Carl D'Alvia, Steve DiBenedetto, Jackie Saccoccio, and Michelle Segre

Hyperallergic, The New Yorker

Helena Anrather is delighted to present CarlJackieSteveMichelle, an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Carl D’Alvia, Steve DiBenedetto, Jackie Saccoccio, and Michelle Segre. The artists are couples and close friends, and this will be the first presentation of the four artists’ work together.

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The exhibition offers a window onto how these relationships have found their ways into the artists’ work. While the works are not explicitly in dialogue with each other, threads of shared considerations weave in and out of the show: humor and exuberance, psychedelic generosity, vivid color, and an emphasis on line. All four artists also challenge distinctions between abstraction and representation, high and low, classical and pop. Each work seems to speak to the others, opening new lines of communication that perhaps stem from but also exceed the artists’ relationships, which points to the richness of mutual influence and deep connections – there are always trace amounts of your friends and lovers in your work, your ideas, and even your body.

In the spirit of friendship and gathering together around food, the artists will host a pasta-making party at the gallery, opening the space into an extension of the home cooking and dinner parties they often share, and emphasizing the importance of caring for one another and sharing a conversation over a meal.

Alongside the exhibition, a series of artist-led workshops titled Proximities will be curated by Mira Dayal and Josephine Heston. Proximities will focus on intimacy, defined loosely– not only in terms of relationships, but also in terms of community, receptivity, collaboration, generosity, and empathy. The six invited artists—Sarah Anderson, Lizzy De Vita, Katie Giritlian, Camilo Godoy, Amanda Turner Pohan, and Jayeon Yi—will consider how to foster intimacy between artists, friends, and strangers to elicit open discussions, productive disagreements, and heightened connections. Workshops will be open to the public and are scheduled for July 18th, 19th, and 20th.