Roland Kulla at George Billis Gallery

Last weekend, I headed to the Beverly Art Center to pack up the Breaking Criminal Traditions exhibition. The Center is about forty minutes south of the Loop. The traveling exhibition is a composed of work from fifteen artists from around the country… all with content dealing with human rights issues. A new version of the exhibition will be presented this fall at The Art Center in Highland Park. I’ll be posting more on this show later this summer.

Roland Kulla, Queensboro, acrylic on canvas, 60x45"

On the way to Beverly, I stopped by the Back Of The Yards neighborhood to visit Roland Kulla's studio. Roland has been a friend for the last twenty-plus years and he just completed a new series of paintings for a show at the George Billis Gallery in New York. The show opened tonight but I was lucky enough to get a private preview.  

One of the walls in Roland Kulla's studio, displaying, among others, [right] "Brooklyn III", acrylic on canvas, 60x48"

With two pieces sold prior to the show opening, the quality of the work continues to be amazing. Kulla's new body of work plays with compositions ranging from hyper realism to abstraction... well, a version of hyper real/abstraction. The "abstraction" is truly created by the cropping of the image and the final composition. My personal preference leans toward the abstract work, which seems to symbolize the barriers we need to navigate to get through to a "blue sky".

The paintings of Roland Kulla will be on display at the George Billis Gallery through June 21st. The Billis Gallery is located at 525 West 26th Street, Ground Floor [Between 10th and 11th Avenues] New York, NY 10001.
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Prior to the Reception... Breaking Criminal Traditions

Images by participating Artist, Sergio Gomez

Last night, The Beverly Art Center hosted a reception for "The Art of Influence... Breaking Criminal Traditions"--an exhibition created to raise awareness of global criminal traditions. Each piece of art, included in the exhibition, has been chosen to allude to the human rights issues at hand. I've selected pieces that straddle the line between the dark reality of the world and the intense beauty of empowerment and freedom. The work may be interpreted in either light. Last evening, many of the artists were in attendance for the festivities.

The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, prints, photography and sculpture by fifteen fine artists from around the country. The exhibiting artists are: Corinna Button, James Deeb, Sheila Ganch, Clair Girodie, Sergio Gomez, Andrea Harris, Paula Kloczkowski Luberda, Richard Laurent, Kathy Liao, Zoriah Miller, Nancy Rosen, Lorraine Sack, Valerie Schiff, Barbara Simcoe, and Anne Smith Stephan.

The Breaking Criminal Traditions exhibition continues through May 18th. All of the exhibited work is available for purchase. The Beverly Art Center is located at 2407 W. 111th Street, Chicago, IL 60655
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