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For Immediate Release: Apocalypse Show at Jay Grimm Gallery, Chelsea Jay Grimm Gallery at 505 West 28th Street, New York, will hold a three-person exhibition from July 12 through August 17, 2001, of work by Keith Duncan, David Newman and Mario Rizzi. There will be an opening at the gallery on Thursday, July 12th, from 6-8 P.M. The three artists make works that depict or reference the destructive and cleansing properties of fire.
Keith Duncan is a New York-based painter who infuses narrative images of urban life with a sense of the supernatural. Duncan will exhibit a large tableau based on the book of Revelations, wherein the four horsemen of the apocalypse descend upon the world. Hurling bolts of lightning and fireballs, they destroy the United Nations and New York City. The end of modern civilization is signaled by the computers and satellite dishes that feed the conflagration. Duncan currently is working on a large-scale painting for NASA, depicting the International Space Station. Duncan teaches art in several New York City institutions and received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 1997. He holds an MFA from Hunter College and received a Skowhegan scholarship in 1990.
David Newman creates work using books and wood bark as collage elements mounted on panels. He then applies color using oil paint and shellac. The pieces he will exhibit depict human limbs and skulls engulfed in fields of fiery reds and oranges. The splayed compositions and hot colors suggest an all-consuming inferno. The presence of books reinforces the notion that the blaze is destroying more than human bodies. Close inspection often reveals the title of the books, which are as often as not seemingly outmoded or useless. Thus, the artist implies that fire can sometimes be as useful as it is tragic. Newman is an alumnus of the New York Studio School who most recently had a solo show at the Slifka Center at Yale University. He is also a psychologist with a private practice in Manhattan.
Mario Rizzi lives in Berlin and Rome and works in a variety of media. He will exhibit photographs of burning bodies executed in a crematorium in Amsterdam. Created with the permission of the Dutch government, Rizzi's series of cibachromes records in vivid detail the disposition of human remains by fire. The dramatic colors and lighting and the gruesome subject matter etch themselves indelibly in the memory of the viewer. Rizzi is currently the Artist in Residence at the Kunstlerhaus Bathanien in Berlin and his work is in the touring exhibition "Il Dono", organized by Independent Curators International. Gallery hours for the summer are Tuesday through Friday, 11-5:30 P.M. and by appointment. Please contact the Gallery at 212.564.7662 or visit www.jaygrimm.com for images and additional information. 
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