Stephen Lewis, November 2020
The November Art Exhibition, “A Season in Hell" is curated by Gary Mayer and features four artists Deirdre Day, David Fox, Stephen Lewis,
Steven Lewis
The November Art Exhibition, “A Season in Hell,” curated by Gary Mayer with a special bathroom exhibition, “The Inferno,” features four artists Deirdre Day, David Fox, Stephen Lewis, and Gary Mayer, and opens on September 7, 5-7 PM, and will be on display from Saturday November 7 to Saturday, November 28, 2020.
New Normal health concerns are a primary. The customary Green Kill opening of beverages with finger foods will be covered for protection. If you wish to come on opening day, please understand that 10 people are permitted in the gallery at one time, that all attendees must were face masks, and we will us a “Non-Contact Infrared Digital Thermometer” and “Pulse Oximeter Blood Oxygen Level Monitor” for screening. There were be outside seating for your convenience. Green Kill is equipped with a heat pump so the air is constantly refreshed and the space is, as always, sanitized.
A Season in Hell
What is the meaning of Hell? Certainly it’s a series of just rewards in the Christian world for immoral behavior accumulated over a lifetime. In the more modern world, Hell could also be a state of mind subjected to mental torture and doubt: “I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced in every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it.”
-Arthur Rimbaud, “A season in Hell”
In 2020, With a President who seems to lack any moral compass, guilt, or Christian doubt, “A Season in Hell” becomes harder to define in moral terms, in the immediate sense, we are left with the Covid virus as a temporary form of Hell that we are subjected to, a plague of locusts offering no parable only destruction. The existential state of hell referenced by Rimbaud becomes our collective Nadir, moral judgements are governed by political expediency, science is denied and there are no lessons learned. We have destroyed causality, by that I mean: we have broken the scientific and oddly moral law of cause/effect, by separating current actions from any acknowledgement of their implications on the future. We deny things like carbon emissions being related to climate change, masks being effective in controlling the spread of an airborne virus. Life becomes an eternal groundhog day repeated over and over again existing forever in the present with no acknowledgement of the future.
Surely this is “A Season in Hell” that Dante describes in “The Inferno” a state of eternal suffering with no future?
“A Season in Hell”, also features a site specific bathroom installation by curator Gary Mayer, abetted by the musical selection of the gallery director Mr. David Schell who refers to it (and possibly to our times) as, “the most terrifying Bidet in town.”
Stephen Lewis
Steven Lewis, “untitled.”
Stephen Lewis is a painter and printmaker who is work is primarily concerned with art of observation of both the sociopolitical and natural world. In that sense, his work is unique in that it inhabits two distinct genres; naturalism and political art, but the artist sees his practice as incorporating the same principals in the creation of both bodies of work -they are tied together by the artists unique ability to articulate realities that only become obvious thru monastic observation and study.
“The message that American pop culture is polluting the world isn’t anything new. But, Lewis sends it in such an over the top manner that the viewer gets pulled into the imagery. How a person who looks as serene and contemplative as Lewis does in his self-portrait can channel so much anger into his paintings is anyone’s guess. But it isn’t just the anger that makes his work compelling it’s the skill with which he translates it into art”
Ferdinand postman, the Washington post
While in Washington, dc he was one of the co-directors of signal66 a 3000 sq. ft. gallery and exhibition space that was widely accepted as the dominate gallery in the city during its tenure.
His work has been reviewed or featured in diverse publications including; the Washington post, art news, timeout, high times, casa vogue, and the New Yorker.
He currently resides in Port Ewen NY with his wife and daughter and is the co-publisher of the art / satirical print newspaper” The Quiet American”. He currently records under the moniker “the royal wylds” and is attempting to re invigorate plein aire painting in a way that doesn’t suck.