In addition to The Armoury's existing art collection, we're pleased to announce a new collaboration with Miyako Yoshinaga, a New-York based contemporary art dealer and specialist in Asian art. Miyako has curated an exhibition in The Armoury Westbury's 2nd-floor space of work reflecting both timely and timeless values.
For more information or to purchase images from previous exhibitions, please email us at westbury@thearmoury.com.
Click here for more information on Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery.
Music New York by William Meyers
April 6 – May 15, 2022
Location: The Armoury, 840 Madison Avenue (between 69 & 70th St.), New York, NY 10021 Hours: Monday through Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm
William Meyers has a vision of New York's quotidian sublime. The photographs on exhibit are drawn from his project Music New York. The project explores the ways in which New Yorkers encounter music; it deals with musicians, audiences, venues and, in a few images, symbolic representations. The project's theme is the variety and ubiquity of musical engagement in the city, not celebrity or any particular genre.
In New York, music is everywhere. All sorts of people play all sorts of music at all times of the day and night, and in every conceivable venue-not just concert halls, bars, and cabarets, but in the parks, subways, streets, schools, churches, synagogues, and, of course, in the privacy of their homes. The pictures here are of musicians performing in public, mostly to make money, but sometimes simply for the pleasure of playing to an audience. The music ranges from sublime 15th-century polyphonic sacred a cappella motets to the intolerable cacophony of rhythms whacked out on plastic pails. The caliber ranges from truly professional to pathetic. There is a great democracy in all of this as the right to perform is open to all musicians and the right to listen to all passers-by or ticket-holders; the latter also have the equally important right to ignore. At a time when most music is heard in one electronic format or another, these musicians preserve the tradition of live music."
William Meyers has had work exhibited in solo exhibitions in museums here and abroad as well as in solo and group gallery shows. It has been published in many newspapers and magazines. Portfolios of his prints are included in the permanent collections of the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, and several other institutions. His photo book Outer Boroughs: New York Beyond Manhattan was published by Damiani Editore in 2015. Mr. Meyers writes about photography for the Wall Street Journal.
All prints were beautifully printed by a master black-and-white printer, Chuck Kelton.
Still Lifes by Ellen Fisch
February 8 – March 26, 2022
Ellen Fisch was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Throughout her youth Fisch evolved as a photographer and an artist, using photography, drawing, and painting to communicate her artistic impressions. Fisch’s atmospheric and visionary images of architecture, landscapes, and still-lifes reveal the mystery of their forms as well as their vital inner spirit.
The still-lifes series presented here exemplifies Fisch’s intimate approach to her surroundings. In 2020, forced to stay home due to the pandemic, Fisch engaged in a cleanout in her house, discovering small objects accumulated over many years, such as bowls, jars, and silver trays. Interested in their shapes and textures, she contemplated how she could use them to express herself. In her studio near the window, she saw how soft northern light enhanced each object, and she began to pursue the art of still life. For Fisch, the genre of still life, initiated centuries ago by artists who were perhaps under similar circumstances of confinement, is a powerful statement with a reference to the essential aspects of human life.
In the series, she arranges seasonal flowers and fruits along with objects, exploring the subtle harmony between the mortal and the immortal. Each work embraces a distinctive personality in the combination of shapes, lines, compositions, and shades depending on the light at the time of day. Fisch took more than 400 frames of each arrangement and carefully selected the final image — a labor of love.
Yamauchi lived in a hut on the summit of Mount Fuji for five months a year for four years – a total of 600 days. Each photograph was captured at dawn from the exact same location. By revealing the essence of an airy mystical place, Yamauchi gives us the rare opportunity to experience the incredible spectacle of Earth waking up from the perspective of one of the planet’s most breathtaking scenic points. Essential to the artist is the notion of a physical place situated between earth and the universe. Removed from society, Yamauchi reminds us that our planet is part of a boundless extent.
Using traditional film processes, Yamauchi fully renders the depth of colors and complexities of the skies to their fullest potential. A square-shaped format representing a window or traditional canvas reveals the astonishing colors and patterns of the ever-changing empty space between earth and sky. The clouds, both reflecting and absorbing light while constantly changing shapes, fuel the imagination like Rorschach tests in the sky. Some works, in a reversed position, seem like extraterrestrial scenes, suggesting Yamauchi's own Copernican discovery in interpreting these transcendent images.
