Gallery RIVAA: Absolutely Hot, Summer Members' Art Show

But I thought the broader themes of the show were best seen in the contrasting works offered by two of Gallery RIVAA's most widely known artists.

Summer In The Hamptons, an etching from Georgette Sinclair is something new for her. Best known for luscious pastels, this works puts her virtuoso drawing skills on display in ways we have not seen before. Careful lines and subtle shading, usually overwhelmed by color, animate the black and white picture.

Several of her pastels are also featured in this exhibit.

In passionate contrast, Valeriu Boborelu's acrylic Composition erupts with fire in the center of the canvas, tendrils reaching for the borders, blackened scraps discarded on all sides. Cooler blues are receding in the deep background. Boborelu's paintings are informed by a passionate spiritual awareness that comes across with conviction and certainty.

Elsewhere, Boborelu shows a second captivating acrylic. Transformation In Blue, itself a study in contrasts, consists of two canvases, one dominated by rectangles, the other by circles and curves. Swelling blues into blue-greens against a dark background suggest spiritual rebirth and transcendence.

Bogdan Borgovan's large photographs, Atlantis 2 and Atlantis 3, show an enthusiasm for ordinarily unseen detail in common objects. Borgovan deftly captures realities beneath realities. His work is that of an explorer bringing back truths that can't be ignored. His focus on a narrow palette of browns to yellows ramps up the intensity of discovery.

In Think I'll Go Fishing, Rachel Garrick's realist water color, we see joy in the simple things of life. A mustachioed man looks dreamily into the distance, envisioning a summer day ahead. In a second painting, A Colorful Fence, Garrick thoughtfully records a rich tropical setting.

Artful rhythms vibrate throughout Deborah Julian's simply titled Central Park. Intense colors, melting in summer heat, turn a New York City landmark into a possible furnace, red radiating from walls and ceiling while a blue-toned surface suspends two figures, a woman standing, a man beginning to run toward her, in permanent stasis. Fantasy puts the lie to reality as colors and contrasts hold.

Zoya Lymar-Krasnovsky's painting, City, is all hot oranges, reds and yellows, except for a band of black overhead, suggesting a glowering sort of nighttime. Lymar-Krasnovsky's urban scene consists of a canvas-wide swath of color within which a limited set of blocks constructs the urban landscape as an unbalanced pyramid. The top cell holds two indistinct figures.

And a pair of regulars at Gallery RIVAA group shows, Alexander Movshovich and Toshiko Kitano Groner, present new works that, as they usually do, add elegance to the rooms.

Groner's Still Life With Oranges, uses the colorful advantages of oil painting to make the improbable seem realistic. Green Apple With Lemon, uses the same compositional approach in a water color.Her geometric background makes a platform for a colorful, natural setting.

Movshovich uses his camera as a magnifying glass, sharing intimate views of reality. In Hot-Cold, veins of fire shoot through a world of ice. Energetic bubbles leap out of the dark to weave through ripe, green vegetation in Diamonds of Nature.

Follows his inspiration into a new direction, Tad Sudol creates the angular figure of a standing woman, using only graphite on canvas. In Muse, he has made a graceful portrait of youthful power and beauty.

In her deftly executed figure studies, Bonnie Goodman shows us the architecture a visual artist works with outwardly.

The study shown here is one of five she brought to Absolutely Hot, the new show at Gallery RIVAA.

Frederica Castle, a Gallery RIVAA Guest Artist with a flair for recreating memorable ocean vistas, adds five impressionistic seascapes. Pastel Ocean 1 is rich in blues and grays. The dynamics of the sea rush into and across her canvas.

Getting ready for her solo exhibit at Gallery RIVAA in September, Anca Pedvisocar offers an appetizer. Her only oil in this show, Les Baigneuses,-translated as "The Bathers"-shares its title with the great Cézanne. The similarity ends there. And it ends with amusement. Pedvisocar deposits her three, smiling females in the early Twentieth Century, posing in one piece suits. Simple enough, but the background is surreal. Large fish swim through and around them as if they're standing, not on a beach, but on the ocean floor.

Arline Jacoby, honoring the "absolutely hot" theme, fired up her kiln and created a clay sculpture from organic substances she has arranged on a serving tray. The image is both elegant and inviting. It reminded me of treasures recovered from the ruins of Pompeii.

"I turned the heat all the way up to the top," she explains.

Finally, Ioan Popoiu continues his efforts at environmentally inspired expressionism. His three related canvases, Broken Blue 1,2, 3, have a dominant blue, so dark it's nearly black, consuming and obscuring more brightly colored space. It's like a cancer extending its reach into new, healthier cells. This seems to reflect the dim view he expressed about environmental conditions in his recent solo exhibit, Ash and Lapilli.