WILD FLOWERS - AN EXHIBIT OF FINE ART AND DESIGN

SEPTEMBER 19 TO DECEMBER 1, 2007

The Gallery at Buck House
1326 Madison Avenue, New York City (entrance at 94th Street)
The exhibit is open by appointment.
For appointment, call 212-828-3123

Click here to view the "WILD FLOWERS" exhibition

Click here to view the gallery pictures

New York: Wild Flowers, an exhibition that explores the visual power of the flower in paintings, furniture and decorative art, will open on Wednesday, September 19 through December 1, 2007, at The Gallery at Buck House, 1326 Madison Avenue, (entrance on 94th Street), in New York. All of the artwork and furnishings will reflect Deborah Buck’s musings about flowers… on the wild side.

“I love nothing more than taking something and turning it on its head,” said Buck, whose Previous sold-out exhibitions included “Manhattan Glamour,” “Seeing…Blue,” and” Gems.” “Having identified the expected, I think it’s now time to use the flower as a vehicle for the unexpected,” said Buck. “Flower paintings have been considered light weight in the contemporary art world. They bring to mind sophomoric renderings of hand-picked sentimentality in a vase. However, once past that notion the connotation of flower begins to open and grow. Flowers symbolize fertility and fragility, a symbol of womanhood. They are anthropomorphic, must be nurtured and cared for and directly reflect their environment.”

Buck’s fascination with flowers started, as do many of her transitional ideas, in her painting studio. At a crossroads in her work, she stood in front of a blank canvas and was drawn to the forms and shapes of flowers. “My concern was as a woman painting flowers, I wouldn’t be taken seriously, but then I decided to let go of my preconceived notions. To my surprise, the flowers began to take on a life of their own; they could be whatever I wanted them to be. Then I began to think about Monet’s water lilies, Picasso’s flower women, Alex Katz’s tiger lilies and thought,” If these men can paint flowers, why can’t I? The flower paintings are some of the most serious, complicated and meaningful images that I’ve ever created. They seem to speak to an audience in a very direct way. “

“Wild Flowers” will encompass the flower as cartoon, architectural detail; pop icon; emblem of ornament; sexual metaphor; the originator of pigment (the first paints, after all, were made from flowers); and one of the premises of aesthetic theory.

Among the artwork, priced between $400 to $20,000 are:

- An eighteenth century Dutch still life of tulips and insects
- Alex Katz's lithograph “White Petunia"
- Mason Rader's “Fleur D' Bee” oil and encaustic on wood, 1999
- Peter Jones, chromogenic prints, super saturated color
- Margaret Murphy selections from Good Girls/Bad Girls series, oil on paper and wood,
- Wout Berger photos of a sewn wild flower installation
- Jed Devine, black and white photo, “Untitled, the Bethesda Terrace”, Palladium print
- Ying Li, “Sunflowers,” very thick, gestural, impasto abstract expressionist paintings, oil on canvas
- Raymond Saa,’ oil in wood
- 5' x 6' cibachrome print by Douglas Friedman, “Romania,” 2007

The furniture and decorative arts, ranging in price from $300 to $8,500, include:

- A pair of hand painted Louis XVI bergeres with embroidered flowered silk seats
- A mid-twentieth century settee covered in Osbourne and Little's “Easter Lily" gold embossed fabric
- Assorted Italian and Scandinavian mid-twentieth century ceramics depicting floral motifs
- Brass wall hanging of star flowers, signed by Curtis Jere
- Mid-twentieth century metal and enameled flower sculptures
- A rare enamel and brass Italian floor lamp with 3 flower heads as fixtures
- A Venetian gilt tile mosaic from a palazzo on the Grand Canal, circa 1870, depicting tulips
- A pair of gilded bronze French wall mounts by Delaunay circa 1920, Paris, lilies of the valley
- Hand- painted and gilded Italian mirror with ivy and flowers surrounding, by Palladio, 1950s
- Hand-painted, English, ceramic pieces en suite, circa 1870 by Minton

The furniture will be upholstered in the deeply saturated color of wild flowers and selected for their curvilinear similarity and reference to petals.

The Gallery at Buck House,
located at 1326 Madison Avenue, entrance on 94th Street,
is open by appointment only.

For additional information, phone 212-828-3123.