Forum Gallery presents seventeen new paintings by award winning American artist Alan Feltus. The works in the current exhibition continue the artist’s neoclassical exploration of the figure, saturated by the colors and richness of Italy, where Feltus has lived for more than twenty years. Feltus’ own influences are diverse: from Cycladic sculpture to Giotto; from Titian to Giorgio de Chirico; from Arshile Gorky to Balthus and Lucian Freud. Feltus puts it succinctly, “I have always understood that art comes out of art.”
Alan Feltus’ canvases portray the complexities of human relationships and emotions. Whether husbands and wives, siblings, lovers, or friends, Feltus’ figures are communicative but detached, pensive yet silent, animated and motionless. Seeking to express the inexpressible, Feltus uses body language as a tool: hands appear clutched or reaching out, never completing a gesture; bodies are postured awkwardly, aloof and frozen in a moment. Preferring solitude as he works, the artist uses his own face as his primary model. The figures that result noticeably resemble one another, creating an additional layer of metaphor in the narrative of each canvas.
Alan Feltus has lived and worked in Assisi with his wife, painter Lani Irwin, since 1987. Works by Feltus and Irwin are currently traveling the United States in an exhibition titled, “Personal Interiors” that will finish touring in October 2010 at the SoFA Gallery at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Recently, Feltus’ work has been included in exhibitions at the Boulder Museum, Colorado; the Casa Dell’Arte, Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey; the American Academy, New York and Rome; the National Academy Museum, New York; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. His work is included in important public collections around the world including, The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; Corcoran Gallery of Art and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; National Academy of Art, New York; and the Wichita Art Museum, KS.
Location: New York 4th Floor