Forum Gallery

Forum Gallery presents Twentieth Century Stories, a curated exhibition of works of art that capture unique narratives from a century of dynamic change. On view are works by seventeen insightful artists whose life experiences were as diverse as they were profound. The paintings, works on paper, photography and sculpture on view are compelling, humanist expressions of subjects that include civil rights, the human toll of war, and the century’s industrial progress, public works, and entertainment that challenged the world and changed modern life.

Forum Gallery is pleased to present What’s New?, our first exhibition of the Fall season spotlighting works new to the gallery. Dating from 1917 to the present, the exhibition will feature twenty-two oil paintings, watercolors, pastel and pencil works on paper by fourteen artists.

Forum Gallery presents Out of Town, an exhibition about the human desire to escape our busy urban lives for the reverie of landscape vistas and seasonal adventures. By the hand of a diverse selection of visionary contemporary and twentieth-century artists, the twenty-nine paintings, works on paper, and textiles comprising the exhibition present visual interpretations of landscapes and nature’s seasonal offerings inspired by natural subjects from coast-to-coast and faraway shores, as well as expressions of the artist’s own personal introspection.

Forum Gallery is pleased to host this year’s presentation of the "New York Academy of Art Summer Exhibition." A much anticipated annual summer tradition, the exhibition will be on view from June 20th to July 19th, 2024 and will feature sixty works, including paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures by New York Academy of Art alumni, students, and faculty. We would like to extend our congratulations to the artists selected by the 2024 Summer Exhibition jurors Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle from Pace Gallery, Artist Eric Fischl, Robert Fishko from Forum Gallery, and Alissa Friedman from Stephen Friedman Gallery: Jean Pierre Arboleda (MFA 2006) Joan Benefiel (MFA 2007) Ard Berge (MFA 1997) Miriam Carothers (MFA 2024) Jenny Chi (MFA 1998) Ally Cotton (MFA 2025) Denis Dalesio (MFA 2020) Stephanie Deshpande (MFA 1999) Peter Drake (Provost) Precious Eboigbodin (MFA 2025) Alaina Plowdrey Forehand (MFA 2011) Jodi Gerbi (MFA 2016) Connor Gewirtz (MFA 2024) Danielle Golden (MFA 2024) Ada Goldfeld (Faculty) Ling Gui (MFA 2023) Gabriela Handal (MFA 2015) Austin Harris (MFA 2020) Jacob Hayes (MFA 2014) Jacob Hicks (MFA 2012) Emily Hildebrand (MFA 2000) Jackson Hill (MFA 2023) Georgia Hinaris (MFA 2019) Kerrie King (CFA 2018) Will Kurtz (MFA 2009, Fellow 2010) Irina Lakshin (MFA 2021) Lisa Lebofsky (MFA 2006) Amber Lia-Kloppel (MFA 2007) Anastasia Lopoukhine (MFA 2021) Jonathan MacGregor (MFA 2024) J. Adam McGalliard (MFA 2003) Tina Dion Mehrpouy (MFA 2025) Mustafa Mohsin (MFA 2024) Alyssa Monks (MFA 2001) Ursula Mur (CFA 2024) Andrea Olivia (MFA 2025) oneslutriot (MFA 2025) Madeline Owen (MFA 2024) Laura Peturson (MFA 2005) PG Picasso (MFA 2024) Bo Prather (MFA 2023) Laura Romaine (MFA 2022, Chubb Fellow 2024) Nicola Russell (MFA 2024) Bahar Sabzevari (MFA 2018) Guillermo Serrano Amat (MFA 2024) Chié Shimizu (MFA 2001) Kathy Stecko (MFA 2000) Vithya Truong (MFA 2007) John Volk (MFA 1998) Kaley Weil (MFA 2024) Sophia Weisensel (MFA 2021) Julianna Wells (MFA 2019) Monica Whalley (MFA 2003) Stephen Winiecki (MFA 2009) Jiannan Wu (MFA 2016, Faculty) Nan Xu (MFA 2017) Zane York (MFA 2003, Faculty)

From May 1 through June 14, 2024, Forum Gallery, New York, will present a special exhibition celebrating twenty-five years of Brian Rutenberg’s (b. 1965) art with Forum Gallery. Brian Rutenberg: Celebrating 25 Years will showcase Brian Rutenberg’s vibrant, colorful abstract paintings inspired by the landscape of his birthplace, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in twenty-one works dating from 1998 to the present. Each painting is a highlight of his artistic evolution, while together the works in the exhibition illuminate the magnetic, enduring appeal of his art that has made Brian Rutenberg one of this country’s most popular painters. Brian Rutenberg joined Forum Gallery shortly after his return from a year in Ireland on a Fulbright Scholarship. The formative experience cemented for the artist that while the landscape was a starting point for his paintings, they were not “about landscape.” Images refer to trees, ponds, and atmospheric hazes but these anchor points give way to color and love, turning Rutenberg’s paintings into deeply emotive portals to places of palpable energy and harmonious contrasts. Rutenberg recalls the words of Art Historian, Kenneth Clark “Ideas become fact through love,” “a great glaze that connects cultures” according to Rutenberg, and the great connector of his art throughout the past twenty-five years. Robert Fishko, Director of Forum Gallery recalls: “I was startled and amazed when I saw Brian Rutenberg’s painting for the first time, 26 years ago. The abstract landscape image… had the fresh boldness of fractal line, the intensity of near-synchronist color and the spontaneous surface of improvisation… To see his work mature and develop has been among the greatest gifts I’ve experienced in the art world.” Brian Rutenberg attended the College of Charleston (SC) and the School of Visual Arts (NY). A Fulbright scholar (1997), he lives in New York and both of his children are enrolled in the College of Charleston. Brian Rutenberg: Celebrating 25 Years opens on May 1 with an opening reception with the artist from 5:30 to 7:30pm. On May 7 from 5:30 to 7pm Forum Gallery will host Brian Rutenberg and Jonathan Miller Spies, “In Conversation.”

Opening March 14th and continuing through April 27th, Forum Gallery will present "Spring Forward," a group exhibition of thirty paintings, drawings, and sculpture encompassing the spirit of springtime, nature’s annual rebirth relished for its reinvigorating light, color, and flora and the energy it imparts, refreshing our vision for the future, propelling us into action. Setting the mood with the melody of springtime will be the charming, "Colored Bird," 1960, sculpted by Max Weber in painted bronze, alongside acrobats and mothers with their children that spring into play in three sculptures by Chaim Gross created between 1944 and 1968. Eponymous with Spring is the season’s colorful displays, which we will celebrate in glorious floral works and still lifes by Claudio Bravo, Charles Demuth, Susan Hauptman, G. Daniel Massad, and Anthony Mitri. Landscapes infused with vitality and Spring light by Benny Andrews, Robert Bauer, William Beckman, Davis Cone, Rackstraw Downes, and Tula Telfair will be on view alongside paintings by Guillermo Muñoz Vera featuring the gardens of the Alhambra and a New York scene by Raphael Soyer evoking civilizations awakening to the fresh days ahead. Charging beyond the picture plane into an unchartered future is Alyssa Monks’ female protagonist enmeshed in botanicals in "Maybe if I Try Harder," 2023; while Alan Magee’s larger-than-life metaphorical "Compass," 2019, reorients us in an evocative arrangement of driftwood. Brian Rutenberg’s electric landscape abstraction, "Pillow & Petal 6," 2023, cries out “Eureka!” in bolts of energy shot across the canvas in springtime hues. Love is in the air in Clio Newton’s new lyrical charcoal of an embracing couple; while Michael C. Thorpe’s quietly poetic moment alone fishing on a picturesque lake, "Da Boat," 2022, rendered in stitches and quilting, reminds us of times reconnecting with nature. Maria Tomasula contemplates our complex human make-up and relationship to nature in "River," 2017-18; while in oils by Alan Feltus and Paul Fenniak, dreamlike visions and questioning insights ignite springtime ideals of rebirth and personal growth.

Forum Gallery presents a two-person exhibition of new and bold figurative works by Alyssa Monks (b. 1977) and Clio Newton (b. 1989). The two women are among today’s most influential, internationally-recognized artists. While each has a unique approach to her art, both artists employ formidable technique to portray a thoroughly contemporary sensibility.

Forum Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of twenty-one paintings and drawings by William Beckman (b. 1942) and Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000), recognized as two of America’s most exceptional figurative painters of modern times. William Beckman and Gregory Gillespie shared the power to illuminate life through revelatory focus on its organized detail above and beneath the surface of the individual subject. Opening on Thursday, November 16, 2023, and continuing through Saturday, January 6, 2024, the exhibition celebrates their friendship and art with landmark works spanning seven decades.

As the world commemorates fifty years since Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) death and remembers his unique contributions to art, Forum Gallery presents a special exhibition of prints and drawings curated for quality, originality, provenance, condition, and excellent value. Picasso on Paper opens on Thursday, September 28th, continuing through Saturday, November 11th, 2023. Spanning eight decades of Picasso’s creative expression, the exhibition will present more than thirty works spotlighting Picasso’s extraordinary early gift, his classical training, his enduring and vigorous artistic production, and his voracious appetite for experimentation in visual vocabulary and art-making techniques. Picasso treated drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture as equal conduits to his vision, revolutionizing traditional approaches to each in ways that would change forever the way we see and make art.

New York, NY – Beginning June 29, 2023, Forum Gallery presents At First Blush, an exhibition of paintings and drawings, each of which is more than it first seems. These provocative works invite the viewer to create their own story and frame of reference for the subject the artist depicts. Something is happening, has just happened or is anticipated in every work, but that something is not explicit, it is up to us to define. Raphael Soyer’s Nude with Self-Portrait, 1961, the earliest work in the show, is about an artist and his model, but there’s more to it than just the fact he’s painting her; while Alyssa Monks’ Be Perfectly Still and Selective Perception, two of the most recent, both from 2021, exhibit psychologically charged expressions of the female experience. William Beckman’s Marseille (Bathers), 2017-23, imagines a relationship between two women that’s undefined while Steven Assael’s Susan with Dog, 1994, suggests a very different kind of relationship. Two women are again the subject of Philip Pearlstein’s masterful Two Models with Bedouin Rug, 1987; while Alan Feltus shows another, intimately personal, relationship in The Best of Times, 2007. These fully human, highly charged works may not have the same meaning to any two viewers, but everyone will bring their background, dreams and thoughts to each work. The clarity of Guillermo Munoz Vera’s Zara, 2017, in which a shopper shops while we observe from a distance, is matched by the opacity of Paul Fenniak’s Man with Collapsible Umbrella, 2012-13; and Offshore, 2011, that set scenes of dream-like mystery. Individual figures in With the Stones, 1999, one of Richard Maury’s most masterly paintings, and Woman on Red Background, 1967-68, by Gregory Gillespie, are shown in a context that compels imagination and presents intrigue. Arresting for the unapologetic directness of their subjects are Susan Hauptman’s Self-Portrait (La Perla #1), 2006; Kent Bellow’s Megan: October 1995, 1995; Bill Vuksanovich’s, Woman with a Scar, 2001; and Nelson Shanks’ Grace, 1996; while ambiguity is Clio Newton’s subject in Harper, 2019. Each work cries out for us to supply our personal narrative, a story we think of when we see the work. At First Blush will be on view from June 29 to September 23, 2023. Forum Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10 AM to 5:30 PM, and closed Saturday and Sunday during June, July and August. You are invited to explore our Online Viewing Room for At First Blush here: viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/at-first-blush ### Forum Gallery is located at 475 Park Avenue at 57th Street, New York, NY 10022. Please visit viewingroom.forumgallery.com/viewing-room/at-first-blush to view the entire exhibition online. The exhibition begins on June 29 and will be on view through September 23, 2023. Forum Gallery‘s summer hours are Monday through Friday, 10am to 5:30pm. The gallery is closed Saturdays, Sundays and holidays through the Labor day Weekend.

Forum Gallery is delighted to announce the second one-person exhibition for American watercolorist Rance Jones (b. 1965) at the gallery. The exhibition, La Vida Brava – Cuba Today, will open on April 27, 2023, continuing through June 23, 2023. Image: Rance Jones, "Calling," 2021, watercolor on paper, 32 x 25 inches

Forum Gallery presents "The Figure in Black and White," an exhibition of expressive figurative paintings, works on paper and textiles in grayscale by more than thirty artists from Modernist to Contemporary. "The Figure in Black and White" will be on view at Forum Gallery from Thursday, March 16 through Saturday, April 22, 2023. Image: Fernand Leger, "Étude pour la Grande Tour," 1949, gouache, ink, oil, and pencil on paper, 32 x 22 inches

From January 19 to March 11, 2023, Forum Gallery presents Tula Telfair: From a Distance, the eighth solo exhibition for the Artist at the gallery. For this exhibition, Telfair has created twenty-four oil on panel paintings in an intimate scale, a departure for the Artist best known for her grand-scale, heroic landscapes. In From a Distance, each 24 x 18 inch painting evokes the birds-eye view captured from an airplane window or a mountain peak. We see scenes of mysterious mountaintops and waterfalls veiled in mist, fiery volcanic eruptions, and haloed plains and valleys revealing the subtle curvature of the earth. Hauntingly familiar, these are invented vistas conjured by the Artist’s mind, portals inviting us to explore immersive and lush, natural worlds.

Forum Gallery presents 14 Years Old, the inaugural New York solo exhibition for Michael C. Thorpe. At just 28 years of age, Thorpe is an exciting young artist who has burst on to the art scene telling stories about his world expressed in quilts of colorful fabric, meandering stitching and printed canvas, in playful pencil and stitched drawings, and in surprising sculptural works. 14 Years Old will present thirty new works by Thorpe and continues through December 31, 2022. Thorpe came to quilting as an artistic vehicle connecting him to his bi-racial background. Quilting is a skill passed on intergenerationally by the matriarchs of Thorpe’s family who were part of the quilting community in New England. Thorpe’s subsequent discovery of the Gee’s Bend community of African American women quilters in Alabama offered the Artist deeper personal meaning in his chosen medium and a connection to his African American heritage.

The Maine Idea is an exhibition of works by Linden Frederick and Alan Magee whose distinct approaches capture the mystery, majesty and history of the place that’s fascinated artists for more than two centuries. Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, George Bellows, John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Andrew Wyeth are just a handful of the many glorious painters who have found and explored the landscape, the people, the feeling of this unique State that is truly like none other. Today, Linden Frederick and Alan Magee, both born elsewhere, have lived and worked in and been inspired by Maine for decades.

Forum Gallery presents Couplings, an exhibition about symbiotic relationships and connections between pairs of people, objects, and ideas. The exhibition, comprised of paintings, works on paper and sculpture, presents two exemplary works by each of eleven artists. Couplings is on view from Friday, June 24 through Saturday, September 17, 2022. Featuring works by Steven Assael, William Beckman, Claudio Bravo, Paul Fenniak, Gregory Gillespie, Chaim Gross, Alan Magee, Guillermo Munoz Vera, Clio Newton, Raphael Soyer, and Michael C. Thorpe.

Coinciding with American Art Week in New York City and The American Art Fair, Forum Gallery presents exceptional American paintings, drawings, and sculpture dating from the first half of the Twentieth Century to today.

From March 17 through April 30, 2022, Forum Gallery, New York, will present Deeps of Peace, an exhibition of new paintings by Brian Rutenberg. Color and memory combine and inspire the abstract paintings in the exhibition. While Brian Rutenberg (b. 1965) has probed and illuminated aspects of the landscape throughout his career, in Deeps of Peace he focuses on the feeling, motion and experience of his birthplace, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where the nearly pastoral beauty of the coastal lowlands meets the neon, architecture and attractions of the town itself.

New York, NY – From January 27 to March 12, 2022, Forum Gallery presents the exhibition, Stillness of Life, comprising of recent works by four artists whose disparate subjects and media contrast with their related devotion to probing contemplation of all they examine. Celebrated for their meticulous execution, each artist on view evokes the infinite complexity of his subject in that space of observation and memory where time stands still.

New York, NY – From November 11, 2021 to January 8, 2022, Forum Gallery presents It’s All Under Control, an exhibition of new paintings by Brooklyn-based artist, Alyssa Monks. The Artist, whose psychologically-charged, figurative paintings have been exhibited in New York since 2006, is known for her bold, expressionistic portrayals of women as they experience the natural, contemporary world. Alyssa Monks’ TED talk has been viewed more than a million times, her paintings have been presented throughout the United States and in Europe, and her work was featured in the television series, The Americans (FX) throughout its sixth and final season. In the sixteen paintings on view, Alyssa Monks draws the viewer into the shifting, powerful emotions experienced during the past eighteen months when the wider world has suffered physical, emotional, and political disturbances unlike at any time in history. Compounding the complexity of the new works in the exhibition, from the smallest (12 x 18 inches) to the largest (62 x 90 inches), have been the acutely emotional, personal circumstances the Artist has faced during this time, events that have combined to propel Monks to turn to herself as the subject of a body of work that endeavors to make sense of troubled times. The Artist writes: At times, the recent global and national devastation, division, and so many disappointments felt like a surreal projection of my own mental states in the isolation of the last 18 months. I began to explore the human reliance on control and predictability, and how our deepest suffering comes from our attachment to security, virtue, identity, and the logic of cause and effect. The glass barrier in these paintings between subject and viewer is clouded with vapor that obscures and abstracts the subject. This barrier underlines the personal and community-wide preoccupation with virus-laden respiratory droplets and the isolation it creates. Some works are more ambiguous than others, amplifying the state of disorientation in the face of terrifying unfamiliarity. Each piece has its own, often-layered, strategy, voice and urgent plea. One of the most painful truths in life is that there are difficult events and circumstances that we cannot control or influence. Perhaps in accepting our limitations, and the often life-altering grief that goes along with them, we can find a greater authenticity of being, a sense of empathy, and an understanding that we are not quite so isolated after all. The paintings in this series paradoxically reveal our shared human experience as they describe private moments of distress. —Alyssa Monks Since receiving her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2001, Monks' paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group presentations including exhibitions at the Kunst Museum in Ahlen, Germany, The Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, GA, and the National Academy Museum of Fine Arts, New York. Her work is represented in public and private collections, including the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, The Center for Contemporary Art, and the collections of Howard Tullman, Danielle Steele and Eric Fischl. Monks has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for Painting three times. It’s All Under Control is Alyssa Monks’ third one-person exhibition at Forum Gallery. ### Forum Gallery is located at 475 Park Avenue at 57th Street, New York, NY 10022. Forum Gallery is open to the public from Monday through Saturday, from 10am to 5:30pm. Please visit https://www.forumgallery.com/exhibitions/alyssa-monks-its-all-under-control to view the entire exhibition online. The exhibition begins on November 11, 2021 and will be on view through January 8, 2022. Forum Gallery is pleased to greet all vaccinated visitors during our public hours, and provides hand sanitizer and face coverings, on request. We comply with New York laws and the protocols recommended by the US CDC. For press inquiries, please contact Marjorie Van Cura, 212-355-4545; marjorie@forumgallery.com. For sales inquiries, please contact Nicola Lorenz, Executive Director or Marjorie Van Cura, Associate Director, 212-355-4545; gallery@forumgallery.com.

Robert Bauer, William Beckman, Alan Feltus, Alan Magee, Craig Mcpherson, Wade Schuman, Claudio Bravo, Susan Hauptman, David Levine, Raphael Soyer, Charles Biederman, Frederick Brosen, Francesco Clemente, Robert Cottingham, Gregory Gillespie, Red Grooms, Alex Katz, Jules Kirschenbaum, Michael Leonard, Joseph McNamara, Oleg Vassiliev, Tom Wesselmann, Andrew Wyeth

Steven Assael, Linden Frederick, Rance Jones, Alan Magee, Chaim Gross, David Levine, Raphael Soyer, Isabel Bishop, Aaron Bohrod, James H. Daugherty, Philip Evergood, Wood Gaylor, William Gropper, Robert Gwathmey, Joseph Hirsch, Jack Levine, Louis Lozowick, Reginald Marsh, Ben Shahn, Everett Shinn, John Storrs, Charles White

Steven Assael, Robert Bauer, William Beckman, Rance Jones, Alan Magee, G. Daniel Massad, Craig Mcpherson, Anthony Mitri, Alyssa Monks, Guillermo Munoz Vera, Clio Newton, Brian Rutenberg, Maria Tomasula, Claudio Bravo, Susan Hauptman, Oscar Bluemner, Robert Cottingham, Carl Grossberg, Reginald Marsh, Elie Nadelman, Odd Nerdrum, Pablo Picasso, John Singer Sargent, Morton Livingston Schamberg, Joseph Stella, Abraham Walkowitz, Andrew Wyeth

Steven Assael, Robert Bauer, William Beckman, Paul Fenniak, Linden Frederick, Rance Jones, Alan Magee, G. Daniel Massad, Alyssa Monks, Guillermo Munoz Vera, Clio Newton, Brian Rutenberg, Wade Schuman, Tula Telfair, Maria Tomasula, Raphael Soyer, Robert Cottingham, Abraham Walkowitz, Andrew Wyeth

Benny Andrews, Steven Assael, Bo Bartlett, Robert Bauer, William Beckman, Elaine de Kooning, Philip Evergood, Alan Feltus, Paul Fenniak, Walton Ford, Gregory Gillespie, Chaim Gross, Robert Gwathmey, Susan Hauptman, Xenia Hausner, Auguste Herbin, Bela Kadar, Jules Kirschenbaum, Kathe Kollwitz, David Levine, Reginald Marsh, Anthony Mitri, Alyssa Monks, Guillermo Muñoz Vera, Elie Nadelman, Clio Newton, Larry Rivers, Hugo Robus, Norman Rockwell, Brian Rutenberg, John Singer Sargent, Wade Schuman, Raphael Soyer, Ernst Thoms, Stephanie Wilde

Robert Bauer, Linden Frederick, Alan Magee, Alyssa Monks, Guillermo Muñoz Vera, Brian Rutenberg, Stephanie Wilde

Alexander Archipenko, Robert Cottingham, Elaine de Kooning, Gregory Gillespie, Arshile Gorky, Chaim Gross, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Elie Nadelman, Raphael Soyer, George Tooker

Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, William Beckman, Ralston Crawford, James H. Daugherty, Charles Demuth, Preston Dickinson, Paul Fenniak, Edward Franklin Fisk, César Galicia, Raymond Han, Susan Hauptman, Bernard Karfiol, Walt Kuhn, Michael Leonard, Richard Hayley Lever, Louis Lozowick, Jane Lund, Alan Magee, Alfred H. Maurer, William Meyerowitz, Guillermo Muñoz Vera, Megan Rye, Joseph Stella, Paul Suttman, Max Weber, Stow Wengenroth, and Cybèle Young