Mary Kocol: Bloom: New Architecture and Flowering Landscapes

and

Saturated Color, More or Less

June 2 - July 14 at Gallery NAGA

For the summer, Gallery NAGA presents two exhibitions: new work by Mary Kocol, the Boston-based photographer whose work is attracting increasing national and international attention, and a group show of a diversity of artists who employ, as a key element in their work, large passages of densely saturated color.

Mary Kocol - Bloom: New Architecture and Flowering Landscapes and Saturated Color, More or Less both run from June 2 through July 14.  A reception for the artists and the public will be held at the gallery on Friday, June 2 from 6 to 8 pm.  In addition, Mary Kocol will speak on her work on Saturday, June 10 at 2 pm.

Since her last Boston show in 2004, Mary Kocol has been shown broadly.  In 2005 she was given a solo exhibition at the Julia Margaret Cameron Museum on the Isle of Wight.  Also in 2005, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum acquired Kocol’s work for the second time and included her work in an exhibition at the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield entitled Aspects of Architecture: Photographs from the Victoria and Albert Collection.  This coming fall her work will be shown in Los Angeles in the Getty Museum’s exhibition Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection.

In the NAGA show, Kocol draws a link between recent architectural flowerings in the area and the annual drama of spring.  “I was really inspired by spring last year, the flowers and the light,” Kocol says.  “I experienced it in four different locations.  It was a nice way to prolong the season, as opposed to this year, which was pretty much washed out.

“I was also inspired by new architecture going up around Boston, imposing and beautiful.  I like photographing big new buildings, and, by exploring that direction, real estate becomes a sub-theme.”

Kocol’s iconic 2002 image of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge began a series that has led to images, included in the current show, of MIT’s Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center, which Kocol shot during construction, and of the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Saturated Color, More or Less is a show that attempts to look past differences of medium and content to examine how dissimilar artists use the formal and psychologically-charged impact of dense color.  While it is obvious that strong color can rivet our attention, our subsequent response can vary considerably.  We can be attracted or distanced, drawn in by the pleasure or held back by the forcefulness.

In the hands of diverse talents - painters Ken Beck, Masako Kamiya, Stuart Ober, Ed Stitt and Irene Valincius; photographers Morgan Cohen; and the great holographic artist Harriet Casdin-Silver - a spectrum of approaches and uses can be seen.

Gallery NAGA is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 5:30 through June and Tuesday through Friday from 10 to 5:30 from July 1 to 14.  From July 15 through Labor Day, the gallery is open by appointment.  Our thirtieth season (!) of exhibitions opens in September with new paintings by Reese Inman and Bryan McFarlane.