Thu 10/14 @ 6-8PM
Cleveland artist and Cleveland State art professor Ken Nevadomi, now 82, is getting a gusher of recognition late in his career. He acquired representation from Cleveland’s prestigious WOLFS Gallery this past summer calling him “Cleveland’s premier figurative painter of the past four decades.” “Nevadomi’s work forces us to take a raw look in the mirror at beauty and poetry, but also at horror, meaningless violence, obsession, sex, silliness and fantasy,” says the gallery. “His work takes us to strange places with dizzying imagination and originality.”
Nevadomi had always been celebrated in Cleveland, winning the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1988 and exhibiting in many of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s May Shows but was largely unknown outside this region.
WOLFS is working on changing that. The gallery collaborated with Maxwell Wolf of New Canons to present a showing of his art in New York in September, his debut in that market where reputations are made, getting favorable notice in both ARTnews and ArtForum.
Nevadomi’s show Dancing on the Moon, which opens at WOLFS’ Beachwood gallery this week, is the first in a series of shows the gallery is putting together of his work. Most of the works in the show, created between 1986 and 1993, have not been seen previously.
The gallery tells us that “the paintings represent a mature phase of Nevadomi’s career, when the artist reassessed his direction, and chose to confront, head-on, one of his greatest artistic heroes and inspirations: Pablo Picasso. A blue palette and classicizing nudes populate many of these canvases, which are set in otherworldly terrains. Another hallmark of this period of Nevadomi’s production is his new technical experimentation with gritty paint additives such as sand and plaster, which he used to evoke rocky and mysterious shores. “
The show opens will a reception Thursday October 15 @ 6-8pm and remains on view through Thursday December 23.