Artists Become Curators At Kehler Liddell

Jennifer Knaus’s portrait pulls in the viewer in five different ways. There’s the vivid color choices, the exquisitely rendered, phantasmagorically fecund hair. But perhaps more than anything, there’s the element as old as portraiture itself: the gaze of the subject of the portrait back at the viewer, direct yet complex. What is the subject thinking? And with a painting like this, it’s possible to take that question a step further: What is the subject thinking about us?

The connection between Knaus’s portraits and the work of fellow painter Sean Patrick Gallagher isn’t overtly stated, but it’s obvious when their works are put side by side. Gallagher doesn’t have the taste for the fantastic that Knaus has, and his color palette is more muted, more realistic, but he shares with Knaus the ability to capture complicated emotions in the facial expression of his subject, the sense that there’s a lot going on behind those eyes, and the subject isn’t going to tell us.

Gallagher, a member of Kehler Liddell Gallery, is the role of curator. Knaus is his invited artist. Gallagher and Knaus are just two of many participants in ​“Artist as Curator,” running now at the Westville gallery at 873 Whalley Ave. through July 28. The show, as described on the gallery’s website, ​“features accomplished New England artists working in a variety of media including ceramic, coding, collage, digital media, drawing, encaustic wax, found objects, glass, handmade paper, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. The common denominator … is a genuine admiration between the curators and their invited artists. The exhibit represents creative relationships: life-long associations, working partnerships, mentorships, personal inspirations, family connections and friendships.”

In some cases, as with Gallagher and Knaus, the aesthetic connection is plain to see. Member artist Marjorie Wolfe explains why she invited David Ottenstein as her guest artist by saying that his ​“pristine, ordered compositions draw you in and implore you to wonder about just how he managed to get that subject, that light, that image, that quality print. I think that the answer is this: nothing but a great eye and hard work.” 

In the pieces in the show, the quality she’s talking about is on full display. In four images, Ottenstein turns a window and a ladder, a porch, a squat row of shrubs, and — most successfully — a men’s room into lusciously rigorous images, full of strong forms and subtle shadows.

But the same could be said of Wolfe’s own work — her eye for bold forms, rich textures, shades of black and white that make a viewer stop and stare. She speaks of Ottenstein with admiration, but they are also, in a very real sense, artistic peers, and kindred spirits in what they choose to point their cameras at, how they choose to see.

In other pairings, the aesthetic connection isn’t so much of similar expression as mutual admiration. Member artist Hank Paper has chosen as his guest Graham Honaker. ​“As an abstract expressionist, his paintings and collages comment on contemporary society, with subjects ranging from potentially harmful political structures to the simple poetics of everyday life,” Paper writes of Honaker. ​“Influenced by existentialism, which emphasizes the act of creating, Honaker exercises his subconscious through auto-painting. Combining collage, abstract painting, and photography, Graham fashions a unique and pertinent link between our past and present that is smartly nostalgic, suggestively questioning, and completely eye-catching.”

Honaker’s work doesn’t resemble Paper’s own output at all, at least in the work seen around town in recent years. Paper has a penchant for travel photography, for street scenes that capture moments of poignancy and humor, often rendered in lush, cinematic color befitting the person who founded Best Video. Honaker, as Paper aptly describes, tends toward collages that often put culture in a blender, creating friction through juxtapositions, offering few easy conclusions but a strong sense of a wry worldview. Artists don’t have to resemble one another in their work for them to admire one another.

The connections among members and guests continue. They are teachers and students, family and friends. Or they are artists engaged in similar pursuits, from photographers with a proclivity to capture people on the fringes of things to artists who are both exploring digital media. Then there’s member artist Sheldon Krevit, who says of guest artist Dganit Zauberman that her paintings ​“require no words from me. They are the works of a painter who’s in touch with her medium. Her use of pigment transitions seamlessly into engaging scenes upon which I wish to linger, every time I see them.”

It’s easy to share Krevit’s fascination. Zauberman’s command of color and texture make her paintings eerie and emotionally moving, hovering somewhere between landscape and abstraction. Some paintings don’t need to depict a face to look through you; they say what needs saying when words fail.

“Artist as Curator” runs at Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Ave., through July 28. Member artists include William C. Butcher, R. F. Wilton, Brian Flinn, Eddie Hall, Frank Bruckmann, Gar Waterman, Hank Paper, Kate Henderson, Marjorie Wolfe, Mark K. St. Mary, Matthew Garrett, Penrhyn Cook, Rod Cook, Sean Gallagher, Sheldon Krevit, Sven Martson, Tom Edwards, Mary Burke, Chris Ferguson; guests include William C.Butcher III, Jim Fiora, Dan Gries, Craig Frederick, Jason Noushin, William Chickillo, Graham Honaker, Ruth Sack, David Ottenstein, Catherine Stein, Sean Kernan, Robert Lisak, Dru Nadler, Jennifer Knaus, Dganit Zauberman, Joe Fekieta, Linda Edwards, Eoin Burke, Steve Brennan. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.