Linda Warren Projects is pleased to present our summer solo exhibitions: Joseph Noderer’s “Horse Hill Waugh and Other Views” and William Eckhardt Kohler’s “Alchemy + Elements”. Both of these gallery artists reveal the source of their intuitive practice through amalgams of landscape and figure, rendered in an expressive and gestural hand. While Noderer looks to his immediate surroundings – which now happens to be his hometown – as means of self-exploration, Kohler refers to alchemical structures to examine intimate and universal cultural systems.

In “Horse Hill Waugh and Other Views” Joseph Noderer investigates his experience of returning to Western Pennsylvania after living in Chicago and Austin, Texas for a number of years. The artist’s roots have been a continuous presence in his work, but now, what were once romantic visions of his beloved hometown wane into candid reflections. Unable to separate himself from his history with the area, the current paintings run the spectrum from loving to critical, often times expressing both feelings at once. For Noderer, conveying a sense of the character of a region, instead of presenting an accurate recording of a place, – whether it be expressed as a landscape, a building or a person –results in what the artist understands to be a more accurate likeness of his environment. A prominent feature of Noderer’s paintings are his lush, rural landscapes with their dilapidated shacks, undomesticated trees, wild foliage, and dynamic palette of unusual greens. The artist disrupts these scenes by reintroducing the fluorescent into his work, with vibrant oranges and magentas, highlighting the tension between the natural and unnatural of each setting. Wooly, haggard trees are painted with the same rugged gesture as his quasi self-portraits. Eerie, apparition-like faces that are at once visually stunning and directly honest. Balancing delicately between the humorous and somewhat disturbing, the work offers a glimpse into the artist’s ambivalent relationship with his native land and those who live in it…including himself.

In “Alchemy + Elements,” William Eckhardt Kohler continues his preoccupation with passage and transformation and with the peaks and vales of emotional and spiritual experience. Relying on a small range of motifs (doors, windows, vessels, arcs, and rays) allows Kohler to improvise and create variations within his paintings. Even when abstract, the paintings have the ability to transform into landscapes, objects, and figurative narratives. However, there is more to this simple template of forms. The ambiguity and mystery of these structures allow for multiple interpretations – a door in the ground becomes a burial space or place of transformation; a dome becomes a sweatlodge, a place where spiritual work or cleansing takes place. Kohler views these paintings as meditations on life. An archetypal journey, the cycle of destruction and regeneration. The paintings are purposefully left open, allowing viewers to construct their own story and meaning from his cache of forms and images. While the taped-off lines, geometric forms, and complex layered imagery that characterize many of Kohler’s highly chroma landscapes are present in some of the paintings, others vibrate with loose painterly gestures. The artist moves organically through the work, allowing forms to converge into holistic compositions. Utilizing tonal and color shifts, each piece demonstrates Kohler’s commitment to both form and narrative and grants him the flexibility to glide between abstraction and the figure.

Linda Warren Projects is also proud to announce the inaugural use of our office space as Gallery O with a group show curated by William Eckhardt Kohler. “New York; New Friends” features a selection of works by Kohler’s colleagues in New York: Sangram Majumdar, Helen O’Leary, David Humphrey, Michael Berryhill, Tom Burkhardt, Katherine Bradford, Alexi Worth, Paul Gagner, and Kyle Staver. Kohler writes, “These are artists with whom I am in dialogue both artistically and verbally.” A self –imposed guideline for inclusion in this exhibition was the exchange of studio visits between Kohler and each artist.

Joseph Noderer’s work has been featured in venues throughout the country including the University of Arkansas, Tiny Park Gallery in Austin, and Corbett Vs. Dempsey and Devening Projects + Editions in Chicago. His work can be found in many prestigious private collections throughout the country, including Kirkland and Ellis in Chicago, as well in the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. His Paintings have been published in The Oxford American, New American Paintings, and Fresh Paint Magazine. Noderer attended Yale at Norfolk School of Art and Music, received his BFA from Tyler School of Art and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This is his sixth solo exhibition with Linda Warren Projects.

William Eckhardt Kohler is a Chicago and New York-based painter whose work has been exhibited in such venues as Brian Morris Gallery and White Box Gallery in New York, Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London, Elder Gallery in Charlotte, NC, the Beverly Arts Center, the University Club, and Aron Packer Gallery in Chicago, amongst many others. Kohler received a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This is Kohler’s fourth solo exhibition with Linda Warren Projects.

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Tags: Alchemy plus Elements, Chicago, Horse Hill Waugh and Other Views, Joseph Noderer, Linda Warren Projects, near west side, William Eckhardt Kohler