Archived Exhibitions

Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce Manifestations, our upcoming solo exhibition of new works by artist Leah Schrager.  Schrager’s first solo exhibition at Roman Fine Art will feature new photographic works from her Reality Instagram Project.  The exhibit will open Friday, February 22^nd and continue through Sunday, March 17^th.
Manifestations is Leah Schrager’s first solo show since embarking on her Reality Instagram Project. Schrager explores the synthesis of digital and classical – traditionalism as rendered through cutting edge tech and contemporary IG culture. This project was instigated In October when Schrager received an offer for one million dollars from a mysterious producer (whom she calls Man Hands) to explore a “female-friendly” aesthetic and expanded art production methods. The story will be shared over the next year on her IG (instagram.com/leahschrager).

Schrager’s artistic practice currently focuses on an examination of the gaze, performance within the context of the internet and social media. She encourages her online viewers to participate, becoming part of the art whether aware or naive to the practice. Her recent show, Female Friendly, the first in her Reality Instagram Project, completely sold out at Scope Art Fair in Miami this December.  The piece receiving the most buzz, Face Girl vs. Ass Girl, is comprised of two of the artist’s Instagram posts, with comments blown up to large scale and inkjet printed on vinyl. The piece revealed the artist’s social experiments with her Instagram following. One of the images was posted on what she refers to as her “face page”, featuring her artwork and modeling photos– the other posted on her “ass page” featuring more provocative images. The former has a following of 32K followers, the latter has 2.7M, and the length of commentary displayed on the rolls of vinyl reflects differences in tone and engagement.
About Leah Schrager:
Schrager creates paintings, digital art, and online performance. She is the model, photographer, artist, and marketer of her images. Her visual works mix a painterly aesthetic with bodily forms and often draw their material from her online conceptual practice. Her works with @OnaArtist (Instagram 2.7m) and Sarah White (The Naked Therapist) explore themes of sexuality, representation, and distribution. Her practice is situated in a contemporary hotbed of female (in)appropriateness, arousal, celebrity, fandom, and commercialism.  Schrager seeks to explore female biography and labor in today’s global society.
Schrager has been compared by journalists to such seminal figures as Diane Fossey, Marina Abramovic, Marcel Duchamp, Laurel Nakadate, and Sigmund Freud. She and/or her work have been profiled in 1000′s of media outlets, including Art Forum, Monopol, The Huffington Post, Vice, Viceland, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CBS News, ABC News, The NY Daily News, and Playboy. She has exhibited at Castor Gallery, Untitled Space, Roman Fine Art, Johannes Vogt Gallery, ArtHelix Gallery, and the Museum of Visual Art in Leipzig.

Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce our participation in the 18th edition of SCOPE Miami Beach.  SCOPE Miami Beach returns to Ocean Drive and 8th Street in its bespoke pavilion on the sand. Honored by the City of Miami Beach Mayor’s Office and Commission for its extraordinary cultural impact, SCOPE Miami Beach features 140 International Exhibitors from 25 countries and 60 cities, and welcomes 60,000 visitors over the course of 6 days. Amidst an unprecedented outpouring of critical acclaim from press, curators and collectors, and a digital and social media outreach campaign garnering over 450 million impressions, SCOPE Miami Beach is once again poised to lead the charge for the emerging contemporary art market.

Participating Artists in Roman Fine Art’s booth, number D13, are Ivan Alifan, Ray Caesar, Tim Conlon, Michele Dragonetti, Michael Dweck, Lizzie Gill, Grant Haffner, The Kaplan Twins, Ciara Rafferty, Leah Schrager, SWOON, Dean West & Stephen Wilson.

Roman Fine Art is pleased to present Get with the Program 2018, the third edition of our annual holiday group exhibition. This exhibit will feature painting, photography and mixed media works by eleven contemporary artists working in a variety of media and genres.

This diverse exhibition includes many subgenres within Contemporary art including street art, figurative, conceptual, sociopolitical and landscape. The eclectic nature of this group show is intended to reflect the diverse program regularly offered at Roman Fine Art. In addition to offering works by Christina Creutz, Tim Conlon, Michael Dweck, Grant Haffner, Lizzie Gill, Ciara Rafferty, SWOON and Dean West, this year’s edition of Get with the Program introduces our clientele to three new talents; Emma Balou, Kelly Franké and Stephen Wilson.

As always, Roman Fine Art is committed to bringing exciting, provocative and relevant new artistic voices to our clientele. Our mission is to create an environment in the Hamptons dedicated to supporting the very best in New Contemporary Art. Among the talented and internationally renowned artists to have exhibited in Roman Fine Art’s exhibitions are Ivan Alifan, Colin Christian, Ron English, EVOL, Shepard Fairey, Mark Jenkins, Steven Klein, Anthony Lister, RETNA, Leah Schrager and Nicola Verlato.

Artists exhibited at Roman Fine Art range from future stars to established forces within the global art community. Many have had their work exhibited in important museums and galleries including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Deitch Projects and the Corcoran Gallery of Art just to name a few. Profiles of these artists and their work have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, TIME, Forbes, Artnews, Juxtapoz, the New York Daily News, The Observer, High Fructose and many more relevant publications.

ARTISTS INCLUDED IN GET WITH THE PROGRAM 2018:

 Emma Balou, Christina Creutz, Tim Conlon, Michael Dweck, Kelly Franké, Grant Haffner, Lizzie Gill, Ciara Rafferty, SWOON, Dean West & Stephen Wilson.

EXHIBITION: Stephen Wilson: Luxury Graffiti
EXHIBITION DATES: October 5 – November 4, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, October 6, 6-8 pm.
LOCATION: 66 Park Place, East Hampton, NY 11937

(East Hampton, NY, September 6, 2018) – Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce Luxury Graffiti, our upcoming solo exhibition of new works by artist Stephen Wilson.  Wilson’s first exhibition at Roman Fine Art will feature works from his ongoing Luxury series as well as selections from his newest Model Tapestries and Brick Wall series.  The exhibit will open Friday, October 5^th and continue through Sunday, November 4^th. There will be a wine reception for the artist Saturday, October 6^th, 6-8pm.

Stephen Wilson is a mixed-media artist best known for his artistic exploration of the intersections between traditional craft and contemporary culture through blended use of handicraft techniques with modern technologies and pop iconography.  High fashion influences are quite prevalent in his work.  His redefinition of textile and embroidery-based art forms evokes questions regarding luxury consumerism and high-low art distinctions.

Citing street art and fashion as two of his biggest influences, the latest work by Wilson fuses these inspirations into wholly unique mixed media series loosely titled, Luxury.  Wilson’s acclaimed Luxury boxes take discarded designer packaging and renews their spirit through luxurious fabric applications and intricate embroidery work. Stemming from a background in embroidery design and technology, Wilson creates and digitizes designs that are then machine-embroidered and finished with mixed-media hand processes including found-object assemblage and painting.

In Luxury Graffiti, Wilson pushes new boundaries as he explores fresh themes inspired by his previous works in the Luxury series.  Recently, Wilson has begun creating supersized luxury boxes.  These larger than life objects are then adorned with his signature embroidery, paint and mixed-media applications to create a grand scale previously unattainable for the artist.  The Brick Wall series features boxes that have been deconstructed, laser-cut into pieces and reassembled into uniform brick-like abstractions, echoing the street art and graffiti appeal.  The exhibit also features tapestry-style pieces featuring photographic images of fashion models which have been transformed with layers of thread.  All the work is brought together by embroidered iconography, mimicking graffiti tags.  A rainbow of graphic appliqué stretches across Wilson’s dimensional pieces, ranging from classic stars and skulls to ski masks and brass knuckles.

About Stephen Wilson:
Wilson is represented by major galleries across the US, including Art Angels, Roman Fine Art, DTR Modern Galleries (NY, Boston, DC, Palm Beach) and New Gallery of Modern Art.  Wilson’s work has been exhibited in The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, The Cornell Museum, Delray Beach, FL and the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY.  His upcoming mid-career retrospective will be opening at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, in Coral Springs, FL in 2019.  Wilson’s work is featured in numerous international collections including Japan, Bulgaria, Italy, and Mexico, in addition to private and public collections throughout the United States.  Scala Arts and Heritage Publishers’ recent book on the Artist, Stephen Wilson: Luscious Threads, was released in Fall 2018.

Texas Contemporary, Houston’s leading contemporary and modern art fair, brings top galleries to the area’s discerning collector base. Now going into its seventh edition, Texas Contemporary 2018 will feature 65 exhibitors and an innovative program of special projects and public installations.

2018 will see the continuation and expansion of Texas Contemporary’s notable partnerships with the region’s finest institutions and museums. With the support of the Houston community and the city’s galleries and institutions, Texas Contemporary will return to the newly refurbished George R. Brown Convention Center for a compelling and constructive seventh edition.

EXHIBITION: Michele Dragonetti: Re-emergent
EXHIBITION DATES: August 31 – October 1, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, September 1, 6-8 pm.
LOCATION: 66 Park Place, East Hampton, NY 11937

Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce our upcoming solo exhibition of photographs by Michele Dragonetti, titled Re-emergent. Dragonetti’s second solo exhibition at Roman Fine Art once again highlights photographs from her Boat Hull series. The exhibit will open Friday, August 31st. There will be a wine reception for the artist Saturday, September 1st, 6-8pm. Michele Dragonetti’s Boat Hull series began in the marinas of Montauk where she was drawn to boats in need of repair and refurbishing. In Re-emergent, Dragonetti focuses on the boats she photographs as art objects. Once removed from the water, most boats live a very different life. Typically propped up on boat supports or storage blocks, the boats’ functional purpose takes a backseat to their aesthetic one. Arguably, the most beautiful part of the boat, the hull, remains hidden for much of its life. The colorful paint detailing, often enhanced by saltwater and natural wear, lies on the bottom surface of the boats…lost to us. Dragonetti’s photographs rediscover this hidden beauty. Through her images, the boats find a new life out of the water.

As always, Dragonetti focuses her compositions on the triangular patterns of the hulls in a square format, allowing her to highlight the essential geometry of the images. The work emphasizes the contrast between the abstract patterns of the painted lines and colors of the hulls, and the interplay of textures. The boats photographed in this series take on the quality of beautiful abstract, sometimes minimalist paintings. Photos in this ongoing series transform often humble vessels into striking portraits, celebrating their imperfect appeal.

About Michele Dragonetti: Since Dragonetti began this series locally in 2013, the series has expanded beyond its East End origins to include images taken in Connecticut, Florida, California, Vermont, Argentina, Cuba, London, Lisbon, Barcelona, Malta and the southern coast of Portugal. Dragonetti continues to travel and document boat hulls for this ongoing series, expanding upon an incredibly large and diverse collection of compositions and colors. Michele Dragonetti lives and works in Amagansett, NY and New York City. In addition to numerous gallery shows, Dragonetti’s photographs have been exhibited at relevant International art fairs including Art New York, Market Art + Design and Aqua Art Miami. This spring her work was featured in an exhibition at Urban Outfitters corporate headquarters in Philadelphia, PA. The East Hampton Marine Museum featured a solo exhibition of Dragonetti’s photographs last summer. Her recent work has been focused primarily on her Boat Hull series.

Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition with renowned photographer Michael Dweck. Michael Dweck: Iconic Images, will include a carefully curated selection of Dweck’s best known works as well as a few new standouts from the newly released expansion of his blockbuster book, The End, Montauk, NY. The exhibit will also include photographs from Dweck’s other wildly successful books, Mermaids and Habana Libre. The exhibit opens Thursday, August 2nd and continues through Monday, August 26th. There will be a cocktail reception for the artist at Roman Fine Art Saturday, August 4th, 6-8pm.

The End, Montauk, NY: In the 1990s, photographer Michael Dweck rented a house on Ditch Plains beach (site of the best surf break) and struck up a friendship with one of the local surfers, eventually gaining unprecedented access to the insular local surf community. Dweck’s photographic essay follows the surfers through their daily rituals, from early morning wave reports to evening bonfires on the beach, capturing their youthful hedonism. Through portraits, nudes, and photographs of the landscape, this book celebrates lives lived only to surf, and captures an endless summer of perfect weather and languorous beauty.

Habana Libre: A stunning contemporary exploration of the privileged class in a classless society: a secret life within Cuba. Michael Dweck’s photographs are exhilarating, sensual and provocative, with a sexy and hypnotic visual rhythm. This is a face of Cuba never before photographed, never reported in Western media and never acknowledged openly within Cuba itself. It is a socially connected world of glamorous models and keenly observant artists, filmmakers, musicians and writers captured in an elaborate dance of survival and success. Here too are surprising interviews with sons of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as well as many others who define the creative culture of Cuba and give it texture and substance. Habana Libre is not a media-fabricated Cuban postcard of crumbling mansions or old American cars, but a revealing and contemporary work by a visual artist adept at capturing the quiet gesture, the sensuous eye and the proud and provocative pose of that most romantic of contradictions: Cuba.

Mermaids: Mermaids features a dazzling array of photographs in which the photographer explores the theme of the female nude submerged in water, and celebrates the modern mermaid, as represented by beautiful young women who appear very much at home in the water. When Dweck scouted out the Weeki Wachee Spring, home of the famous mermaid shows, as a location for his Mermaids project, he met a local young beauty who had been raised in Aripeka, an island fishing village on the coast nearby, and began photographing her. And through her, Dweck met other island girls—so-called “waterbabies”—some of whom could hold their breath underwater for as long as five or six minutes. He photographed them alone, together, and at play, but mostly at night in the depths of the Weeki Wachee River. Dweck also photographed in Montauk, Amagansett, and Miami, and the new images, while often abstracting the female body in a painterly swirl of watery refractions, celebrate the physical charm of the female form and the transformation that is achieved by the shedding of clothes and psychic baggage in the meditative isolation of the underwater world.

About Michael Dweck:

Michael Dweck is a visual artist known for his seductive photographic style and pursuit of alluring subject matter, principally the female form and locales that offer their own particular enchantments. His developing narrative of a somewhat upended version of the theme Paradise Lost and Regained would favor privilege, youth, beauty, and the temptations of the flesh, although the photographic project at once records and fictionalizes what is inevitably receding and thus ever elusive. Dweck studied Fine Arts at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and began his career in advertising where he went on to become a highly regarded Creative Director receiving over 40 international awards, including the coveted Gold Lion at the Cannes International Festival in France. Two of his long-form television pieces are part of the permanent film collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Having taken up photography at an early age and used it throughout his career, he left advertising to focus on photography full time in early 2001. His photographs were first showcased at Sotheby’s, New York, in 2003, in their first solo exhibition for a living photographer. Dweck’s work has become part of important international art collections and has been exhibited extensively throughout the world, with solo exhibitions at the Staley-Wise Gallery (New York), Modernism (San Francisco), Acte2 (Paris), Maruani & Noirhomme (Belgium), Robert Morat Galerie (Hamburg), and the Blitz Gallery (Tokyo). His work has also been shown at the Fahey/Klein Gallery (Los Angeles) and the Eric Franck Fine Art (London). Michael Dweck currently lives in New York City.

(Montauk, NY, June 5 2018) – Roman Fine Art​ is pleased to announce, I Only Summer in the Hamptons, a selection of new work from LA-based multidisciplinary artists, The Kaplan Twins​, to be presented at the Montauk Beach House this July 4th weekend. Please join the gallery in welcoming the artist duo to Montauk Beach House, 55 S Elmwood Ave, Montauk, NY 11954​ on Friday, July 6th from 6PM-8PM.

Celebrated for their nude depictions of personalities like Kim Kardashian West, Emily Ratajkowski and Amber Rose, The Kaplan Twins’ latest paintings continue to utilize the quirky, ridiculous and engrossing culture of internet fame while exploring new modes of communication, and the resulting evolution of language and symbolism. Over the past two years, the internet / digital artists have caused quite a stir with their previous bodies of work dubbed “self-aware, ‘sexploitation’ art” by W magazine. However, the progressive artists are evolving into their next phase.

With, I Only Summer in the Hamptons, Roman Fine Art brings The Kaplan Twins’ unique sense of ironic, yet playful humor from LA to the East End, exploring a concept for the digital era. In this new series of oil paintings, The Kaplan Twins incorporate witty text, humorous ideograms, and “trendy” objects to pull from popular iconography. Allowing for commentary on “overheard” and “millennial culture”, compositions are driven by ubiquitous social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Imagery of luxury goods, status icons and emoji eggplants are blown out of scale and paired with colloquialisms derived from sexting, “Swipe Left / Swipe Right” culture. The colorful pieces comment on our current need to keep our Instagram feeds more filtered, more exaggerated, more curated, and “better than yours”.

The Hamptons, being the Summer location for affluent East Coaster’s, and spiritual neighbor to communities such as Miami and Los Angeles, undeniably attracts the “trend-afflicted” to its perfect beaches, in their search for the “it” crowd. These millennials flock into the beach towns in droves, seeking out the latest and best of everything, and the twins new body of work plays perfectly to their target audience, with a hint of irony .

The Kaplan Twins are not as straightforward as they may initially appear. They encourage us to reconsider the nature of art using their brand of wit, humor, and a dissection of our evolving use of language. Equal parts performative, conceptual, digital, and fine artists The Kaplan Twins can be added to the cannon of emerging Millennial Artists fusing Page Six celebrity, Instagram influencer and wry humor into one. They cite Warhol’s quote “Everyone will be famous” and aim to explore the notion that everyone is looking at the same homogenized imagery for inspiration.

About the Artists: The Kaplan Twins’ (b. 1993, New Jersey) work explores the complexities of today’s celebrity culture and comments on it through the eyes of their millennial generation. Their goal is to create a conversation, while breaking through societal cliches and taboos, and looking at today’s media headlines through a different lens. Working as a duo, they attended NYU graduating in 2015, Allie with BFA in Fine art with a concentration in painting, Minor in Art History, Lexi with a BFA in Fine art with a concentration in painting. They have shown mainly in Los Angeles, most notably We Rise Gallery, De Re Gallery and the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery, they have also been included in several pop-up exhibitions, and performed a live piece at the Delano Hotel during Art Basel Miami Beach in 2017. They are included in numerous celebrity and private collections worldwide. Their work has been featured in Flaunt Magazine, W, Vice, The Times, Cools, Issue Magazine, Teen Vogue, Dujour Mag, Instyle, Playboy, High Snobiety, Elle China among others.

EXHIBITION: Art Market Summer Group
EXHIBITION DATES: July 2 – July 30, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, July 13, 6-8pm.
LOCATION: 66 Park Place, East Hampton, NY 11937

Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce our new exhibit, Art Market Summer Group. Art Market Summer Group is an annual survey of New Contemporary Art featuring the most provocative new painters, sculptors and photographers working in their respective mediums. Art Market Summer Group opens Monday, July 2^nd and the exhibit continues through Monday, July 30^th. There will be a cocktail reception for the artists at Roman Fine Art Friday, July 13^th, 6-8pm.

Art Market Summer Group embodies Roman Fine Art’s mission to provide an environment in the Hamptons dedicated to recognizing and supporting New Contemporary Art by showcasing the cutting-edge talent newly entering the gallery scene. As always, our Summer Group strives to further advance the dialogue of New Contemporary art movements from around the country with a national roster of relevant new artists. Each year, the eclectic nature and quality of work featured in this special exhibition have made it the “must-see” summer event for savvy Hamptons contemporary art collectors.

As with last year’s edition, Art Market Summer Group expands beyond the gallery walls and into Market Art & Design fair, celebrating its 8^th year. This continued partnership with the premier Hamptons art fair allows Roman Fine Art to expand the scope and depth of its program. Market Art & Design opens Thursday, July 5th at 6pm at the Bridgehampton Historical Society in Bridgehampton, NY and continues through Sunday, July 8th.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Ray Caesar is an English artist living and working in Toronto, Canada. Describing his work as “digital surreal”, Caesar merges elements of the decorative and architectural, Art Deco and Victorian visual codes. His portraits of childlike creatures portray elements of the grotesque, however are offset by their fairytale surroundings. His painterly haunting imagery is digitally created using 3D modelling software.

Tim Conlon an American artist lives and works between Los Angeles and Washington. Conlon is best known for large- scale murals, graffiti, particularly freight train graffiti. Conlon takes inspiration from the logos, typography, and color schemes of old freight trains.

Michael Dweck is a photographer from Long Island, New York. Known for his photographs of the body situated in the local environments of the Hamptons area, his is an American version of the Arcadian vision. Blending nostalgia, fantasy, and documentation the photographs present a compelling portrait of a place in time and a way of life at once fading and being reinvented with each new season.

The Kaplan Twins Identical twin artists who work as a collaborative team. Celebrated for their nude depictions of personalities like Kim Kardashian West, Emily Ratajkowski and Amber Rose, The Kaplan Twins’ latest paintings continue to utilize the quirky, ridiculous and engrossing culture of internet fame while exploring new modes of communication, and the resulting evolution of language and symbolism.

Reisha Perlmutter is a Brooklyn-based painter interested in how water and light blur the separation between body and nature in her imagery. Drawn to the organic nature of oil paint, Perlmutter explores the way it bleeds, glows, moves, and transforms over time.

Dalton Portella is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and surfer. Portella cage dives with sharks in Montauk to capture his source photographs for his stunning watercolor paintings of the deadly creatures.

Dean West is an Australian Photographer who lives in New York. His complex imagery blends several ideas seamlessly into one image, often leaving the viewer with an unsettling feeling. He is best known for his intricate and highly staged photographs that take everyday occurrences beyond the realm of natural reality.

Stephen Wilson is a conceptual artist whose background in fashion and home design honed his embroidery-digitizing mastery and creative expertise. In his fine arts practice, Stephen is deeply interested in the intersection of traditional craft and contemporary culture. His work reflects high fashion influences, traditional craft and quilting techniques, and a pop-culture aesthetic.