1. Portraits: Works on Paper by Joe Radoccia, Studio Hart; 2. Joe Bochynski, Mimicry 5, BT&C Gallery; 3. Mothing: Life Beyond the Edge of Awareness print media by Joseph Schee, Indigo Art; 4. John E. Drummer, Untitled Diptych (51), 1997, BT&C Gallery; 5. Claud Monet, The Ice Floes, The Albright Knox Art Gallery

> by peter soscia

Some consider the natural beauty of fall foliage a work of art in its own way, and while there’s plenty of beauty to be found in the explosion of colors outside during the fall, inside, local art galleries are matching that beauty with the many exhibitions on display throughout the season.

Things are already underway at Studio Hart on Allen Street with the opening of UNCLAD: Male Figurative Works. The show features artwork from many local male artists, featuring representations of the male form. The idea behind the survey is to bring the male form back to being a major subject of art, as it was in past centuries. “The artworks that they have created represent their widely divergent perspectives of the male body and the results include political and social commentary, allusions to classical art history, and sensual depictions,” as described in a press release from Studio Hart. While the UNCLAD: Male Figurative Works show will highlight the male body until September 26, in October, Portraits: Works on Paper by Joe Radoccia, puts the focus on the face. “The goal with these portraits is to explore working in a much larger scale than I have in the past, while sustaining an intimate engagement between the subject and viewer. I am seeking to create not just big representational images of men, but also psychological portraits of individual emotional identities,” said artist Joe Radoccia. His large scale painted and drawn portraits will be on display at Studio Hart from Friday October 2 until October 31.

By taking a walk down Allen Street, you can go from viewing the male form to the moth form with Joseph Scheer’s Mothing: Life Beyond the Edge of Awareness, currently display at Indigo Art until October 4. Scheer’s body of work documents moths with digital images greatly enlarged. “[Scheer] goes on expeditions to find moths with the idea that these are things in our environment that we are not really aware of. Also, the idea is to not only bring attention to these species, but to become more sensitive to things that exist in our world,” said Elisabeth Samuels of Indigo Art.

Opening on Thursday, September 10, Body of Trade & Commerce (BT&C) Gallery at 1250 Niagara Street will be opening its first group thematic show with Chasm, featuring the works of Joe Bochynski, John E. Drummer, and Pam Glick. According to BT&C Gallery Director Ann Kaplan, it was Glick’s work that inspired the show’s title. “I titled the show thinking about her series of Niagara Falls paintings,” said Kaplan. “I took this idea of a chasm, and Drummer and Bochynski’s relate to this theme in different ways, but it really starts with Glick’s literal depictions of Niagara Falls. Although, her paintings are very abstract and you wouldn’t necessarily know you’re looking at the falls unless you read the title,” said Kaplan.

Chasm will be the first show to display John Drummer (more famously know as “Jack,”) artwork since 2007. Drummer passed away in 2013. “I’m especially excited to be hanging Drummer’s work. This is the first time that his work has been shown since 2007, and it is the first time that these canvases have ever been shown. The show is an announcement that BT&C is now representing the collection of this late artist’s’ work. Hanging his work next to Joe [Bochynski] and Pam [Glick’s] work really helps illuminate all three of the artists’ pieces,” said Kaplan.

Along with viewing Drummer’s never before seen work and Glick’s work that was inspired by the local area, patrons will also have a great opportunity to see a young emerging artist in the Brookyn-based Joe Bochynski. “[Bochynski] is fresh out of school and is ready to start making waves. He works in tile, and his work relates really well to drummer’s canvases,” said Kaplan.

Friday, September 11 brings the opening of Mystic North: Burchfield Sibelius, and Nature, at The Burchfield Penny Art Center at Buffalo State College. The exhibition highlights the paintings and drawings of Charles E. Burchfield, who interpreted the sounds of music and nature to artwork on paper and canvas. There are many other exhibitions currently open, and opening through out the fall at the Burchfield Penny Art Center. To see the full list visit burchfieldpenney.org/exhibitions.

Late September brings even more art exhibitions to the area, with the big night being September 25, as the Buffalo Arts Studio (BAS) will hold an opening reception for three different shows. Teachers from the Buffalo Arts Studio’s education program will get their chance to show their own pieces with the BAS Teaching Artist Exhibition 2015. The exhibition will feature works by BAS’s teaching artists including Mary Ellen Bossert, Richard Christian, Kayla Leach, Stacy Robinson, Tom Rojek and Deb Stewart.

The opening reception also brings Elizabeth Gemperlein’s Fool’s Paradise to the gallery. Much like Joseph Sheer’s Mothing: Life Beyond the Edge of Awareness, the exhibition touches on the struggle between man and nature.

“Gemperlein draws compelling images depicting nature’s fragility caught in man’s interior world—the impact of human excess and consumption and the struggle for its dignity. It tells the story of animals forced to inhabit a hostile environment, where humans are sometimes passive witnesses and a distant romantic landscape laments a loss of a more balanced co-existence. The images are meant to haunt us and remind us of our most basic fears, our ability to survive, and the persistence of nature,” as described on buffaloartsstudio.org.

The largest of the three exhibitions at BAS comes from Marissa Lehner with Anima Mundi. “Lehner creates sculptures and spaces that are poetic yet accessible for her audience. Through combinations of simple forms and textures, she provides an immersive, sensory experience for the viewer. Her themes and materials weave together, playing off each other and lending context and meaning from their use and relevance in our daily lives. Her work binds together themes such as birth, death, hope, fragility and futility, and the contradiction that creates tension between them,” as described on buffaloartsstudio.org.

At the Albright Knox Art Gallery, the fall season gets started on October 10 with the opening of Ecologies of Drama by Eija-Liisa Ahtila. The show will be the first United States career survey of the pioneering, Finnish artist. “This selected survey of the past twenty years of Ahtila’s multichannel video installations includes works from every period of her career, and it features the United States premiere of her newest video, the four-channel installation Studies on the Ecology of Drama 1, 2014,” stated in a press release by the Knox Gallery. “The installations included in Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Ecologies of Drama trace a central question posed throughout her work: how have drama and narrative historically been constructed, and how might we envision their new forms?”

Later on in the month, what Albright Knox Art Gallery describes as a “Landmark Acquisition,” will open on October 24 with Looking at Tomorrow: Light and Language from the Panza Collection, 1967-1990. The exhibit will feature the light and sound installations, as well as Minimal and Conceptual artworks from the celebrated Panza Collection at the Guggenheim Gallery in New York.

“The works selected for Looking at Tomorrow broaden our understanding of what art can be and represent some of the key innovations of the period...These works, selections from a 2015 acquisition of forty-five installations, photographs, films, sculptures, and drawings from the Panza Collection, join a group of seventy-one paintings, sculptures, and drawings that the AK acquired from the Collection in 2007. Together, these acquisitions significantly enrich the museum’s collection of Minimalist, Conceptual, and installation art.”

While the Looking at Tomorrow highlights the influential Minimalist artwork of the late 20th century, AKAG has just announced that on November 15 a new exhibition will highlight another important movement in art history with Monet and the Impressionist Revolution. The exhibition features landmark works by French painter Claude Monet and leading artists associated with the Impressionist movement of the nineteenth-century. “Monet and the Impressionist Revolution will reveal the arc of five decades of artistic innovation, from the late nineteenth-century plein-air painters, early Impressionists, and so-called post-Impressionists and Fauves, to the radical abstractions of Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky at the turn of the century.”

Other Fall Exhibitions

“PAPER.SCISSORS.ROCK” is currently on display through the rest of September at TGW at 497 Gallery, on Franklin Street.

Weather permitting, on October 2, Queen City Gallery will be hosting its final “Art Under the Stars,” as part of the First Friday Gallery Walks on College Street. Queen City Gallery will also be participating in First Friday Gallery Walks throughout the rest of the fall and winter at their gallery within the Market Arcade on Main Street.