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Above Images
1. Portals, Hampton Bays ©2018 Elisa Decker
archival pigment print
2. Brooklyn Window ©2017 Elisa Decker
archival pigment print
3. Huginn 1 ©2017 Elisa Decker
archival pigment print
4. Birthday on my Perch ©2018 Elisa Decker
archival pigment print
5. Mother Pigeon (portrait in Bushwick) ©2016 Elisa Decker
archival pigment print
Image at the bottom
6. Nine Huginns ©2017 Elisa Decker
9 archival pigment prints
Links to additional photographic images:
http://www.pwponline.org/member/view/elisa-decker
Decker’s photographic images are the result of an ongoing inquiry into the possibilities for transformation in the everyday. They celebrate serendipitous findings filtered through a painter’s sensibility, and often, humor. Texture, color, movement and ambiguity of scale come into play in works derived from both natural and inorganic sources. Conceptually, the work is simply about being present.
Other ongoing series include portraiture, street photography, flora and fauna, still life.
When photographing weathered walls in Marseilles during a Camargo Foundation photography grant in 2003, I was first drawn in by the colors, textures and abstract compositions that had informed my landscape painting. I soon realized that not just any wall would do. So what began as a purely formal study became an exploration of the seen and the unseen.This ongoing series of photographs documents my investigation of quotidian reality and its potential for transcendence. Discovered mostly on sidewalks, street pavements, walls, dumpsters and on construction sites, these easily overlooked motives resonate with me, suggesting portals to other worlds. -- Elisa DeckerOn January 1, 2011, Decker began shooting what she sees every morning from her Westbeth perch overlooking the Hudson River. A solo exhibition in 2014 at the Manhattan Borough President's Gallery featured 245 works from the series. They document the flow of time and represent a departure from the photographs Decker usually takes. Candid glimpses of narrative moments in peoples' lives, these cinematic sequences and leitmotifs record the transformation of a landscape as weather and season change, turning people and their animals into miniature figures in a living scroll painting.
Links to paintings and drawings:
http://www.saatchionline.com/profiles/index/id/5299
http://www.sketchbookproject.com/library/12200
Though anchored in reality, Decker’s paintings and works on paper have an otherworldly quality that invites the viewer on a magical journey. As the artist examines the ways in which nature corresponds with her internal life, her approach to realism takes a metaphysical turn. Organic weathered forms undulate in a shimmering dance. Mysterious crevices lead to secret places and hidden treasures. Swirling roots and limbs pulse and vibrate in a visceral landscape revealing the spectral, fairy-tale shapes of the imagination. Broad suggestive passages combined with attention to fine detail produce a combination of dreaminess and earthiness. Entering the worlds within worlds of these multi-layered pieces, the viewer is invited to partake in a participation mystique, a communion with the numinous in nature.
Elisa Decker received a B.F.A., summa cum laude from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She has exhibited extensively since 1975 and has work in the permanent collections of Pfizer Inc., Peter Hay Halpert, Lawrenceville Hospital, Bronxville,
NY, International Art Studio, Valievo,
Altos de Chavon, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado and in many private collections. Ms. Decker is an exhibiting member of Professional Women Photographers (PWP). In 2008, her work was featured in PWP magazine’s March/June Issue XXV.
A freelance art critic since 2004 (Art in America, Brooklyn Rail) Decker also organizes and leads art gallery walks, and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY), where she has been teaching drawing and painting since 2006, and writing intensive drawing since 2013.
Three art review links (more on LinkedIn)
http://brooklynrail.org/2015/11/artseen/leo-rabkin-a-tribute-1958-2015
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/thomas-bangsted/
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/drew-shiflett/
Selected Exhibitions, 2019
Circles
& Squares, Rick Wester Fine Art, NYC (6/13-
Abstracted
Reality (PWP), Atlantic Gallery, NYC (
Our Botanical World (PWP), Matted LIC, Long Island City, NYC (3/22-5/12)
Glimpses of Our World, Salmagundi Club, NYC (PWP), Magdalena Solé, juror (2/
Selected Exhibitions, 2018
Our Botanical World (PWP), Queens Botanical Garden, Flushing, NY (5/4-8/8)
Artist-Curator, Sympathetic Magic (31 artists), Westbeth Gallery, NYC (3/29-4/15) http://westbeth.org/wordpress/sympathetic-magic-group-show/
In Studio: BMCC Art Faculty Show, Shirley
Fiterman Art Ctr., NYC (2/14-3/24)
Solo show, Stones Speak, Jefferson
Market Library Gallery, NYC (Jan. 3-30)
Selected Exhibitions, Performances 2017
The Power of Tones (PWP), Jadite
Gallery, NYC (12/5-12/16)
Four on Paper, Westbeth Project Space (7/6-9/30)
Duality:
Glimpses of the Other Side, Islip
Art Museum,
(6/24-9/17)
Solo show, Chase Bank, 8th Ave, W. 12 St, NYC (8/31-12/31)
RE-SEARCH, BMCC faculty recent work, Shirley
Fiterman Art Center
(2/22-4/1)
Scene
on the Street, Jadite Gallery, NYC, juror: Meryl Meisler
(2/1-2/15)
Bastard (The Painted Bird: Part 1) La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, The Downstairs, NYC, in association with Pavel Zustiak / Palissimo, 1/4-1/8, performed with the Ensemble
Selected Exhibitions, 2016
Structure in the City, PWP, National Arts Club, NYC (5/16-5/31/16)
ART/ WORKS, BMCC faculty recent work, Shirley
Fiterman Art Center
(2/10-3/19)
Concerts on the Canal, slide show, Gateway City Arts, Holyoke, Mass. (Feb. 14)
Butterflies and Insects, San Diego Museum of Natural
History
(9/19/15-1/11/16)
Selected Exhibitions, 2015
Twyla Tharp's The One Hundreds, River to River, performed June 20
Whims of Weather, PWP, The National Arts Club, NYC, (5/18-5/31)
Spring Together, Medicine Show Theatre, NYC, Other Side of the Mirror, slide show for dance performance by Beth Soll and Janet Aisawa (4/10-4/12)
At this Moment: Recent Artwork by BMCC Faculty, Shirley Fiterman Art Center (2/18-3/24)
Selected Exhibitions in 2014
Small Wonders, PWP, Atlantic Gallery, NYC (12/9-12/20)
Hudson River Park Series, solo show, Manhattan Borough President's Office
(10/1-10/31)
Time Frames Marking Time, Westbeth Gallery, 19 artists (5/24-6/15),
co-curated with Barbara Lubliner
http://www.blurb.com/b/5911564-time-frames-marking-time
Interior Lives, National Arts Club, NYC (5/19-5/31)
Selected Exhibitions, 2013
Curate NYC, curator: Wim van Sinderen, The Hague Museum of Photography
NYC25, Westwood Gallery, NYC (10/25-11/14)
Crest Hardware Art Show, Williamsburg, New York (6/8-8/17)
Collective Currents, Contemporary Artists Guild, Manhattan Borough President Gallery (6/3-6/21)
Beasts & Bodies, Schema Projects, Brooklyn, New York (11/8-12/8)
Rising Waters: Photographs of Hurricane Sandy, Governor’s Island, ICP and the Museum of the City of New York (9/22-9/29)
Women Inspired, Grady Alexis Gallery, El Taller Latino Americano, NYC
(3/18-4/30)
Abundance and Scarcity, Calumet Photo Gallery, NYC (2/1-2/22)
In 2012, Decker's work was chosen for a MICA Alumni Exhibition, Spattered Columns/Art Connects New York. That summer she performed during the River to River Festival in Le Grand Continental, choreographer Sylvain Emard.
A solo show of Decker’s photographs of stone heads around the city was held at the Manhattan Borough President's Gallery in March 2010. The Ultimate Eye Foundation selected her photograph (Cursive Indigo) for Waking Dreams at Peninsula Museum of Art, Calif. (2008). She received a cash award for Incognito in a juried show at Kauffman Gallery, Shippensburg University, PA (2008).
A 30-year survey of Decker’s photographs, paintings and drawings was on view Oct 8-Nov 8, 2005 at the Westbeth Gallery.
Ms. Decker was awarded a 2003 Camargo Foundation grant and residency in Cassis France, which was followed by a solo exhibition of her photographs at Pfizer in 2004.
Other fellowships include the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, I-Park, Fundacion Valparaiso, Altos de Chavon, Chateau de Rochefort-en-Terre, Chateau de Lesvault, Fondation Karolyi, Ragdale Foundation, William Allen White Cabin, Villa Montalvo Ctr for the Arts and Ossabaw Island.
