Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, and Susan Silas at Catskill Art Space
Livingston Manor, NY—Catskill Art Space (CAS) will present an exhibition of work by Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, and Susan Silas. The exhibition opens on Saturday, May 3, with an artist talk from 3 to 4 p.m. and a reception from 4 to 5 p.m.; it remains on view through June 21.
Wade Kramm's Wall Fragments jolt perception and manipulate space by strategically placing mirror-like portals on the gallery's walls, floors, and corners. These perceived architectural realities made from building materials (such as drywall, molding, floorboards, and doors) expand our perceptual awareness while also making us cognizant of the perceptual process we use when constructing the world by looking at it. Standing in front of each piece, the phenomenological experience fluctuates between simply seeing the materials as materials and a perceptual/physical engagement with the new spaces within the surrounding architecture. Kramm's art explores Minimalism, architecture, and perception to reshape the viewer's engagement with the gallery space.
Howard Schwartzberg will present work that explores his evolving language of painting, investigating how canvas and paint interact beyond traditional illusion. Rejecting conventional rectangular formats, he seeks to expand the painting's possibilities by questioning its structure and presentation. His process, influenced by reverse brainstorming and a respect for art history, involves repurposing existing visual languages to uncover new creative directions. Through this approach, he challenges material boundaries, embracing painting as an exploration of space, time, and transformation rather than mere image-making.
After delivering a eulogy for her mother, Susan Silas considered how she would be eulogized and what ideas and entities outlive us. Silas has created work that responds to contemporary concepts of immortality, particularly Whole Brain Emulation, which proposes uploading human consciousness to an inorganic substrate—an idea largely discussed by men and based on the assumption that mind and body can be separated. To explore this, she created an avatar to house her hypothetical brain upload and extended the concept into three sculptures in the form of manipulated busts of her likeness. The works are a long-standing inquiry into embodiment and how technology reshapes our understanding of selfhood.
About the Artists
Wade Kramm is an installation artist based in New York and Pittsburgh. His work has been exhibited at Piero Atchugarry Gallery (Pueblo Garzon, Uruguay), Tapir Gallery (Berlin, Germany), Cue Art Foundation (New York, NY), Odetta Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Space 776 (Brooklyn, NY), Sammer Gallery (New York, NY), Concept Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA), Esther M. Klein Art Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); Athens Contemporary Museum of Art (Athens, GA); Expo Chicago (Chicago, IL), and Art Project Fair (Verona, Italy). Kramm received his M.F.A. in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.
Howard Schwartzberg was born in 1965 in Coney Island, Brooklyn. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, and his Master's in Education from the University of New England, Maine. Schwartzberg began showing work in 1990 at The Drawing Center and Stux Gallery. He has had solo exhibitions at Momenta Art, Silverstein Gallery, Dorsky Gallery, and most recently at the Private Public Gallery in Hudson, NY. After twenty years of focusing on art-making with Education, in 2020, Schwartzberg retired from the NYC Public School System, and In 2016, he began making his paintings again.
Susan Silas has had recent solo exhibitions at The University of Kentucky Art Museum, Koli Art Space in Istanbul, Studio 10 in Bushwick, and CB1 in Los Angeles, as well as group exhibitions, including BIENALSUR 2024, Cuvo 2023 in Spain, CURRENTS 2021 in Santa Fe, and WRO2021 REVERSO in Wroclaw, Poland in 2020, along with shows at Wasserman Projects in Detroit, bitforms gallery in New York, and Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken in Germany. She has also participated in recent panels sponsored by Horasis USA, The Wiener Holocaust Library in London, and the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge.
Long-term Installations
Following a major renovation and expansion, Catskill Art Space reopened in October 2022 with a long-term presentation of James Turrell’s Avaar (1982) in a custom-built gallery on the building’s second floor. A room-sized installation, Avaar is an important example of the artist’s early, wall-based “aperture” works, which function by creating two areas within a room. There is a “viewing space,” where one stands to see and experience the work, and a “sensing space,” which is an ambiguously defined area of diffused light. Avaar is one of the rare examples of Turrell’s aperture works to make use of white lighting only; no colors will be present in the installation. This work is in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum, which has granted CAS a special long-term loan to exhibit the work. The presentation at CAS marks the first time the work has been shown since the 1970s, giving audiences from the Catskills and beyond the rare opportunity to experience a major Turrell work that has not been seen in nearly five decades.
On the second floor’s central landing, Sol LeWitt’s vibrant Wall Drawing #992 unfolds in three sections, each consisting of 10,000 straight lines drawn in color marker, to create a mesmerizing arrangement of primary colors. On the fourth wall, presenting LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #991, straight, arced, and organic lines will encompass the wall in black marker and pencil. The conceptual, minimalist artist conceived guidelines for his two-dimensional works to be drawn directly on the wall. Much like Turrell’s Avaar, the LeWitt works were realized for CAS’s space; in this instance, they are generously loaned by the artist’s estate. This work was overseen by a draftsperson, who determines the length and placement of the lines, and executed by five artists local to the area over nearly two weeks.
The newly realized performance space on CAS’s second floor hosts British sculptor Francis Cape’s A Gathering of Utopian Benches—an installation of meticulous copies of benches built and used by communal societies. Cape’s installations have always argued that design and craft express belief. Utopian Benches, which has toured extensively throughout the US, was built from poplar grown near Cape’s studio in Narrowsburg, NY. To be considered both as contemporary sculpture as well as furniture that visitors can actively use, the benches reference the societies who first used them, inviting visitors to utilize them for exchange, discourse, and community. The installation, which is meant to be used by visitors both for contemplation and may be used for performance seating, overlooks an expansive wall of windows onto the Willowemoc Creek.
Ellen Brooks inaugurates an intimate gallery space, framed by a partially open staircase, with Hang (2022), an installation suspending over 30 feet of scrolls of film negatives from the ceiling. The artist hangs transparencies and negatives in all formats and from clips attached to the ceiling, mimicking the practice of film photography. Hanging negatives reference the surrounding natural landscaping, evoking a cascading waterfall with coils of film collecting on the ground floor gallery.
About Catskill Art Space
Catskill Art Space (CAS) explores contemporary art practices of emerging and established artists. Through exhibitions, performances, classes, lectures, and screenings, CAS fosters creative community in the Catskills.
Established as Catskill Art Society in 1971, CAS reopened in October 2022 as Catskill Art Space following a major renovation and expansion of its multi-arts center, located in the picturesque hamlet of Livingston Manor in the Western Catskills. CAS presents a rotating slate of exhibitions, performances and other events featuring national and regional talents, alongside long-term installations of works by James Turrell, Sol LeWitt, Francis Cape, and Ellen Brooks. Learn more at catskillartspace.org.
