Fooling the Eye, Or Filling the Eye With Treasures

   Two exhibitions in Kent – one of remarkable photography from Russia, the other showing work by five women artists – are welcome changes of pace from the usual holiday routine.

    At his eponymous gallery, Rob Ober continues his concentration on contemporary Russian artists with a show of the digital photography of Vladimir Kuprianov. As part of Ober’s Russian Artists in Residence Program, Kuprianov spent September in New York City, where he created a new series of pieces based on 19th- and 20th-century family photographs, both Russian and American.

   Educated and trained as a theater director, Kuprianov brings a theatrical sense of shifting time and reality to his work. Using digital techniques and tools, he juxtaposes images — one informing another or several others — to create often haunting montages, diptychs and triptychs. Sometimes he deconstructs an image, say of a family grouping, into layers that fool the eye into seeing what is essentially two-dimensional as three. Yet the layers remain separate, like sheets of acetate laid one upon another. These pieces are mostly shown in sepia or pale pastels.

   Kuprianov’s work questions the photograph as a record of reality. One particular work shows a family group from the front, but if you walk around the piece you see the same family from the back.  How can a photograph do this, you wonder.

   Other photographs are from past series created in Russia: The great composer Dimitri Shostakovich seems to sit stolidly, proudly, among ordinary Russian men, the very embodiment of the Communist house composer he appeared to be, but wasn’t. There is a lovely colored print of a Continued from page 5

woman eating a chicken leg at a picnic that captures the essence of a Russian forest in summer. And, similarly, “Ford� is a black-and-white montage of images from a small American town that, too, seems to speak of summer and family and home.

   A very different show —  this of work from five women – is the holiday season offering from Jane Eckert Fine Art. While mostly filled with paintings and watercolors, the show also features unique jewelry as art.

   Gabrielle Vallarino from Millbrook creates elegant jewelry combining semi-precious stones — many rarely seen — with exotic, unusual pearls and gold, silver, even brass.

   Watercolorist Mita Corsini Bland, also from Millbrook, gives her pieces the elegant quality you would expect from the illustrator of the book “Sister Parish Design: On Decorating.â€�

   Susan Rand of Salisbury is a frequent exhibitor whose work is realistic, moody, impressionistic, gentle yet strong. There is a waiting, expectant quality to her “Maine Room,â€� for example, as if someone just left or is about to enter.

   Jessica Tcherepnine, also from Millbrook, is a superb botanical artist, whose work will be included in a compendium of the flora at Highgrove, the Prince of Wales’s now famous estate in Gloucestershire. She is also a major contributor to the florilegium — a collection of watercolors and words about plants — on the gardens at the great Filoli estate south of San Francisco. Her work in the Eckert show is gorgeous.

   JoAnn Belson, from Los Angeles and the only non-local artist on show, is a favorite of Jane Eckert.  Belson’s portraits and other works in painting and collage are in-your-face, contemporary, very California. There is openness and a certain haunted quality to the work, as well as a slashing technique. She provides an interesting counterpoint to the other women.

    Ober Gallery is at 6 North Main St. (in the Village Barns complex) in Kent. The Kuprianov show runs through March 15, 2011. Hours are Thursday, 1 to 4 p.m.; Friday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. Call 860-927-5030 for holiday hours.

     Eckert Fine Art is at 27 Main St., #1. “Five Womenâ€� runs through Dec. 31. The gallery is open Monday and Thursday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Call 860-927-0012 for holiday hours.