Archived Exhibitions

Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce an upcoming solo exhibition of new paintings by Grant Haffner. Mohawk Trail, marks Haffner’s first solo exhibit in eleven years and his first show at Roman Fine Art. Mohawk Trail will open with a reception for the artist Saturday, May 27, 7-9pm.

For over a decade Haffner has captivated art enthusiasts and collectors with his paintings of Hamptons’ roadways. His renditions of familiar roads and local landmarks, often set ablaze in dayglow, sunset colors, have made him one of the most sought after artists on the East End. Whether it’s a cool gray winter scene on Bay Point or a night sky overlooking Gardiner’s Bay, those that are familiar with the highways and byways of the Hamptons, can easily recognize their favorite routes and lots depicted in Haffner’s works. In Mohawk Trail, Haffner’s first solo exhibit in eleven years, the artist begins to explore an entirely new landscape. The low-lying bays and farmlands of the South Fork are traded for the mountain ridges and deep gorges of Western Massachusetts. This seminal exhibition for Haffner marks an entirely new chapter in his career as a painter.

Arguably, no local artist captures the South Fork locales we love, like Haffner. This detail becomes a bit surprising when one realizes that Haffner is no longer a local artist. He lives and works in Massachusetts. Haffner had lived in the Hamptons for most of his life and he has been a fixture in the art scene here for at least a dozen years, but most fans of his work do not realize that he moved to Massachusetts in the Spring of 2016. For almost a year now, Haffner has continued to paint scenes of the Hamptons, works that have earned him an international following, but the impetus to create an entirely new body of work had already taken root, even before he left Sag Harbor. For years, Haffner longed to explore a new set of roads and locations and fortuitously, his relocation to Western MA allowed him intimate access to the Mohawk Trail region. True to Haffner’s process, these paintings are often created from photographs collected during his travels through the area. Capturing the roads, trails and colors of hills and mountains have infused Haffner’s newest works with something fresh. We see this new landscape through familiar eyes with a fresh perspective.

Grant Haffner has over a hundred works in private collections around the US, Europe and Asia. Actress Rose McGowan and Internationally renowned collector Yusaku Maezawa are among his notable patrons. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries, museums and art fairs including Visions West Gallery, Denver, CO; Vered Gallery, East Hampton, NY; One Art Space, NY, NY; Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL; Sebastian Foster Gallery, Austin, TX; Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY; Scope Basel, Basel Switzerland; Scope New York, NY, NY; Texas Contemporary, Houston, TX. Damien Roman has represented Haffner since 2009, but this is their first solo exhibit together at Roman Fine Art.

Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of Deceptive Spaces, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Sarah Slappey. Deceptive Spaces, marks Slappey’s first major solo exhibit and her first show at Roman Fine Art.

Deceptive Spaces features a collection of new oil paintings from recent Hunter College MFA graduate, Sarah Slappey. Slappey has described her painting style as having roots in the Southern Gothic aesthetic, an amalgamation of Bible Belt superstition, ghost stories, swamp lore and mysticism. Her paintings explore pleasure and pain as experienced through evolving narratives, haunted places, seductive color, and dark humor.

In Slappey’s previous body of work, she was largely focused on the body within nature. Figures would appear in forests, shady groves, and among ominous brush. The simultaneous beauty and terror of nature spoke to the fear expressed in the paintings. In each scene, figures hovered between perpetrator and victim, and the natural surroundings were simultaneously cold and protective. In her most recent paintings, Slappey explores the same kind of pleasure/fear emotional response but within interior spaces. Mother nature’s relationship with fear and the sublime is evident; Slappey wanted to explore the challenge of recreating this emotional tenor within an interior, man-made space.

In this series Slappey was also interested in the idea of framing and illusion, both literally and figuratively. Each of the paintings reference themselves as imaginary and illusory spaces, and framing within the scenes points to this self-awareness. In the natural settings, the images are both highly rendered, but also speckled with abstract pieces that take the viewer out of the illusion of the painting. Many of the interior paintings contain paintings-within-paintings, referencing works by Boucher, Fragonard, and other master painters. Both the new interior and previous exterior spaces aim to explore qualities of shifting reality and visual destabilization.

Slappey remains interested in beauty, color, and luscious painting. She sees these as an important counterpoint to a scene that would otherwise be uncomfortable. The bright color and delicate paint handling keep a viewer engaged. Things might appear real, but reveal themselves to be illusions. Like a dream, each painting’s reality constantly shifts and resists explanation.

Sarah Slappey (b. 1984, Columbia, South Carolina) live and works in Brooklyn, NY. Slappey graduated from Wake Forest University in 2006 and completed her MFA from Hunter College in 2016. In 2015, she was awarded a Kossak Painting Grant and a Hunter MFA award in Painting. Slappey has exhibited in both solo and group shows in South Carolina, North Carolina, New York, and Italy. In 2016, her paintings were exhibited in Hamptons’ Market Art + Design and in 2017, she was represented by Damien Roman Gallery at Scope New York. Her work has appeared in such publications as Social Life, Long Island Pulse, and Hamptons Art Hub. Damien Roman has represented this artist since 2016, and this is her first solo exhibition with Roman Fine Art.

Friend and Griffin, collectively working as Gentleman’s Game since 2011, explore recurring themes of mythology, technology, history and mortality as viewed through the murky waters of their mythological realm, The Atlantic.  The Atlantic is the vast ocean that covers nearly the entire surface of Gentleman’s Game’s Fantastic Planet, a vision of our own possible dystopian future. Safe Houses boasts the most complete selection of paintings from their Atlantic storyline displayed to date. In this show, Gentleman’s Game will debut a new collection of previously un-exhibited works, their latest addition to this epic saga.

In this striking world imagined by Gentleman’s Game, tenacious survival instinct and ingenuity give rise to incredible, fragmented and towering cities referencing shanty towns cobbled together with raw materials and strange alchemy. Cities built to exist upon the trees, upon the skeletons of long decaying oil rigs and the very few mountaintops able to break the surface of the great, never-ending ocean. The constant struggle for resources and land lead to a proliferation of fantastical modes of transport. Alchemists, utilizing technologies and magics both old and new, create vessels to fill the sea and air, allowing their clans to fight and maybe survive as new Gods watch over their subjects with cool disregard. Among the chaos and despair, the artists still manage to create images of hope. Glimmers of this world’s fragile beauty can be spotted throughout the relentless turmoil.

In their latest works, Safe Houses, Friend and Griffin depict a refuge in larger than life trees, lending themselves to colonization for those with the means and perseverance seeking higher ground. Tree houses are often whimsical and magical in their creation, a makeshift adaptation of their site-specific nature, and these works feel just the same. Set in the context of an implied undying struggle for survival, the nostalgic and lightheartedness of tree houses turn to a more serious and cerebral tone.

Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce our participation in the 17th edition of SCOPE New York as it returns to a new Chelsea location at Metropolitan Pavilion. Featuring a critically-acclaimed exhibition design, SCOPE New York’s convenient and well-appointed venue will host 60 international galleries and a focused schedule of special events, performances and talks to complement its daily VIP program.

The first fair to run concurrent with The Armory Show, SCOPE New York’s spirit of innovation has consistently forged the way for emerging artists and galleries. Attuned to nuances in the market and itself an influential force in the cultural sphere, SCOPE continues to usher in a new vision of the contemporary art fair.

Long-established as the original incubator for emerging work, SCOPE’s Breeder Program celebrates its 16th year of introducing new galleries to the contemporary market. A remarkable opportunity for exposure, Breeder Program alumni include: Peres Projects, John Connelly Presents, Galeria Enrique Guerrero, Daniel Reich Gallery, Bischoff/ Weiss, Spinello Projects, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, SEVENTEEN, ROKEBY, Taxter Spengemann, and Magical Artroom, among other notable galleries.

Roman Fine Art is pleased to present Repeat Offender, the collected works of LA-based artist Knowledge Bennett. This will be his first solo show with the gallery.

Known for his unique aesthetic, employing hand-pulled printmaking techniques to explore contemporary and historical subject matter, Bennett delves into a commentary of social and political issues using pop cultural references. Playing upon the repetitive nature of the silkscreen painting process, Bennett references the echo of modern production, repetition as a psychological branding tool, and the impact of intent. Repeat Offender showcases his process by first deconstructing, then reconstructing his subjects, appropriating recognizable imagery to educate and reveal often hidden histories behind the subjects themselves.

Roman Fine Art is pleased to present “Deconstructing Borders: The Flux of Dissent,” its first solo exhibition with Elektra KB, opening Friday, January 27th, 6-8 pm, and running through February 19th.

Elektra KB, born in Odessa, Ukraine, is a Colombian artist living and working in Berlin and New York. KB’s body of work is of a performative nature in the thread of the post-colonial discourse and uses the platform of the personal mythology: The Theocratic Republic of Gaia, a Utopian-Dystopian world.

“Deconstructing Borders: The Flux of Dissent” speaks to issues about migration, mobility, transculturality, and a sense of place. The discourse is informed by the current experience of migrant women. This year is seeing a refugee and migrant crisis all over the world. Our current President Elect– aided by the media– is a symbolic figure who plays a key role in constructing the fear of immigration which is fed to the American public. Plans of building a wall to separate the USA and Mexico are being considered. Over 35,000 refugees and migrants died in their attempt to reach or stay in Europe since 2000, with 2016 being the deadliest by far. Money is being lavishly spent on detention centers, on walls being erected and even artificial sniffers that can smell refugees and migrants trying to hide at border crossing points are being developed in Europe. The post-modern hybridization of culture is fueled with violence and power games.

Many of the works included in “Deconstructing Borders” have culminated from a year-long fellowship in Berlin. During this time, KB traveled to what she perceived as a mutant city, where east meets west driven by the interest of unpacking her own conflicted feelings of sense-of-place and home of an Odessa born Latin-American living in New York and her interest in the issue of migration. She researched the experiences of migrant women from post-colonial societies focusing specifically on Latin-America, in the context of a city that is a post-soviet hybrid. KB undertook the task of interviewing several women who left their countries for a variety of reasons, existential, economic, psychological and political persecution. KB created works as a result of this research. Each work is inspired and/or performed based on an individual story, or a collective story. KB uses textile, photography and video as her main mediums.

“Deconstructing Borders: The Flux of Dissent” features six new GIFs highlighting Elektra KB’s fantastical world, The Theocratic Republic of Gaia, or T.R.O.G. for short. The T.R.O.G., plays with critical humor and the aesthetics of colonial art tropes and the insurgent struggle KB grew up with. The Papess, the veiled women, the guerrilla fighter are represented here as well as pre-Hispanic imagery and the cross– an autobiographical nod to her upbringing in a rural hospital in Colombia. The T.R.O.G. serves as an allegorical homeland created from a sense of necessity—the artist has spent most of her life as a migrant. Anxieties over oppression—from religious authority to gender/racial inequality—are battled out in KB’s fictional country. KB has perhaps best summarized the urgency of her militant aesthetic by quoting Frantz Fanon from his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth: “Either one must remain terrified or become terrifying.”

Elektra KB received a DAAD award to pursue a visual arts fellowship with professor Hito Steyerl at Berlin Univeristy of the Arts.  In 2016 She received her MFA from Hunter college.  Her work has been written about in ARTnews and she was named an artist to watch by British art critic Zoe Pilger, in the Independent Newspaper in 2015.  Her animated GIFs have been featured in Art F City’s acclaimed, Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies: The Animated GIF as Place curated by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNarama and at Moving Image Istanbul.  KB has shown at Gaia Gallery in Istanbul, Bravin Lee Programs in NY and the Istanbul Contemporary Art fair.  Her work will be included in El Museo Biennial in New York in 2017. Eight works by KB were just acquired by the Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art in China.

Roman Fine Art is pleased to present Get With The Program I, the first of its two part inaugural exhibition opening Saturday, Oct 8th.  This group exhibition will feature painting, photography and sculpture by a dozen contemporary artists working in a variety of media and genres.  The exhibit opens with a public reception for the artists Saturday, October 8, 6 – 8pm.

This diverse exhibition includes many subgenres within New Contemporary art including Street Art, Pop Surrealism, Conceptual, Abstract, Sociopolitical and Graffiti.  The eclectic nature of this group show is intended to reflect the curatorial taste of the gallery’s Director, Damien A. Roman.  “Get With the Program introduces our clientele to our new location, in the heart of East Hampton, as well as to some of the wonderful artists that we represent.”   A few special guest artists with be featured as well.

ARTISTS INCLUDED IN GET WITH THE PROGRAM:

Scott Bluedorn, Troy Brooks, Ray Caesar, Darlene Charneco, Eddie Colla, Tim Conlon, Gentleman’s Game, Grant Haffner, JURNE, Elektra KB, Dan Sabau, Sarah Slappey, SWOON, Mary Theinert & Dean West

Market Art + Design, the East End’s premier Art Fair, returns to the center of Bridgehampton this July 7th through 10th for its sixth edition, with top presentations of modern and contemporary art enhanced by a striking design component pulling from dealers and designers from around the world.

TOP EXHIBITORS
Downtown Manhattan’s trendsetting gallery The Hole, NYC and Seattle’s Winston Wächter Fine Art, international powerhouse Sundaram Tagore Gallery, important Southampton­based PETER MARCELLE PROJECT, along with returning favorites ACA Galleries, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Tally Beck Contemporary, Rebecca Hossack Gallery and exciting newcomers AVIKZER ROMAN, Eckert Fine Art, Joseph Gross Gallery, and Walker Waugh are among the forty exhibitors joining the fair in its much anticipated return to The Bridgehampton Museum, just steps from the Hamptons’ main thoroughfare ­ Montauk Highway.

SCOPE BASEL CELEBRATES 10TH EDITION WITH NEW VENUE THREE
BLOCKS FROM MESSEPLATZ

Celebrating its 10th Anniversary in Basel, SCOPE Art Show is delighted to announce its new location at Clarahuus, just three blocks from Messeplatz. A brief walk from the main fair, SCOPE Basel’s well appointed venue offers guests a view of the contemporary art world available nowhere else.

SCOPE Basel will welcome 85 International Exhibitors alongside 10 Breeder Program galleries. Exhibitors
hail from four continents and over twenty countries including China, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Italy, Iran,
Russia, Turkey, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, UK, Spain, and Canada.
Long established as the original incubator for emerging work, SCOPE’s Breeder Program celebrates its 16th
year of introducing new galleries to the contemporary market. A remarkable opportunity for exposure,
Breeder Program alumni include: Peres Projects, John Connelly Presents, Galeria Enrique Guerrero, Daniel
Reich Gallery, Bischo / Weiss, Spinello Projects, INVISIBLEEXPORTS,
SEVENTEEN, ROKEBY, Taxter Spengemann, and Magical Artroom, among other notable galleries.

SCOPE taps into the cultural psyche to present only the most pioneering work across multiple creative
disciplines. With over a decade of critically acclaimed art fairs and nonprofit initiatives that extend beyond
the ordinary in contemporary art.

Montauk Beach House presents Montauk paintings by Grant Haffner.  Celebrated Hamptons’ Landscape painter Haffner adorns the lobby of the MBH for the month of June.  Included in this exhibition are scenes of Montauk and other iconic Hamptons locales.  Opening reception Memorial Day Weekend, Friday, May 27th from 6 – 8pm.   

Sponsored by Montauk Rum Runners