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Yool Kim “Play Factory”
October 21st – November 18th, 2023Court Tree Collective proudly presents "Play Factory" by South Korean artist Yool Kim. This is the first solo show for this up and coming outsider artist. Her work demonstrates the artist's desire to use modern pop culture to soothe her emotional state of personal acceptance.
Summer Freestyle
July 29th – Sept 9th, 2023Opening Reception July 29th 3-6pm!
Court Tree Collective proudly presents Summer Freestyle. A salon-style group exhibition created to showcase a wide range of works to peak the interest of any art collector. Featuring art from Barbtropolis, Bill Brand, Derek Haffar, HelloMarine, Jacob Gerard, Jason Lustig, John Vitale, Jung Eun Park, (SALUT) Bradd Young, Saxon Quinn, Theo Bardsley, Toyameg, TRAVROC, and Yool Kim - this exhibit presents numerous international and local artists all brought together in one place. Come and enjoy the summer with us!
Click here ︎ to preview the collection!
Barbtropolis
Barbara Graetzer, or Barbtropolis, was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but is living as a modern-day nomad. Barbara spent many years of her life living in different countries and cities throughout the globe and became interested in art after finding herself unable to properly communicate in languages she didn’t fully understand. She believes that only the visual language can be truly universal and has devoted her life to creating a multitude of expressive images.
Barbara was formally trained as a graphic designer and illustrator while earning a BFA in Visual Communications from the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago and an MA in Illustration from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
Lately, combining her newfound passion for surfing, she's been experimenting with a new visual language that consists primarily of cheerful characters and creatures. “Surfing takes me back to my childhood state of mind and these characters do as well. I like bringing back that doodling inner child and producing images that are happy and positive."
Bill Brand
Bill Brand is a multi-disciplinary artist whose films, public artwork, installations, paintings and works-on-paper are exhibited worldwide in museums, galleries, microcinemas and on television.
Bill Brand’s artwork has been featured at Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Anthology Film Archive and Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art. He is represented by Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre, Paris. His films have been presented at major film festivals including the Berlin Film Festival, New Directors/ New Films Festival, Tribeca Film Festival and Rotterdam Film Festival.
Dallas Owens
Dallas George Wade Owens was raised in Hamilton, Ohio. He received his B.F.A. in painting and sculpture from Miami University of Oxford, Ohio in 2011. He moved to New York after graduation and is currently working on his MFA at Brooklyn College. His recent work explores the dark side of the human condition with figurative mash ups that refer to an increasingly short public attention span and an indifference to social misfortune.
Derek Haffar
Derek Haffar has cast a huge variety of things, from prosthetic horns for an overly aggressive Ibex for WCS to cracks in N.Y. sidewalks for trip and fall lawyers. Currently he is using the figure, concentrating on the subtleties of texture and moods. His work reflects a view that sees things coming together and falling apart all at once; slices of time. Although the recent work is sculptural it often crosses disciplines sometimes manifesting as photographic series or performances with the objects as props.
Derek is from the mid-Hudson valley, received his BFA from the University of Utah in drawing and painting; MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. He has worked for the wildlife conservation Society as an exhibit specialist and sculptor as well as many name artists and Galleries in N.Y. and internationally. He is based in Brooklyn N.Y now and is currently teaching 3 Dimensional design at Parsons School for Design Strategies in lower Manhattan.
HelloMarine
French Paris born artist HelloMarine is full of optimism and good vibrations which she transcribes into her intensely colourful paintings, illustrations and print editions.
After a childhood in the South of France, and some studies in the UK, Marine has been working for various clients all over the world for the last 14 years as well as exhibiting her personal work in galleries. Currently, within her work Marine redefines the idea of still life today, painting familiar things with a twist.
With a striking simplicity and well curated colour palette, her work is both bold and memorable.Her goal as an artist is to deliver a sense of innocent and joyful escapism and create pieces that radiate positive energy back to the viewer.
Her ever evolving influences include the works of Matisse, Margaret Kilgallen, 70’s aesthetic, Henri Rousseau, nature and interior design..Clients include Dior, Lacoste, TruThoughts, The NY Times, Penguin, Zadig & Voltaire, to name a few.HelloMarine currently lives and works in Brighton, UK.
Jacob Gerard
Jacob Gerard is a true outsider artist with no formal training. His work is powerful, brilliant in creativity, and rich in humor. His colors, brightness, attention to details, emphasize a scale of production usually found in a well seasoned educated artist. In less than 2 years of painting exclusively he has amassed a small arsenal of paintings that would be considered a full career for many. Whether this is an attempt to never go back to construction or years of pent up creativity the current results will last a lifetime. At this moment in time all signs point to this being the beginning of a flourishing artistic career.
Jason Lustig
Jason Lustig is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from the S.F. Bay Area Jason’s work is largely informed by the environment he grew up in. Often moving between cities, mountains, and coastal areas, Jason uses these as the main settings of his paintings and then adds charmingly mischievous characters to live inside them. Using a bright and saturated color palette, his paintings capture moments in time from other worlds that seem to parallel our own.
John Vitale
John Vitale is a self taught multidisciplinary artist. His work was previously shown in Portland, OR, at Nationale, Chefas Projects, Association, and Never Lab, and in Wenatchee, WA, at Collapse Contemporary. Vitale is a creative director, graphic designer, as well as the founder and creative mind behind The Killing Floor skateboard brand.
Jung Eun Park
Jung Eun Park is a New York-based artist working in drawing and sculpture. He primary materials are graphite pencil, embroidery thread, and watercolor on coffee dyed Korean paper. Park investigates a meaning of home by observing a relationship with people, objects, and environments. Park captures imagery of her intimate life, which implying her psychological narratives, and records the moment with simple line and shape on her drawing. Simplified and symbolized objects, such as a house, plants, bricks, or pots are altered conceptually in her drawing to speak a universal language of a human being living in a new environment.
Jung Eun Park was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea where she received her B.F.A degree in Painting at KookMin University. She moved to New York in 2005 for her M.F.A degree in Painting at Pratt Institute. She has received artist grant and studio space fro the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been widely exhibited in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Park is currently an artist in residence of Chashama Visual Arts Program in Brooklyn, NY.
(SALUT) Bradd Young
Salut (Bradd Young), born in 1994, is a multi-media artist based in Rochester, New York. Young’s work references the cartoons that shaped his childhood through its vibrant colors and expressive characters. Young uses different paint techniques, like airbrush and impressionism, to create a sense of depth and absurdity. Oftentimes, his paintings can be seen as an arrangement of motifs and imagery, rather than an easily identified setting. Nature is a common theme and setting explored in Young’s work because it is one of the most easily attainable depictions of beauty through the lens of a child. When Young introduces characters to his pieces, they are done with a disregard to anatomy, focusing more on shapes and his trademark facial expressions. Whether he is working on a piece with a maximalist or minimalist approach, Young sets out to create a colorful dreamy aesthetic that provides the same feelings of escapism found in Saturday morning cartoons.
Saxon Quinn
Saxon JJ Quinn is a self-taught mixed media artist interested in the rough, the worn and the resilient. Born in country Victoria, Saxon spent his childhood surrounded by creativity. His artist mother tied a basket to the ceiling of her studio where, as a baby, he would swing while she worked. As he grew older, he began sketching, painting and experimenting with clay, at times accidentally defacing her works in the process.
After studying Communication Design and building his career in Melbourne, Saxon moved to New York City, immersing himself in the city and its urban patina.The beauty he found in the aged and weathered elements were cemented as the foundation of his creative work, and painting became the outlet.
Now, from his home in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Saxon primarily uses canvas, graphite and paint, layering hues, symbols and textures to create works that sway from the intentional to the unrestrained, the minimalist to the uninhibited. Each piece bears meaningful motifs alongside elements of mischievous humour, with each mark representing an aspect of his life. These marks are arranged precisely to induce a sensory effect, where a calming constellation can be found in a world of perceived chaos.
Sneakerwolf
Tokyo based artist. Japanese traditional graffiti arts “EDO-MOJI” established 17th century. By using the combined alphabets while merging it with the pure Japanaese “EDO-MOJI” aesthetic, a new graffiti style was born. Successfully held numerous solo exhibitions in Tokyo. and this art form was launched and chosen as the first ever pieces by a Japanese at the “URBAN MORPHOGENISIS” held in Moscow during the 2019 Mural Art Festival.
Theo Bardsley
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Theo Bardsley is a young rising figurative painter from London. He paints large scale portraiture, taking inspiration from his own daily life, and of those around him. Theo’s work merges the everyday with the historical, bridging the gap between past and present. Having studied the History of Art at the University of Manchester, Theo draws from a plethora of influences from the art historical canon. Theo’s layering approach to the canvas allows textures to build up, slowly a narrative comes to life, sometimes simple compositions of encounters at the pub, tied in with nods to historical events and figures. In turn the viewer can associate the paintings with a certain point in their own life, and by doing so Theo hopes transport them back to that moment.
Toyameg
Toyameg is an artist based in Fukuoka, Japan She describes her art as “pop with a pinch of poison. She holds solo exhibitions throughout Japan and provides illustrations to musicians, apparel brands, and other clients. Outside of Japan, she has participated in group shows and held solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, Hawaii, and Melbourne.
TRAVROC
Brooklyn based painter and designer, Travis “TRAVROC” Dommermuth, has been painting for nearly three decades. While having started doodling and drawing at a very young age, exposure to Hip Hop, graffiti and skateboard culture in New York in the early to mid 80’s helped mold him into who he was as a youth. Those worlds started him down a creative path and lifestyle that, while continuing to grow and branch out into many other areas throughout his life, his roots in these cultures continue to influence everything he works on to this day.
After obtaining an Associates in Fine Art in 1993 and a Bachelors Degree in Illustration from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan in 1997, he went on a very long stint as an illustrator/graphic designer and product designer working in the fashion industry in NYC. While he's moved away from the fashion industry to a degree, while still doing freelance design and illustration work, he has been deep in pursuit of his own personal work.
Having been exposed to and utilizing many different art styles, mediums and techniques over the years, he's never settled on one particular medium for too long, experimenting along the way. In turn, he uses a diverse mixed media approach to his work, with acrylics, inks, oils, oil pastels and spray paint all making their way into his work regularly. Additionally, nailing down one particular stylistic inspiration for him wouldn't be possible. From the aforementioned graffiti and skateboard cultures, to typography, calligraffiti and hand styles, from editorial illustration and caricature, to hyper-realism and still life, from portraits and figurative work, to abstract deconstruction, his style is an amalgamation of all of the above, creating its own unique aesthetic.
Yool Kim
Seoul-based artist Yool Kim navigates ideas of identity and subconscious mind through mixed media artwork. Her paintings focus on figures expressing a form of disorder. This is seen not through just facial expressions, but extends throughout the painting to express dissatisfaction and dizziness that come from the human experience. Kim’s work often highlights self expression that have not yet matured, an expression stunted in growth. Her desire is to organize these emotions through her artwork.
Kim was born in 1982 and graduated from Hongik University Graduate School of Industry in 2015 with a degree in Color Studies.
Click here ︎ to see more of Yool’s work.
“All the Smoke”
Group exhibition May 20th - June 24th, 2023Featuring Shantaye McMorrow, KAVES, Piero Penizzotto and PJ Cambe
Opening Reception May 20th 3 - 6pm!
Court Tree Collective proudly presents “All the Smoke”, a group exhibition featuring four local artists that blur the lines between pop culture and abstraction. PJ Cambe decollages are made from actual wheat pasted advertisements that flood the streets and subway stations of New York City. Michael “KAVES” McLeer, the world-renowned graffiti artist works within the medium of found objects. Transforming discarded billboard sized portraits to create new identities. Shantaye McMorrow’s dark, gritty paintings act as pavement to work out her own traumatic life events. Piero Penizotto uses traditional methods of paper mache to carefully document culture and the world around him. His work aims to build a visual language that everyday people and people from the art world can both understand. Together, these works serve as a brave avenue of self-discovery.Click Here to shop/view the collection!︎
Shantaye McMorrow
Shantaye McMorrow is an abstract mixed-media painter focusing in acrylic, ink, spray paint and various dry mediums. Shantaye grew up on the south shore of Long Island, New York but eventually ventured to the west coast to pursue a BFA in Art & Visual Culture Education at the University of Arizona, as well as, a Graduate degree in Applied Behavior Analysis at ASU. During her time in Arizona, Shantaye immersed herself in teaching Fine Arts in public schools, galleries and privately, while also, honing in on her own artistic practice. Currently, Shantaye lives in Queens, New York and works as a behavior intervention specialist for the developmentally disabled community.
Shantaye’s artwork is autobiographical and created to make sense of traumatic life events, as well as, less than desirable feelings. Raw, gestural marks work primarily with color and value to emphasize internal landscapes. Paintings focus on her own negotiation of memory; particularly looking at how these experiences have shaped her current understanding of intimacy. The work can best be described as cynical non-linear representations; seen over time, all at once. Emotions or behaviors that are pertinent at the time of the work rise to the surface and are explored through intuitive mark-making. The artistic process is an active inventory of personal archetypes, allowing for connections to be drawn, with the goal of uncovering origins. The journey from start to finish, acts as a catharsis, allowing for connection to primal knowing and higher self.
KAVES
Michael ‘KAVES’ McLeer is a man of faith.
For McLeer (b. Brooklyn, 1969), faith and spirituality are derived not from a theistic higher power but from a rich fabric of personal memories firmly anchored to a sense of place. That place has always been but one:Brooklyn. McLeer’s work has continually been inspired by the crumbling, many-faced Brooklyn of the 1970s and 1980s in which he was born and raised.
McLeer has carried memories of this place in time and spent years recounting them as a kind of folklore through the formats of graffiti, music, and painting. He began making artwork in his early teens illegally spray painting subway trains, buses, and handball courts. This instilled in him a tendency of capitalizing onbold lines, high contrast, and fast mark-making. Graffiti also functioned as a form of storytelling and socialcommentary. It was a citywide bulletin board, a system of communication, and a platform for the youth forthe development of individual fable.
PJ Cambe
Brookyn based artist PJ Cambe’s work is inspired by the city he calls homes. His decollages are made from actual wheat pasted advertisements that flood the streets and subway stations of New York City. His background as a street artist and skateboarder led him into being a fine artist. Like many of his contemporaries he is self taught, an autodidact. Influenced by the DIY aesthetic, driven by finding one’s voice and style through the constant exploration of trial and error. PJ is also an accomplished street photographer, designer, DJ and skateboarder. He owns and operates the skateboard hardware company “Happy 88”. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. His work has been exhibited in galleries both domestically and abroad.
Piero Penizzotto
Piero Penizzotto (b. 1998) is a Peruvian-American artist born and based in Queens, NY. Piero’s practice, primarily sculpture and painting, is rooted in documenting the people, objects, locations, and the personal/communal experiences in his life that hold a sentimental value to him. He received a BFA from Hunter College (2022) and has recently placed third in Labor Art’s annual CUNY Contest (2021) with his painting “At a Glance”.
Future Primitive
March 25 - April 29th, 2023OPENING RECEPTION March 25th 3 - 6pm!!!
Court Tree Collective presents “Future Primitive”, a set of works that represent original approaches to artistic styles drawn from the ancestral past. Jeanne Tremel’s improvised sculptures—made from objects gleaned while beachcombing—fill a void of a modern day archeologist. Creating handmade instruments like fixtures from the past. The spiritual paintings of Michael McGrath render uncanny subjects—ghosts, floating faces, arched cats, monsters — in a playfully crude style, like the illustrations to some haunted, obscure folklore. Pushing this style further, Saxon Quinn’s compositions pose sketchy shapes on opaque backgrounds, in a messy arrangement that seems to encompass cosmic bodies and pop culture alike, following a tradition somewhere between cave painting and de Kooning. The scratched faces of Yool Kim’s paintings crowd her canvas like the chatty spirits of ancestors, outlined with manic precision in vivid colors. Together, these works suggest the persistence of the distant past within the work of contemporary artists.
View/Shop the collection! ︎
Michael McGrath
Michael McGrath lives and works in Rhinebeck, in New York's Hudson Valley. His recent work is inspired by his current upstate NY environment and its history, and also in his curiosity in the cults of mysticism, mythology and religion through the lens of naivety. He is interested in religion, magic and mythology, and also more mundane aspects of daily life. His ghosts and skulls symbolize death and afterlife, with a measure of happiness and hope. His faces are often gods, deities or the deceased, and he imagines that “…if there were gods, ghosts or magic, they would exist in nature and in the landscape; not just beings in the sky, but also in the ground, in the trees, in the flowers and in the animals.”
Michael’s work has bee exhibited in Rhinebeck, New York, Germany, Belgium, and a solo show at Fir Gallery in Beijing, China.
SAXON JJ QUINN
Saxon JJ Quinn is a self-taught mixed media artist interested in the rough, the worn and the resilient. Born in country Victoria, Saxon spent his childhood surrounded by creativity. His artist mother tied a basket to the ceiling of her studio where, as a baby, he would swing while she worked. As he grew older, he began sketching, painting and experimenting with clay, at times accidentally defacing her works in the process.
After studying Communication Design and building his career in Melbourne, Saxon moved to New York City, immersing himself in the city and its urban patina.The beauty he found in the aged and weathered elements were cemented as the foundation of his creative work, and painting became the outlet.
Now, from his home in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Saxon primarily uses canvas, graphite and paint, layering hues, symbols and textures to create works that sway from the intentional to the unrestrained, the minimalist to the uninhibited. Each piece bears meaningful motifs alongside elements of mischievous humour, with each mark representing an aspect of his life. These marks are arranged precisely to induce a sensory effect, where a calming constellation can be found in a world of perceived chaos.
Yool Kim
Seoul-based artist Yool Kim navigates ideas of identity and subconscious mind through mixed media artwork. Her paintings focus on figures expressing a form of disorder. This is seen not through just facial expressions, but extends throughout the painting to express dissatisfaction and dizziness that come from the human experience. Kim’s work often highlights self expression that have not yet matured, an expression stunted in growth. Her desire is to organize these emotions through her artwork.
Kim was born in 1982 and graduated from Hongik University Graduate School of Industry in 2015 with a degree in Color Studies.
Jeanne Tremel
Jeanne Tremel (b. 1960) is a visual artist who has shown her works throughout the NYC area, the US and abroad. Born in Minneapolis, her formal art education began at St.Cloud State University, Minnesota (BFA) and continued in Chicago at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA). Later, at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, she earned a
Certificate in Art Therapy. She has exhibited her work most recently with Court Tree Collective, Flatfile Gallery, Nancy Margolis Gallery, Pelham Art Center, David & Schweitzer Contemporary, Royal Society of American Art and Ground Floor Gallery.Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Time Out New York, and featured on many online venues, such as Artspiel, WoArtBlog, Woman Artist A Day, Left Bank Art Blog, Artefuse,Two Coats of Paint, and Gallery Travels. In November, 2015, she was interviewed about her work for The Huffington Post. She works in a wide range of media both 2D and 3D,alternating between oil and mixed media flat work and sculptural wall and floor pieces, installations, all made of found and collected materials and hand-made textile forms.She
also enjoys the challenge of painting en plein-air, especially seascapes. Jeanne has lived in Brooklyn for 29 years.
Jason Lustig “Creature Comforts”
January 21 – February 25, 2023Court Tree Collective proudly presents “Creature Comforts” by Brooklyn based artist Jason Lustig. A collection of works made between 2019 - 2022.
A full studio replica installed last week for Jason Lustig’s first solo exhibition “Creature Comforts” opening January 21st.
Jason’s work hits on many different levels and collectively there is a narrative taking place. Whether putting himself into the work as a cat or a lonely landscape of a new home, there is a visual common ground that brings them all together. The imagery demonstrates humility yet defines his modest style as one can see in the intelligence of his lines and color palettes. His work is reminiscent of the art style that was forged by "The Beautiful Losers” a style that influenced and still influences many of his generation. It’s the crossroads of street culture, nature, and folklore. His work is a refreshing comfort that we appreciate and value.
View the collection and available works here!︎
Jason Lustig is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from the S.F. Bay Area Jason’s work is largely informed by the environment he grew up in. Often moving between cities, mountains, and coastal areas, Jason uses these as the main settings of his paintings and then adds charmingly mischievous characters to live inside them. Using a bright and saturated color palette, his paintings capture moments in time from other worlds that seem to parallel our own.