Andrew Stevovich: Contemplating Figures
May 4 - June 24, 2018
Over the past 36 years, Adelson Galleries has developed a close relationship with Andrew Stevovich. In 2012, Adelson Galleries Boston opened to the public with our inaugural exhibition of Stevovich’s artwork. We were met with enthusiasm by old and new collectors. Two years later, we exhibited Stevovich again and sent the exhibition to our New York gallery. Now, as we begin work on a comprehensive publication on the artist to be released in 2019 – including a traveling museum tour – we are thrilled to present our third exhibition in the Boston gallery. The artist is a core member of the gallery’s stable of artists. He has developed a dedicated following throughout the country and many parts of the world.
Stevovich’s ability to carefully apply thin layers of oil paint over linen to represent his unconventional figures distinguishes his style from other artists. One must take a few moments to study each painting in order to properly appreciate the artist’s attention to detail. The subtle and delicate brushstrokes coalesce into swaths of color, interrupted by carefully contoured lines. Each composition has been meticulously assembled through several drawings, sometimes over the course of many years. The result is a balanced collection of colors and shapes that materializes into organized milieus, which produce narratives that are open to interpretation. He has distilled the features of the people he represents to their essential elements, and allows the observer to determine their own meaning.
The artist’s aesthetic voice is stylistically inspired by Old Master Renaissance painters but consciously comments on contemporary society. The subjects explore our culture’s social constructions, and
allow us to investigate how we view ourselves. At first glance, they may appear to be ambiguous figures in indistinctive environs, but upon further inspection one can see the underlying themes of identity, societal practices and pressures, the passage of time, nostalgia, neuroses, and idiosyncrasies of human interaction to name a few. The paintings’ vernacular is simplistic, allowing the bystander to reflect their own views onto them, rather than being told how to feel. He invites the viewer to contemplate the paintings as they relate to their own lives.
Our increasingly globalized ethos today – facilitated by the screens that some of us are addicted to watching – is fast paced, and it’s often difficult to slow down. The artwork of Andrew Stevovich provides us an opportunity to pause and examine moments of our personal and social lives that we all share. The artist rarely describes the narrative elements of his work, so I have provided my own interpretations of each painting in the exhibition with the hope of inspiring a deeper look. The artist is painstaking in his process – both in compositional analysis and application of paint. My goal is to allow the visitors of this exhibition to appreciate these intricacies and read carefully among the lines to identify with the figures they form.
Adam Adelson