Opening March 14th and continuing through April 27th, Forum Gallery will present Spring Forward, a group exhibition of thirty paintings, drawings, and sculpture encompassing the spirit of springtime, nature’s annual rebirth relished for its reinvigorating light, color, and flora and the energy it imparts, refreshing our vision for the future, propelling us into action.
Setting the mood with the melody of springtime will be the charming, Colored Bird, 1960, sculpted by Max Weber in painted bronze, alongside acrobats and mothers with their children that spring into play in three sculptures by Chaim Gross created between 1944 and 1968.
Eponymous with Spring is the season’s colorful displays, which we will celebrate in glorious floral works and still lifes by Claudio Bravo, Charles Demuth, Susan Hauptman, G. Daniel Massad, and Anthony Mitri.
Landscapes infused with vitality and Spring light by Benny Andrews, Robert Bauer, William Beckman, Davis Cone, Rackstraw Downes, and Tula Telfair will be on view alongside paintings by Guillermo Muñoz Vera featuring the gardens of the Alhambra and a New York scene by Raphael Soyer evoking civilizations awakening to the fresh days ahead.
Charging beyond the picture plane into an unchartered future is Alyssa Monks’ female protagonist enmeshed in botanicals in Maybe if I Try Harder, 2023; while Alan Magee’s larger-than-life metaphorical Compass, 2019, reorients us in an evocative arrangement of driftwood. Brian Rutenberg’s electric landscape abstraction, Pillow & Petal 6, 2023, cries out “Eureka!” in bolts of energy shot across the canvas in springtime hues.
Love is in the air in Clio Newton’s new lyrical charcoal of an embracing couple; while Michael C. Thorpe’s quietly poetic moment alone fishing on a picturesque lake, Da Boat, 2022, rendered in stitches and quilting, reminds us of times reconnecting with nature. Maria Tomasula contemplates our complex human make-up and relationship to nature in River, 2017-18; while in oils by Alan Feltus and Paul Fenniak, dreamlike visions and questioning insights ignite springtime ideals of rebirth and personal growth.