singular sweeping motion -  a painterly mark liberated from canvas yet bound to bodily presence. Martiny’s works engage with the aesthetics of fluidity and the tactility of the natural world invoking both sand's granular resistance and water's mercurial force.

Towering chromogenic prints such as Falls #36 by Jonathan Smith render cascading water in hyper-detail dissolving the boundary between documentation and abstraction Inviting the viewer into liminal spaces where scale becomes ambiguous and time seems suspended. These images harness the sublime through a modern lens echoing 19th-century romantic landscape photography.  His photographs often exclude any sign of human presence emphasizing the landscape's autonomy and ancient rhythm. These vast photographic fields evoke a connection to a place while offering a contemplative space for viewers to consider their own relationship with nature.

Kx2 is the collaborative moniker of artist-sister duo Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman whose mathematically inspired sculptural works merge industrial materials with painterly surfaces. From a distance, their works appear bold, minimalist, and architectural.  Upon closer inspection the viewer is drawn into the tactile surfaces of meticulously hand-sanded aluminum and the layered subtleties of acrylic and mixed media painting. While rooted in formal aesthetics, their work embraces themes of ecological awareness and environmental fragility by incorporating up to 50% recycled aluminum in their metalwork and making use of reclaimed materials whenever possible reflecting a belief that sustainability and beauty can coexist within the artistic process.

Deeply committed to the intersection of art and environmental advocacy, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson's work incorporates repurposed materials sourced from local landscapes, specifically, discarded flip-flops and plastics found on Ghana’s southern Atlantic coast.  In his flip-flop wall-hanging series, Turkson recontextualizes these everyday objects, presenting them as “Objects of Value.” The artist’s approach draws parallels with traditional Ghanaian textile arts, such as Kente weaving, creating complex, patterned compositions that speak to continuity and change within cultural traditions. His work challenges conventional perceptions of discarded materials, emphasizing their potential for beauty and storytelling. His process reflects a deep commitment to sustainability, and he positions himself as an archivist of cultural memory, an environmentalist, and a storyteller whose art serves as both a medium of aesthetic pleasure and a conduit for social commentary.

Sponder Gallery is proud to present ALEX KATZ: Figures and Faces–an exhibition in the Tower lobby at The Boca Raton.  Celebrating the iconic work of Alex Katz, one of the most influential figures in contemporary art, this meticulously curated showcase features silkscreens, pigment prints, and linocuts spotlighting Katz’s ability to distill time and space into strikingly minimalist compositions that balance flatness, form, and color.

Katz’s work, emerging as a counterpoint to the gestural dynamism of Abstract Expressionism, embraces simplicity, narrative clarity, and compositional balance. Drawing inspiration from cinematic storytelling and the aesthetics of advertising, his art transcends Pop Art conventions, creating intimate, personal connections through recurring subjects and themes like bathers and swimmers. Works such as Ariel (B&W) highlight Katz’s ability to refine human and natural forms into their essential components, offering a profound meditation on identity, presence, and relationality.

Through his reductive methodology and minimalist aesthetic, Katz transforms the everyday into the monumental. His works resonate as visual essays, distilling the mundane into compositions of profound elegance and complexity. As Katz approaches his 100th year, this exhibition reaffirms his enduring legacy as a masterful chronicler of form, color, and human expression.

Abstract expressionism emerged in the United States after WWII and quickly became one of the most influential movements in the history of art. AbEx artists were influenced by the ideas of psychoanalysis and believed in the importance of tapping into the subconscious mind. They often worked spontaneously, allowing their inner thoughts and emotions to guide the creative process.

Most of the artists on view in Drips, Stains & Pours fall under the second generation of Abstract Expressionism, with the first generation including artists such as Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler. Much like their predecessors, the younger generation emphasized spontaneous, gestural expression, the exploration of color and material, and often used bold brushwork, dynamic compositions, and non-representational forms. Gesture and movement were central to their aesthetic, and evidence of their spontaneous movements are trapped in swaths of color. The resulting artworks may be viewed as an artifact of their choreographed actions.

Boaz Vaadia was born on a farm in Israel in 1951, and moved to New York City to study art in 1975 on a grant from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.  His compelling works have won him audiences worldwide.

His materials, slate and bluestone were formed by layers of sediment compressing over millions of years.  He hand carves slices of the stone with a hammer and chisel, (shaping the layers like a topographical map), and stacks the slabs until the graded silhouette of a person, animal or group emerges.  His process parallels natural transformations in stone, and also recalls ancient methods of construction that relied on the cut and weight of the stone rather than on mortar.

He then pairs them with glacial boulders which function as counterpoints to the figures.  These boulders settled in the New York Bay area during the ice age. Most of them are excavated from construction sites within 20 blocks of his studio.

Gino Miles says of his work, “Exploring the relationship between organic design and inorganic materials has led me to a strong conceptual balance of how things grow, bond together, and respond to their neighboring environment.  I often choose materials which can reflect, absorb, or blend with their surroundings. Miles works primarily in fabricated stainless steel and bronze, choosing a curvilinear aesthetic that often appears weightless as the lines spin throughout nature. "Fandango” has the ability to be kinetically turned or spun so viewers can experience the work from several vantage points. “Presenting such mass in motion with seemingly effortless fluidity invites a challenge to the viewer’s perception of the sculpture,” remarks the artist. 

A long-time illustrator and ceramist, Curt Brill’s art career took a turn in 1980 when he began working with bronze.   The sculptures he produced were sensual - a direct response to the feel of the materials and his history of working with clay. With a keen eye and acuity for people-watching, his work aims to reveal the universal human spirit, that which makes us each unique, yet shares a common home.

Boaz Vaadia’s style has evolved into figurative forms created with layers of chiseled stone and reflects the eternal relationship between man and nature. The figures appear as though created by natural forces, such as erosion by wind or water. He said, “By using the natural forces of rocks, my work awakens ancient ‘earth senses’ that were slowly abandoned by man during his evolution to civilization. By carving the stone, I release its inherent energies. Man came from the earth and in death returns to it. I see stone as the bone structure of the earth.”

Metis Atash views her sculpture as a fusion of worldly pleasure and spiritual insight. Upon first glance, their shiny surfaces and bright colors are unmistakable, though much like the human beings they resemble, their complexity lies within. As a child growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Metis was heavily influence by music. She felt drawn to Punk Rock with its rejection of the mainstream and perceived excesses. This feeling continued into adulthood, when Metis chose to relinquish a successful corporate life for an artistic one. She found the source of her artwork in Bali, after much time spent embracing the authenticity and love of its people.

The approach to sculpture requires a form, and Metis’ choice is reflected literally as the form of Buddha. This shape implies a relationship to Siddartha Gautama, and to Buddhism. Siddartha’s teachings were based on the idea that we exist in a constant state of craving, or want. This endless cycle creates an attachment to impermanent worldly things and pleasures. According to Siddartha, only by recognizing these desires may they be extinguished. The physical act of creating these sculptures is also linked to Buddhism’s ascetic fundamentals. Ascetics have historically withdrawn from the world for their religious practice, and adopted a lifestyle of extreme austerity and reflection. Two examples of this practice are seen in the creation of Buddhist sand mandalas, and even Christian illuminated manuscripts. The intensely detailed work offers solitary monks a profound state of concentration. This kind of ‘escapism’ is also found in the repetitive placing of tiny crystals that cover each Buddha sculpture. Although these works are not intended for religious purposes, the simple act of creating them is meditative.

"To make the sculptures I scavenge scrap yards and construction sites for evocatively shaped pieces of steel, looking for pre-existing lines and shapes with which to draw. Most of the metal is rebar, the reinforcement rod used in buildings, bridges, and highways. Rendered from the concrete for recycling, it comes in a great variety of curves, shapes, and thicknesses. To begin a sculpture I have an idea of the type of animal it’s going to be, and a rough mental image of the gesture. I sketch loosely, welding steel line to line in the air. Rather than bending every piece, I choose pre-existing curves and cut them free from the pile with an oxy-acetylene torch. If I need to adjust the shape I heat and bend with the torch. The arc welder is immediate: I can tack weld a steel line in place and if I don’t like it can twist it off easily. Only in the final stage is each section welded thoroughly. Since the sculpture is not a solid form all the connections have to be strong; I spend a lot of time on the final welding to make the piece ready for transportation and installation."  -Wendy Klemperer

By quoting figures from well-known works of art, Manolo Valdes revitalizes these familiar images by taking them out of their original context. In both paintings and sculptures, he inflates the figure's size, abstracting form and minimizing detail, while incorporating a lot of roughly applied surface texture.

In this sculpture “Infanta Margarita”, Valdes pays tribute to Spain’s great master painter, Diego Velasquez.  His painting of “Las Meninas” (The Maids of Honor), painted in 1656 depicts Margarita Teresa of Spain in fashion of the era.  The most striking characteristic is the huge expanse of the voluminous dress.

Infanta was the title and rank given in the European kingdoms of Spain and Portugal to a son or daughter of the king.  Margarita Teresa was the favorite child of her father, King Philip IV.

Working in both monumental and small dimensions since the 1970s, Gino Miles is inspired primarily by 20th century European masters.  He instills his love of the classical figure and objects found in nature, working with a sparse and contemporary language that embodies tranquility.  Stripped of an overt narrative, his abstract forms focus on elegant minimalism with clean lines and shapes.  These kinetic sculptures can be turned, rotated or spun, allowing the viewer to change the sculpture and experience it from a different viewpoint.  

We are pleased to present our inaugural rotating exhibition at The Boca Raton's Tower lobby featuring the work of Tom Leighton.

Tom Leighton is an artist, photographer and printmaker, with a fascination with architectural structure and form. Trained at the Royal College of Art in London, he expertly layers and manipulates his photographic images, creating work which is both beautiful and provocative, encouraging us to imagine different possibilities for the world around us.

Leighton’s close and conjectural explorations are about environments both natural and constructed. Travelling between ancient cities and the most futuristic developments of Hong Kong and the Middle East, he works with buildings and cityscapes which are part of an international iconography.

Kx2 is a collaboration combining the strengths of artists and sisters Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman who create mathematically inspired sculpture merging metal and painting. From a distance the work is bold and geometric, yet up close the viewer is engaged by textural hand-sanded metal and multi-layered paintings. By exploring geometry, symmetry and connection, their work aims to create a moment of pause, inviting the viewer to escape the stresses of the day and find a space to achieve balance. In their most recent work, themes related to environmental issues are presented with the hope to raise an awareness of the fragility of our natural ecosystems.

Isabelle van Zeijl is recognized for her mastery in creating striking self-portraits. She produces her images autonomously, taking on the roles of model, creator, object and subject simultaneously. Her work possesses a timeless beauty, while referencing the historic portraiture of her Dutch homeland. In a world that condemns beauty for shallowness, championing high aesthetics is nothing short of rebellion.  Van Zeijl presents a new way to explore female beauty ideals through her unique approach to character and emotion.  Within each series, she reinvents herself and creates a body of work to illustrate these autobiographical narratives.

Doug Argue’s vast canvases stuffed with shimmering, bullet-shaped forms have come to be known as the “fish paintings.” To guess a species is to miss the point, though the dense cramming-in of shapes suggests sardines. With only planes of silvery forms, the fish school depicted is the perspective of a fish, a portrait of the herd. The rendered world is both tamed and wild, familiar and entirely alien. 

One cannot look at Argue’s fish paintings without contemplating the intricate hours of their creation, without imagining the obsession that took hold and sustained itself until the moment in which they were first displayed. The intricacy of the fish paintings, their obsessiveness, like so much outsider art, is not madness, but a profound interest, a fascination that abides for a time, and then, like a wave, subsides. 

Boaz Vaadia’s style has evolved into figurative forms created with layers of chiseled stone and reflects the eternal relationship between man and nature. The figures appear as though created by natural forces, such as erosion by wind or water. He said, “By using the natural forces of rocks, my work awakens ancient ‘earth senses’ that were slowly abandoned by man during his evolution to civilization. By carving the stone, I release its inherent energies. Man came from the earth and in death returns to it. I see stone as the bone structure of the earth.”

Donald Martiny’s large scale brushstroke motif paintings suggest the gestural markings of paint applied directly to the wall – a tribute to the energetic motion of action painting.  To create these highly palpable textures, he mixes polymers with pigments and applies the mixture to sheets of aluminum, allowing the gesture to dictate the form.  He once described his practice as “a dance trapped in paint” and his dynamic works are a testament to his active process.

Working in both monumental and small dimensions since the 1970s, Gino Miles is inspired primarily by 20th century European masters.  He instills his love of the classical figure and objects found in nature, working with a sparse and contemporary language that embodies tranquility.  Stripped of an overt narrative, his abstract forms focus on elegant minimalism with clean lines and shapes.  These kinetic sculptures can be turned, rotated or spun, allowing the viewer to change the sculpture and experience it from a different viewpoint.  

New York School painter Alex Katz developed his highly stylized aesthetic in reaction to 1950s Abstract Expressionism, finding his own distinctive resolution between formalism and representation. His brightly colored figurative and landscape paintings are rendered in a flat style that takes cues from everyday visual culture like advertising and cinema, in many ways anticipating both the formal and conceptual concerns of Pop Art. Well known for his many portraits of his wife and muse, Ada, Katz has also dedicated himself to printmaking and freestanding sculptures of cutout figures painted on wood or aluminum.

What are we to make of Tigran Tsitoghdzyan's "Mirrors" — big, bold portraits, confrontationally large, and black and white, like the negative of a photograph, the colors of life enigmatically erased as though in a melancholy underworld? They are clearly masterpieces, but for all the beauty of the female model peculiarly bleak. However well-realized—empirically precise, insistently descriptive—her appearance, she seems peculiarly unreal. The hands that hide her face, yet let her piercing eyes magically see through them, suggest she is a delusion. Ambiguously transparent and opaque, her hands convey the ambivalence built into the artist's "handling" of her.

Michael Dweck is an award-winning filmmaker and visual artist known for his narrative photographic and film projects. His work depicts the beauty and complexity of human life, while exploring on-going struggles between identity and adaptation within endangered societal enclaves. The artist says of his work, “I’m not a documentarian that explains a foreign world, not the insider bragging about his haunts, but rather a visual storyteller, who tries to transport and immerse you into a very particular cloistered cultural ecosystem and tells the stories of its characters in the process.” 

Dweck holds a degree in Fine Art from the Pratt Institute in New York. During his earlier career as a highly regarded creative director, Dweck received over forty international awards, including the coveted Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 

The artists' objective is to distill the stereotypical perceptions and associations within our culture into visually compelling objects, sculptures and installations. Whether they are creating an installation describing the impending doom of the dinosaurs or a valise filled with gold lucky charms, their iconography is drawn from the animals, objects and/or situations that operate as commonplace tropes within our culture. Berg & Myers take these generic stand-ins and invest them with multiple meanings through humorous allusions. The aesthetic decisions they make are informed by the consumer culture we inhabit and their desire to create ultra-smooth forms and high gloss finishes that seduce the viewer. Although each individual piece we create may be understood on it’s own terms, the pieces within each exhibition reinforce one another and manifest connections, which make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The stainless steel and aluminum sculptures created by Massachusetts artist, Rob Lorenson are a compositionally rich interplay of formalist elements.  They exist in suspended animation and are situated to freeze a moment in time; hovering effortlessly in space.  The work is constructed of sturdy, permanent materials but lives in contradiction to the impermanent sense of the composition.  He strives to emphasize the compositional qualities of the work, to create dynamic movement with static, solid objects.  

In 2002, Rob was commissioned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create two editioned works to be given as Awards to Innovator of the Year and Humanitarian of the Year.

James Austin Murray’s paintings are made using the most basic of means: ivory black oil paint, a canvas and wood-panel support, and wallpaper brushes—up to nine affixed to a long handle. But the surface effects are far from simple, and indeed offer an almost otherworldly experience, as the striations from the brush take the eye on a roller-coaster journey into pleats and folds, over light-struck hillocks and into shadowy crooks and bends. Depending on where you stand, the paintings look like a forbidding landscape you could walk right into. It’s a visual encounter that is both unsettling and profoundly seductive.

Matt Devine is a self-taught sculptor working with steel, stainless steel, aluminum and bronze. The contrasts of nature and industry, light and shadow, chaos and order are themes found throughout his body of work. Pared-down organic shapes are formed out of sheet and solid materials and welded together in harmonious accord, often allowing the metal to appear as light and fluid as sheets of paper. These contrasts, plus the relationships of patterns and boundaries, address Devine’s desire to contain chaos and push out the discord of an information-saturated culture. 

Initially debuted at Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary in 2022, “Passage”, measuring 8’ x 10 x 13’ was the most massive, interactive stainless-steel sculpture that the artist had created to date.   Viewers are encouraged to “pass” through its towering arches and swooping curves.  Produced during the COVID pandemic on the Zia Pueblo in Gino’s home state of New Mexico, with the assistance of a few select Zia Native Americans, it took a full year to create the sculpture. 

From a conventional point of view, Jane Manus can be described as a sculptor whose artistic materials are welded aluminum and paint.  But in a deeper sense, her materials are space, gravity, asymmetry, balance and disequilibrium.  She wields these properties, creating striking geometric sculptures that challenge our perceptions of inside and outside, movement and stasis, illusion and reality.

A colorful ode to Modernism, Ugo Rondinone’s Sun Series is a satisfying visual experience based on the repetition of circles. Merging the psychedelic patterns of Op Art with the depthless tones of Color Field painting, these mandalas fill the viewer’s field of vision with pulsing color. He began the Sun series in the early 1990s, by directing his gaze inward - translating his emotional state to circular bands of color; a reflection of his interest in Tibetan mysticism as a vehicle to explore natural phenomena and interior states of being. 

The emergence of a digital world has affected almost every aspect of contemporary life.  New forms of inhabiting the algorithmic world and the physical world emerge through relationships between human and machine.  While many aspects of natural life have become inextricable from digital life, these new coded forms are consistently evolving–avatars look human; online communication between people is referred to as “chatting”; computers have “brains” etc.

Two objects that have punctuated key moments in the history of Western modernity have undergone a process of radical transformation since the advent of the digital: books and photographs. The emergence of print culture in the 15th Century and of mechanically produced images in the 19th Century set certain parameters around knowledge, communications, circulation and truth. It was these ways of constituting knowledge as a method of enlightenment that set the stage for many struggles and forms of freedom, but also a stage of power and control. 

Her work takes many forms: furniture, outdoor installations, floor- and pedestal-mounted works, and even wall-mounted pieces that allude to the history of reductivist painting and shaped canvases. “A lot of pieces are site-specific,” says Manus, “and I think of every piece in three-dimensional terms, even wall pieces. I always think about furniture from every different angle as well.” Works such as Double Jeopardy (2004), which is mounted on the wall, are reminiscent of the work of El Lissitzky, an early 20th-century Russian constructivist who blended mass production and graphic design with high art and confounded the division between two- and three-dimensional artworks. The sculpture is a highly formal experiment: a diptych composed of two aluminum forms painted blue. The two pieces mirror one another’s shape—a vertical band with a cube mounted on each, pointing outward. The cube on the left element is closed, absorbing light, and the right one open and reflective.

Ernest Trova was an artist whose signature creation, a gleaming humanoid known as “Falling Man,” appeared in a series of sculptures and paintings and became a symbol of an imperfect humanity hurtling into the future. Mr. Trova was largely known as a sculptor, but his “Falling Man,” a standard of Pop Art, began life as a painted figure, taking shape on his easel in the early 1960s. Faceless, armless, with a hint of a belly and, its name notwithstanding, of indeterminate sex, the figure struck a variety of poses, sometimes juxtaposed with other like figures, sometimes with mechanical appendages.

Swiss-American sculptor Roger Reutimann works with contemporary materials like stainless steel and fiberglass to transform the inexhaustible subject of the human figure into innovative works of art. Influenced by such Modern Masters as Moore, Brancusi and Arp, the artist also finds inspiration in industrial and automotive design.  Relying on the purity of shapes and simple geometric lines, his minimalist sculptures suggest a semi-abstract representation of the human form. 

Born in Gat Rimon in 1951, Vaadia grew up in a rural community where his parents, Nissim Vaadia and Rivka Horozlaski, farmed strawberries. In 1968, he enrolled at the Avni Institute of Fine Arts in Tel Aviv but was drafted into the Israeli Army just a year later. After completing his service, he returned to school and began teaching there after graduating. In 1975, with a grant from America-Israel Cultural Foundation, he relocated to New York, where he studied at the Pratt Institute. The artist said he thought the move was “the worst mistake of my life,” but “within one week I actually recognized that the urban environment of New York is as natural as my village.”

Isabelle van Zeijl is an established mid-career international acclaimed artist. Recognized for her mastery to create striking self portraits with depth and meaning who enriches life, possessing lasting and impressionable depth and value. 

Van Zeijl dips into the post-modern to craft a vision of feminine power that will have you questioning both historical and 21st-century concepts of beauty. Van Zeijl produces the scenes entirely independently, she is both model, creator, object and subject. Her work  possesses a timeless beauty, transcending the boundaries of epoch and media. 

Working in both monumental and small dimensions since the 1970s, sculptor Gino Miles  (b. 1952) is inspired primarily by 20th Century European masters such as Moore, Brancusi, Archipenko, and Marini. Gino distills his love of the classical figure and objects found in nature, working with a sparse and contemporary language that embodies tranquility. Stripped of an overt narrative, Miles’ abstract forms achieve a poetic harmony of man and nature, with subtle references to both the human form and ancient cultures.

Gino Miles became interested in painting and sculpture in the early 1970s at the University of Northern Colorado, where he also earned a Master of Arts degree in Sculpture. He studied at università per i stranieri in Perugia, Italy, and at the accademia di belle arti in Florence, Italy.  He lived in Italy for ten years in the 1970’s and 1980’s. A profound love of teaching inspired Miles to help establish Italart, a school for American and German students in the Chianti region outside Florence.   After many years of study and work in Europe, the artist and his wife returned to the US and settled in Santa Fe, NM, where they raised three children, who are without doubt Miles’ greatest works of all and the source of immense and never-ending pride.

Working in both monumental and small dimensions since the 1970s, sculptor Gino Miles  (b. 1952) is inspired primarily by 20th Century European masters such as Moore, Brancusi, Archipenko, and Marini. Gino distills his love of the classical figure and objects found in nature, working with a sparse and contemporary language that embodies tranquility. Stripped of an overt narrative, Miles’ abstract forms achieve a poetic harmony of man and nature, with subtle references to both the human form and ancient cultures.

Gino Miles became interested in painting and sculpture in the early 1970s at the University of Northern Colorado, where he also earned a Master of Arts degree in Sculpture. He studied at università per i stranieri in Perugia, Italy, and at the accademia di belle arti in Florence, Italy.  He lived in Italy for ten years in the 1970’s and 1980’s. A profound love of teaching inspired Miles to help establish Italart, a school for American and German students in the Chianti region outside Florence.   After many years of study and work in Europe, the artist and his wife returned to the US and settled in Santa Fe, NM, where they raised three children, who are without doubt Miles’ greatest works of all and the source of immense and never-ending pride.

Roger Reutimann is a Swiss born sculptor, living and working in Boulder, Colorado. 

Reutimann's sculptures carry the imprints of our time. He shapes and forms the materials of the modern age, often using the methods of the past, and in the end leaves us something new to contend with. Our response to his work cannot be axiomatic. Forms have been distilled down to their base elements, leaving only pure geometrical lines behind, oftentimes suggestive of the human form. It is easy to be lulled by the apparent simplicity of it all, but it is in this moment of tranquil regard that the work fully reveals itself.

"My disciplined upbringing, my rigorous piano practicing, my aim for excellence, my sculptures are a reflection of all these things. I strongly believe in perfection." Knowledge and technique are hard earned guiding tools, to help navigate through the chaos of creative thinking. All this is reflected in an uncompromising and meticulous execution. Refining the surface and painting it with high gloss automotive finishes that leave no texture or unnecessary details to distract the eyes. It is condensed to pure and simple form.

Donald Martiny's paintings look straightforward--dramatically expressive gestural works, some small and invitingly intimate, most grand and intimidatingly large, all blatantly colorful, sometimes with a singular color in a sweeping shape, at other times with contrasting colors and intersecting shapes, dialectically interacting however at odds, subliminally reconciled however ostensibly irreconcilable--but that is deceptive, for they are as much abstract sculptures as abstract paintings, sometimes suspended in space, sometimes stranded on a wall, as though they were fragments of some grand mural.  If, as Hans Hofmann wrote, "the mystery of plastic creation is based upon the dualism of the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional,"(3) then the mystery of Donald Martiny's plastic creations is that they are two-dimensional and three-dimensional--paintings and sculptures--at once, and as such paradoxically monistic rather than dualistic.  For Martiny painting and sculpture--traditionally separated however often a sculpture may be given a skin of paint, and painterly texture may give a painting sculptural resonance--are implicitly the same.  Martiny's works are subjectively expressive--convey feeling, often intense, as the abruptness of the gestures suggest (they have a meteoric presence, as though articulated on the spur of the visual moment)--even as they show a mastery of the material medium of paint that makes them exemplary modernist works.

Working in both monumental and small dimensions since the 1970s, sculptor Gino Miles  (b. 1952) is inspired primarily by 20th Century European masters such as Moore, Brancusi, Archipenko, and Marini. Gino distills his love of the classical figure and objects found in nature, working with a sparse and contemporary language that embodies tranquility. Stripped of an overt narrative, Miles’ abstract forms achieve a poetic harmony of man and nature, with subtle references to both the human form and ancient cultures.

Gino Miles became interested in painting and sculpture in the early 1970s at the University of Northern Colorado, where he also earned a Master of Arts degree in Sculpture. He studied at università per i stranieri in Perugia, Italy, and at the accademia di belle arti in Florence, Italy.  He lived in Italy for ten years in the 1970’s and 1980’s. A profound love of teaching inspired Miles to help establish Italart, a school for American and German students in the Chianti region outside Florence.   After many years of study and work in Europe, the artist and his wife returned to the US and settled in Santa Fe, NM, where they raised three children, who are without doubt Miles’ greatest works of all and the source of immense and never-ending pride.

Miles’ large-scale works are prominently featured in many permanent and private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and South America, including:   the Evansville Museum in Evansville, Indiana; the Polk Museum in Lakeland, FL; Disney Corporate Headquarters in Burbank, California; the Cities of Cerritos and Napa, CA, and the City of Edmond, OK; and Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, among others.

Bernar Venet is a Conceptual artist best known for his versatility in multiple mediums, including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, as well as stage design and musical composition. Venet became well known in the 1960s for his amorphous installations made by piling up loose gravel, coal, or asphalt; and “industrial paintings” from cardboard reliefs or tar. (Around that time, he decided to drop the last letter from his given name, Bernard.) Shortly after, inspired by the works of Minimalist sculptors like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Carl Andre, Venet began to produce wall-mounted and freestanding metal sculptures. Among the best known are his torch-cut steel plates and beams resembling scribbles, lines, and arcs. Venet says that his sculptures are about “how metal resists. They are a test of strength—a battle between myself and the piece of metal.”

One of the leading sculptors in Britain after World War II, Lynn Chadwick is well known for both abstract and figurative works that embodied the tensions of the post-war era. His precariously balanced and monumental geometric figures have brought him international renown.

Lynn Chadwick was born in London in 1914.  He worked as an architectural draftsman in the late 1930’s and served as a pilot during World War II.  Though his family appreciated the arts, they dissuaded him from pursuing formal training in sculpting, pointing out the difficulty of making a living in the arts in Depression-era England.

Chadwick’s art career began in 1950 at his first solo exhibition in London which featured mobiles similar to those by Alexander Calder, whose work at the time was unknown to him. He soon eliminated the kinetic element of his sculpture but continued to use construction and assemblage methods rather than carving or modeling.

Mauro Perucchetti was an only child, born in Milan in 1949. His early career in the arts began when he enrolled for classes in theatre studies and began acting in film. He worked with Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol in the 1974 film, The Driver’s Seat.

Changing courses, he relocated to London and threw himself into interior design work.  In 2000, Perucchetti sold his design and architectural practice so he could become a full-time artist. Dedicating himself to art, he spent the next three years experimenting with materials before perfecting the formulation of the plastic he wanted to use.  It was lustrous and transparent, forever changing under different lighting conditions.  His use of polyurethane resins is pioneering and utterly original. 

When asked in early 2009 why he makes art, he explained: ‘I wish I could be a politician to govern fairly, a religious leader to guide pragmatically and a powerful entrepreneur to serve as an example and inspiration to others, but I can’t. However what I can do hopefully is create art that makes people think about global issues.’

Carole Feuerman’s sculptures are like minutes from a slice of life, frozen for pause and contemplation. And unlike looking at real people you get the chance for an up-close, unblinking gaze.

Feuerman says that her “work inspires the viewer to look closely at what stands before them.”  She wants the viewer to “complete the story, to reflect and feel touched”.   She explores universal feelings and emotions that are captured in a single, fragmented moment of time. Carole Feuerman’s sculptures are just too believable and she doesn’t forget a single detail. Casting figures from live models in her studio, she then adorns them with every attribute of life-likeness, applying tiny eyelashes, wisps of hair and painting the most convincing skin tones, freckles and veins. 

Because of its faithfulness to reality, her life-size and realistic sculptures are uncanny in that they are simultaneously familiar in their lifelike appearance and yet strange as static works of art.

Over the years Peter’s work has evolved from the simple concept of space being defined by a single line into sculptures that depict the structure of living form. He pushes the boundaries of his material, creating sculptures from intricately woven surfaces that look more like spun sugar than iron blended with carbon. It is the fluidity of the hand-bent rods that give the pieces a strikingly soft organic feel. Positive and negative space allows the viewer to pass through it, incorporating the surrounding environment. The sculptures feel both full and empty, and invite the viewer to complete the volume that the framework suggests.

He approaches the concept of public art from the perspective of inclusion and strives to appeal to and interact with a broad spectrum of viewers while inspiring the imagination on many levels. The body of his work expresses a commentary about the nature of the world we live in.

The stainless steel and aluminum sculptures created by Massachusetts artist, Rob Lorenson are a compositionally rich interplay of formalist elements.  They exist in suspended animation and are situated to freeze a moment in time; hovering effortlessly in space.  The work is constructed of sturdy, permanent materials but lives in contradiction to the impermanent sense of the composition.  He strives to emphasize the compositional qualities of the work, to create dynamic movement with static, solid objects.  

In 2002, Rob was commissioned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create two editioned works to be given as Awards to Innovator of the Year and Humanitarian of the Year.

The stainless steel and aluminum sculptures created by Massachusetts artist, Rob Lorenson are a compositionally rich interplay of formalist elements.  They exist in suspended animation and are situated to freeze a moment in time; hovering effortlessly in space.  The work is constructed of sturdy, permanent materials but lives in contradiction to the impermanent sense of the composition.  He strives to emphasize the compositional qualities of the work, to create dynamic movement with static, solid objects.  

In 2002, Rob was commissioned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create two editioned works to be given as Awards to Innovator of the Year and Humanitarian of the Year.

Fernando Botero was born in 1932 in Medellín, Colombia. His father was a salesman who traveled by horseback and his mother worked as a seamstress.  At the age of four, his father died and an uncle took a major role in his life, including his education. In 1944, he was sent to a school for matadors for two years.  Although isolated from art as presented in museums and other cultural institutions, Botero was influenced by the Baroque style of the colonial churches and the rich life of the city.

Though he spends only one month a year in Colombia, Fernando Botero considers himself the "most Colombian artist living" as he feels insulated from the international trends of the art world.  He shares his time between homes in Pietrasanta, Itlay and Paris with his wife, Greek artist, Sophia Vari.

His style has an unmistakable identity. Botero depicts women, men, daily life, historical events and characters, milestones of art, the still-life and animals, all united by their exaggerated and disproportionate volume, and accompanied by fine details of scathing criticism, irony, humor, and ingenuity.

Jun Kaneko was born in 1942 in Nagoya, Japan and came to the United States in the 1960’s. Particularly drawn to sculptural ceramics, Kaneko studied at the Chouinard Institute of Art during a pivotal time when ceramics as functional craft was expanding to embrace the highest levels of contemporary artistic expression. After studying with Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, and Ken Price in California, Kaneko emerged during the time now identified as the “America Clay Revolution.”

Jun Kaneko’s work is defined by its overwhelming scale and exquisite form, implying a spatial relationship between the object and viewer. Evidence of Kaneko’s early years as a painter exists in the richly glazed surfaces and rhythmic pulse of his marks and patterns. The artist’s recent body of work continues this feeling with a series of larger than life bronze heads. Their sheer size combined with the artists hunger to push the physical limitations of his material, generate an undeniable presence.

Carole Feuerman’s sculptures are like minutes from a slice of life, frozen for pause and contemplation. And unlike looking at real people you get the chance for an up-close, unblinking gaze.

Feuerman says that her “work inspires the viewer to look closely at what stands before them.”  She wants the viewer to “complete the story, to reflect and feel touched”.   She explores universal feelings and emotions that are captured in a single, fragmented moment of time. Carole Feuerman’s sculptures are just too believable and she doesn’t forget a single detail. Casting figures from live models in her studio, she then adorns them with every attribute of life-likeness, applying tiny eyelashes, wisps of hair and painting the most convincing skin tones, freckles and veins. 

Because of its faithfulness to reality, her life-size and realistic sculptures are uncanny in that they are simultaneously familiar in their lifelike appearance and yet strange as static works of art.

Born in 1967, Julien Marinetti spent his youth in Paris between the workshops of great artists and national museums. He fed his imagination on cinema, classical music and punk rock. He only spent one day at the Beaux-Arts (French Academy of Fine Arts) before dropping out and devoting himself to art.

In 2004, after years of oil painting, Marinetti renewed his relationship with sculpture. This masterpiece, “Doggy John” rapidly earned him a name in the artistic world.  He is a master of shape and material, but any classicism ends there: the sculpture unexpectedly becomes a three-dimensional canvas or “support-surface” for his imagination.

Painted in the colors of Pop Art and Expressionism, his sculptures embody the swing of the temporalities and natural progression of time.  Sculptures of dogs in unexpected colors, enameled and varnished as a car body, are representations transformed into radiant life-inhabited objects. The colors are the litmus test of his mood, each expressing a state of thought.

Bernar Venet is a Conceptual artist best known for his versatility in multiple mediums, including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, as well as stage design and musical composition. Venet became well known in the 1960s for his amorphous installations made by piling up loose gravel, coal, or asphalt; and “industrial paintings” from cardboard reliefs or tar. (Around that time, he decided to drop the last letter from his given name, Bernard.) Shortly after, inspired by the works of Minimalist sculptors like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Carl Andre, Venet began to produce wall-mounted and freestanding metal sculptures. Among the best known are his torch-cut steel plates and beams resembling scribbles, lines, and arcs. Venet says that his sculptures are about “how metal resists. They are a test of strength—a battle between myself and the piece of metal.”

Dennis Oppenheim’s Garden of Evidence series comprises sculpture, ceramic tiles, and landscape elements distributed throughout the entry plaza of Scottsdale’s District 1 police station and crime laboratory. Six architectural, scale prickly pear cactus forms are placed within landscape shadow forms on the ground plane. The ceramic tiles and other artistic and landscape elements are inspired by the evidence analyzed inside the lab. These tools of investigation combine with the interlocking cactus and bench forms create pieces of a thematic puzzle.

Oppenheim was born in 1938 in Electric City, Washington. He received a bachelor of fine arts from the California School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and a master of fine arts from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. After graduation, Oppenheim lived and worked in New York City. He first achieved recognition for his conceptual work in the 1960s, traversing through earth art, body art, video, and performance. Using his body as a site to challenge the self, he also explored, through numerous gallery and museum installations, the boundaries of personal risk, transformation, and communication. In the 1980s, he used machine factory installations to create metaphors for the artistic process. Since then, the artist has concentrated on permanent public sculpture. Through this work he fused a longtime interest in architecture with public sculpture.

Sophie Ryder's world is one of mystical creatures, animals and hybrid beings made from sawdust, wet plaster, old machine parts and toys, weld joins and angle grinders, wire 'pancakes', torn scraps of paper, charcoal sticks and acid baths. These art objects are direct products of her working methods, and as such they have an inherent fascination - people are naturally intrigued by unusual processes. It is still necessary, however, to see beyond them and recognize that the materials are a means to an end: the communication of ideas. They lie at the center of all the artist's creations, and they are fed by a spring that never runs dry. Indeed, the ideas emerge so quickly that she never has enough time to implement all of them. The ability to retrieve and develop an idea will depend not only on how other projects are progressing, but also on the resolution of any technical hurdles she may have set herself, especially in relation to her larger sculptures.

To the artist, the imagery of the sculpture is that of a book. “The geometric shapes are the pages as well as iconic images representing the World Trade Center, while the organic shapes are in motion,” Barrett said. What sort of motion, he leaves to the viewer to decide.
  
Barrett began by crafting many more organic shapes than he used, giving weight and mass to his emotions and finding catharsis in the act of self-expression. Then, like a writer penning a history, from all these many lives he selected the few that would best tell the story of them all; of the men and women in the buildings and of the first responders in the streets, of every citizen of the United States of America and, of course, of his own fear, anger, and hope.
 
And it’s okay to see what you need to see, says the artist. “Abstract art is like music in that when you listen to a song, everyone has different ideas about it, feels different emotions because of it. Even the same person listening to a piece at different times will feel differently. That’s true of abstract art. As a viewer, you can interpret it for yourself as well as seeing what the artist made. That’s what I like about abstract art: you get a chance to participate.”

To the artist, the imagery of the sculpture is that of a book. “The geometric shapes are the pages as well as iconic images representing the World Trade Center, while the organic shapes are in motion,” Barrett said. What sort of motion, he leaves to the viewer to decide.
  
Barrett began by crafting many more organic shapes than he used, giving weight and mass to his emotions and finding catharsis in the act of self-expression. Then, like a writer penning a history, from all these many lives he selected the few that would best tell the story of them all; of the men and women in the buildings and of the first responders in the streets, of every citizen of the United States of America and, of course, of his own fear, anger, and hope.
 
And it’s okay to see what you need to see, says the artist. “Abstract art is like music in that when you listen to a song, everyone has different ideas about it, feels different emotions because of it. Even the same person listening to a piece at different times will feel differently. That’s true of abstract art. As a viewer, you can interpret it for yourself as well as seeing what the artist made. That’s what I like about abstract art: you get a chance to participate.”

Boaz Vaadia was born on a farm in Israel in 1951. He moved to New York City to study art in 1975 on a grant from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.  His compelling works have won him audiences worldwide.

His materials, slate and bluestone were formed by layers of sediment compressing over millions of years.  He hand carves slices of the stone with a hammer and chisel, (shaping the layers like a topographical map), and stacks the slabs until the graded silhouette of a person, animal or group emerges.  His process parallels natural transformations in stone, and also recalls ancient methods of construction that relied on the cut and weight of the stone rather than on mortar.

He then pairs them with glacial boulders which function as counterpoints to the figures.  These boulders settled in the New York Bay area during the ice age. Most of them are excavated from construction sites within 20 blocks of his studio.

Sculptures are later cast using the "lost wax" method. This is the most precise casting technique in existence, insuring accurate reproduction of the original stone sculpture and exquisite detail of the stone’s texture. Lost wax casting dates back thousands of years and is a fascinating process. While modern methods and materials have improved the technique, it is still an extremely labor intensive and expensive process.

One of the leading sculptors in Britain after World War II, Lynn Chadwick is well known for both abstract and figurative works that embodied the tensions of the post-war era. His precariously balanced and monumental geometric figures have brought him international renown.

Lynn Chadwick was born in London in 1914.  He worked as an architectural draftsman in the late 1930’s and served as a pilot during World War II.  Though his family appreciated the arts, they dissuaded him from pursuing formal training in sculpting, pointing out the difficulty of making a living in the arts in Depression-era England.

Chadwick’s art career began in 1950 at his first solo exhibition in London which featured mobiles similar to those by Alexander Calder, whose work at the time was unknown to him. He soon eliminated the kinetic element of his sculpture but continued to use construction and assemblage methods rather than carving or modeling.

One of the leading sculptors in Britain after World War II, Lynn Chadwick is well known for both abstract and figurative works that embodied the tensions of the post-war era. His precariously balanced and monumental geometric figures have brought him international renown.

Lynn Chadwick was born in London in 1914.  He worked as an architectural draftsman in the late 1930’s and served as a pilot during World War II.  Though his family appreciated the arts, they dissuaded him from pursuing formal training in sculpting, pointing out the difficulty of making a living in the arts in Depression-era England.

Chadwick’s art career began in 1950 at his first solo exhibition in London which featured mobiles similar to those by Alexander Calder, whose work at the time was unknown to him. He soon eliminated the kinetic element of his sculpture but continued to use construction and assemblage methods rather than carving or modeling.