Lee Harvey Roswell: Soup n’ Crackers
San Francisco-based artist Lee Harvey Roswell returned to his home state of New York this month to make his solo debut in the Hudson Valley. Lee Harvey Roswell (such an inventive name should not be truncated) is a study in the playful and bizarre with such favorites as "Three Graces," his subversively silly behind-the-scenes take on the original, from his series "Stills are Still Moving."
â€I've watched painters haphazardly spill their paints, splatter them around, make great messes and still end up with nothing more than nothing,†writes Lee Harvey Roswell in The Nothing Manifesto—an irreverent artist's statement that's more interesting than many to read. “That said, I've also seen painters so studied and accomplished that for all their acquired skills they show nothing after nothing after nothing and each time it still it amounts to nothing. An overeducated cookie-cutter shaped like a zero. However, a skilled hand attached to the right nervous system … can elevate the very same materials, the very same nothing, to the loftiest heights of human revelation … and all out of nothing!â€
Remaining more or less on the fringes of the official art world, Lee Harvey Roswell hawks his humorously macabre work, think Norman Rockwell with today's snark and style, online. In addition to the show in New York (details below), you can catch him in a couple group shows currently in San Francisco and NYC. Check his site for more info.
Soup n’ Crackers
Through 31 March 2009
Zahra's Studio
496 Main Street
Beacon, NY 12508 map
tel.+1 845 838 6311
