February 8 - March 6, 2024

Transcultural Enigma: Janet Goldner & Nieves Saah

Evil Plastic Blues: Vernita Nemec

Out of Body: Olivia Beens

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 8, 2024, 6 - 8pm
Artist Talk with Vernita Nemec and Olivia Beens: Saturday, February 24, 3 - 5pm
Janet Goldner Meet the Artist: Saturday, February 17 and March 2, 3 - 5pm

Carter Burden Gallery presents three new exhibitions: Transcultural Enigmas featuring steel sculpture by Janet Goldner and large oil paintings by Nieves Saah; Evil Plastic Blues featuring recycled plastic sculpture by Vernita Nemec; and On the Wall featuring the installation Out of Body by Olivia Beens. The reception will be on Thursday, February 8 from 6pm to 8pm. Vernita Nemec will be giving an Artist Talk on Saturday, February 24, from 3pm to 5pm. Masks are encouraged for all events. The exhibitions run from February 8 - March 6, 2024, at 548 West 28th Street in New York City. The gallery hours are Tuesday - Friday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Exhibition List

Janet Goldner

Janet Goldner’s steel sculptures piece together discarded fragments and scrap steel from previous projects, embodying a commitment to sustainability inspired by recycling practices in Africa and worldwide, in her fifth exhibition with Carter Burden Gallery, Transcultural Enigmas. Rooted in the artist's exploration of immigration and a sustained fascination with African culture, the abstract forms emerge intuitively. Goldner says, “The abstract constructions of welded steel have a vintage aesthetic and a strength of interconnectedness that speaks to my international, intercultural, and multigenerational collaborations.” This exhibition follows Goldner’s recent installation Woven Journey, which, through photographs and text, unveiled the artist's 50-year artistic bond with West Africa. This continuous journey of creative exploration and cultural involvement serves as the driving force behind her compelling steel sculptures.

Janet Goldner is a New York City based interdisciplinary artist. Born in Washington, DC., Goldner earned her BA from Antioch College and her MA in sculpture from New York University. Janet’s steel sculpture, photography, video, text, installation, and social projects bridge diverse cultures, exploring and celebrating similarities and differences. Goldner's work has been exhibited in over thirty solo exhibitions, and over one hundred-fifty group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. Highlights from Goldner’s museum exhibitions include Global Africa Project, Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY curated by Lowery Sims; Women Facing AIDS, New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Multiple Exposures, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Visions of Life, Islip Museum, Islip, NY curated by Marcia Yerman; Activist New York, The Museum of the City of New York, NY; Beyond Reading: Books As Art, Suffolk Museum, Suffolk, VA; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx NY. Permanent collections include the American Embassy in Mali, the city of Segou, Mali and the Islip Museum on Long Island, NY. She has received four Fulbright Specialist grants (Mali, Zimbabwe, Japan, Uganda) and grants from the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Public Diplomacy grant, US Dept of State. Goldner's published articles include a chapter in Contemporary African Fashion, Indiana University Press, an essay in Poetics of Cloth, Grey Art Gallery, NYU.

Nieves Saah

In in the exhibition Transcultural Enigmas, Nieves Saah presents large whimsical oil paintings on canvas, inspired by her vibrant experiences, capturing the essence of her life in Spain, a country steeped in a rich and colorful artistic legacy. Her extensive travels across South America, Europe, and the Middle East further influence her diverse and dynamic color palette. In her zestful paintings, Saah skillfully juxtaposes contrasting hues, textures, shapes, and fantastical imagery. Guided by whimsy and a lifetime of honed skills, she orchestrates the paint to convey a narrative that is both intricate and emotionally charged, often drawing from her life. Saah's commitment to her craft is unwavering – she persists until she deems a painting complete, occasionally allowing works to rest for extended periods before bringing them to full fruition.

Nieves Saah, raised in Bilbao, a town in the Basque region of Spain, is a painter who almost exclusively uses palette knives and spatulas to scrape and layer paint on her pieces. Saah earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she graduated summa cum laude. Saah’s work has been shown extensively in group and solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including at the Sideshow Gallery in New York City, the Decker Gallery in Baltimore, and the Galleria Dix in Helsinki, Finland. She also has work in collections at the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and in private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and South America. Saah received the Gertrude Pentland Merit Scholarship and was the selected candidate by NYFA and the Spanish Cultural Council in New York for Artepreneur. Her work has been reviewed by the New York Times, the Star Ledger, and the Washington Post, among others.

2) “Caring for the environment” 2021. 36”X 53”. O:C $3,000.png

3) “On the Other Side” 2021. 45”X 35” O:C $2,300.png

3) “Tangible Memories” 2023 Oil on canvas. 40”X 72” $5,500.png

5) “Dancers” 2021. 54”X 76”. O:C. $6,000.png

12) “Unconquerable Spirit”. 2023. 54”X 42”. O:C $4,000.png

Vernita Nemec

Sculptor, performance artist, and curator, Vernita Nemec finds fascination in the weathered beauty of broken and discarded objects, drawing inspiration from the Japanese philosophy Wabi-Sabi, which embraces the value of imperfection and material transience. Evil Plastic Blues features her latest series Eco-Plasticism, which includes vacuum-formed bas relief collages and small sculptures created from deformed plastic packaging. By repurposing overlooked and discarded plastic, transforming it into artwork Nemec brings attention to the vast quantities of refuse contributing to our current environmental emergency. Urging action to address this escalating plastic crisis with her work, she states “These plastic forms, fragmented and irregular, coalesced into compositions that spoke to the chaotic interplay between our lives and the pervasiveness of plastic detritus. Plastic in trash not only fills our landfills but is filling the oceans, the air, the soil and even our bodies as it is incorporated into more and more substances that we live with, including the fabric of our clothing and much more.”

Vernita Nemec, also known as N'Cognita, born in Painesville, Ohio, earned a BFA from Ohio University and an MA from New York University. She began creating and exhibiting her work in New York City in the early 70’s and continued to have a prolific career with performances and exhibitions at notable institutions including the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Pompidou Museum in Paris, France, the Hiroshima Prefecture Museum of Art in Japan, Soho 20 Gallery, AIR Gallery, Ceres Gallery, 55 Mercer Gallery, and many more. Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Asian American Art Center, Savaria Museum in Szombathely, Hungary, Sylvia Sleigh Collection of Feminist Art at Rowan University, as well as numerous private collections across the United States and Europe.

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Out of Body: Olivia Been

In her installation Out of Body, Olivia Beens explores our changing times, bodies, memories, and collected possessions by divulging aspects of the self. This installation resulted from the need to purge unwanted items in her life, and, by chance, rediscovered bygone treasures, and memories. She found the process of revisiting objects that once held interest and value, X-rays, trinkets, and items thought lost, illuminates her personal history. Utilizing these objects Beens incorporates the mark of her hand by soaking, scrubbing, and scratching photographic emulsion away, adding paint to the backlit images, then stringing them together in sequences. The sequences can be read and interpreted as light, shadow, and reflection, revealing otherwise reticent information. She adds, “As an older adult, I value and want to honor what is behind me and what has yet to come.”

Sculptor/educator Olivia Beens, born in 1948 in the Netherlands of Czech and Dutch parents and lived in Portugal until age 7. After receiving a BFA from Pratt Institute in 1977 and an MFA from Hunter College in 1982 she moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan where she still lives and works. During the 1980’s she exhibited installation and performance work in many alternative art galleries including Franklin Furnace, ABC No Rio, PS 122 and was a member of artists groups such as Colab, PADD, and other political art groups. In 2014 and 2015 she was a (SPARC) Artist In Residence at Sirovich Senior Center and completed a series of ceramic murals that are permanently installed in the grand auditorium. She has taught through many arts organizations, worked for the New York City Department of Education, Brooklyn College and Pratt Institute. Beens has received commissions for public art works through Public Art for Public School and has been awarded a New York State Council on the Arts fellowship as well as residencies to the Mac Dowell colony for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hambidge Center and received a Fulbright-Hayes fellowship to Turkey, and traveled to India and Portugal with grants.

Out of Body is on view from January 4 - April 10, 2024.