Jeff Christensen, Bonnie Rychlak, Heidi Schlatter opens at Catskill Art Space on August 30
CATSKILL ART SPACE
Livingston Manor, NY—Catskill Art Space (CAS) will present three exhibitions from Jeff Christensen, Bonnie Rychlak, and Heidi Schlatter. The exhibition opens on Saturday, August 30, with an artist talk from 3 to 4 p.m. and a reception from 4 to 5 p.m.; it remains on view through October 25. Catskill Art Space is pleased to present The Dick Gibson Show: Six Paintings, 2015–2021 by Christensen, alongside new sculptural works by Rychlak and an immersive installation by Schlatter. These three artists offer distinct, materially driven explorations of history, architecture, memory, and the built environment.
In The Dick Gibson Show, Jeff Christensen delves into the visual detritus of the past, centering a series of paintings inspired by a set of found photographs from the 1960s—images of an anonymous DJ interviewing pop performers. With a nod to artist Neo Rauch’s counsel to “explore the caves of your own mind rather than the caves of strangers,” Christensen uses the ephemera of others to animate a vivid, personal studio practice. His paintings embed the dynamic relationship between interviewer and subject within the swirling, ambient force of music, offering intimate glimpses into the artist’s imaginative world.
Bonnie Rychlak’s sculptural project continues her long-standing experimentation with wax and encaustic, addressing themes of feminism, materiality, and urban life. Her work centers on the sensuality and vulnerability of form—melting wax into fabric, casting it, painting with it, and coating wood and plastic surfaces. The resulting pieces are tactile and enigmatic, often described as “quirky objects of contemplation” that challenge conventional distinctions between the organic and the constructed.
Heidi Schlatter’s critically oriented practice spans photography, sculpture, and installation. Her work at CAS examines the intersections of architecture, power, and historical narrative, engaging with the American western landscape as both a mythic ideal and a site of environmental and political consequence. The exhibition features imagery of the Alaskan pipeline, gold mining remnants, and a collapsed miner’s shack, printed on reflective aluminum panels that shift appearance with changing light. This marks the second installment of her ongoing series addressing American expansionism. Schlatter’s digitally manipulated images disrupt architectural space, amplifying the viewer’s awareness of place while distorting familiar structures.
About the Artists
Jeff Christensen is a New Orleans and Roscoe-based artist. He worked for over 20 years as a graphic designer, art director, and illustrator before relocating upstate with his wife Sue Barnett, where they ran Hamish & Henry Booksellers and co-founded the Dry Goods Arts Association. He designed the first seven Trout Parade posters and was instrumental in shaping Roscoe’s creative identity throughout the 2000s.
Bonnie Rychlak is an artist and occasional curator whose work has been exhibited extensively in the U.S. and Japan. She received her BA from UCLA and her MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Rychlak has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the American Academy in Rome, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and Surnadal Billag A/S in Norway, among others.
Heidi Schlatter is a New York and upstate-based artist originally from New Jersey. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including MoMA PS1, Hallwalls, Galerie Erna Hecey (Brussels), and the Daros Collection (Zurich), among many others. She is the recipient of grants from NYFA, Art Matters, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and has held residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and Kunstlerhaus Boswil. Schlatter holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.
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.
