M Fine Arts at the Art Market Hamptons

The M Fine Arts team is off to the Hamptons! We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be returning to the Art Market Hamptons for the East End’s premier annual art fair. Headed to the Hamptons August 11th through 14th? Come by the pavilion and see us along with 90 other galleries showing some of the top vanguards in modern and contemporary art. A cultural spectacle for twelve years, the art fair serves as a forum for collectors, designers, dealers, and artists, as well as an adventurous day out for the avid art-appreciator. 

M Fine Arts plans to present six of our artists, Anne Leone, Stéphane Joannes, Mark Knoezer, Beth Carter, Franco Salas-Borquez, and Philippe Charles Jacquet. Their work really celebrates the coastal summer spirit of the Hamptons with their playful marine themes and nautical motifs. Keep reading for a deeper “dive” into these artists and the art fair!

Anne Leone is an L.A. native but now splits her time between Berkley, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York. She produces eye-catching hyper-realistic paintings of swimmers, as though looking at them from under the water. Leone deftly captures the water’s refractions and reflective properties, rendering work almost evocative of photography. Her interest in the expressivity and litheness of forms in the water felt perfect for a carefree weekend on the Long Island shoreline.

Corazón del Paraiso #14, acrylic on linen, 60 x 74in.

Like Leone, Chilean-born artist Franco Salas-Borquez also features water prominently is his work. Perfect for a beach-front art show, Salas-Borquez’s wave paintings will also make an appearance at our booth in the Hamptons.  From far away, one might mistake these works for large-scale photographs, but they are actually oil paintings. His keen eye for mimicking how water moves and rendering it onto canvas is truly spectacular, and the resulting pieces work perfectly in the modern art-lover’s space.

l'horizon perdu, oil on canvas, 75 x 78in.

We also plan to show work by contemporary French artist, Stéphane Joannes. Joannes’ large oil paintings on canvas depict nearly-abstracted cargo tankers at sea. He draws on the ships’ vast horizontality and employs bright dynamic hues to produce compositions comparable to abstract color fields. The clear connections to water and global commerce made Joannes a perfect fit for the fair. 

Tanker 30 (triptych), Oil, bitumen and glycerin on canvas, 39.25 x 118in.

Alongside Joannes’ Tankers, we’ll be showing one of Beth Carter’s sculptural masterpieces: Giant Minotaur II. Standing at over six-and-a-half feet tall and cast in bronze, the Minotaur will act as one of the more sizable pieces in the show, but is nonetheless exemplary of Carter’s oeuvre. Carter works exclusively in bronze, and is primarily interested in hybridity and mutability as subject matter. Like the Minotaur, many of her works feature animal-human amalgamations, often lost in a moment of quiet contemplation. Their soft, almost melancholy gazes evoke a sort of pathos in the viewer, reminding us they might be more human than animal after all. Come check out more of Carter’s work here.

Giant Minotaur II, bronze (with steel base), 78.75 x 25 x 24in.

Mark Knoezer, a Hudson-River-Valley-based artist, will also be showing with us in the Hamptons. Knoezer is best known for his striking wooden wall sculptures that combine oil, acrylic, and epoxy to produce stunning abstract works. His extensive layering of pigment produces vibrant concentric circles, honoring symmetry, color, and dynamism. Their unique visual language speaks to the forward-thinking contemporary minds a part of this event! See more of them here.

Splendor, oil, acrylic and epoxy on wood, 62in. diameter

Last but not least, we’ll also be showing pieces by artist, Philippe Charles Jacquet. His ethereal seascapes depict the French coasts in Brittany, France. Combining fantasy and reality, these works celebrate the ever-changing waters of the region and emanate a beachy coolness perfect for the Hamptons’ affair. Check them out at the Art Market in August, or in our Boston gallery.

le maitre de mon monde, oil on panel, 47 x 23.5in.

We hope to see you there! For more information on the Art Market such as ticketing, location, or COVID protocol, visit their website.

 M Fine Arts at the Art Market Hamptons | August 11-14

Location:

Nova's Ark Project & Sculpture Park
60 Millstone Road
Water Mill, NY 11976

FRANCISCO SEPULVEDA

M Fine Arts is pleased to present an online exhibition of Francisco Sepulveda’s work titled: La nuit au bout du monde. Roughly translating to “night at world’s end,” La nuit au bout du monde features seven unique paintings whose mystery and surrealist intrigue truly earn the show its name. It seemed only fitting to exhibit this show in cyberspace, as each painting feels like a dreamscape itself, telling otherworldly stories of man, flora, and fauna in colorful exuberance.

Using the online platform, Artland, we’ve created an intimate, white-cube-style gallery in virtual reality. Participants can “walk” through the gallery space by clicking on different parts of the room, and see the paintings reproduced to scale on the walls. To learn more about each work, you can click on the painting directly, and see its title, size, materials, and pricing information all from the comfort of your living room couch. You can sign the virtual guestbook, and even peer through the skylight on the gallery’s ceiling! Even when exhibited in a two-dimensional space, the pieces still work in conversation with one another and create a visual impact.

Born and raised in Chile, Sepulveda now lives and works in France, and regularly displays in galleries around the world including Switzerland, Germany, and the United States. Clearly an artist of global breadth, his work maintains its resonance in a gallery with a potentially global reach. Here are some of our favorite works from the show.

La nuit au bout du monde will be on view in the VR gallery through August 31. Check it out here.

The wedding, Acrylic on Canvas , 59 x 59 in

This work, The Wedding, combines humor, a vibrant palette, and a dynamic composition to tell its eccentric story. In the work, a young man holding flowers sails in a gondola alongside his hybrid horse-tree companion. Though unclear if the beast is to be the boy’s bride, or is merely accompanying him to the altar, either narrative is a compellingly peculiar tale typical of Sepulveda’s oeuvre. The deft flattening of space produces large swaths of color that both contribute to the composition’s dynamism and its overall chimerical otherworldliness.

The commitment, Acrylic on Canvas , 39.25 x 27.5 in

Another favorite, titled The Commitment also presents the viewer with a delightfully puzzling narrative. A young woman dangles lithely from a tree; her bright red dress creating a stark contrast against the midnight blue sky. In her grasp, she holds a large turquoise bird, which dons a yellow crown. Despite her precarious position, the girl’s gaze is impassive, even tranquil. Like The Wedding, Sepulveda does not impart his viewers with any more context and leaves the nature of the girl’s commitment up to our interpretation. We can see some of the artist’s South American influences in the energetic textures and patterns of the girl’s dress and the landscape behind her. The forms’ flatness and colorful vitality somewhat recall quilting, while still adhering to surrealistic aesthetics.

Critics have referred to his body of work as “the Sepulveda Galaxy.” Each canvas is its own planet, orbiting within his celestial imagined reality. Come see for yourself and experience them in virtual reality.

Text by Alexandra Cirelli

Spring and Summer 2022

M Fine Arts Galerie has kicked off the spring season with three shows consisting of five different artists. Read more about them below. 

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May

 As the rest of Boston began to thaw, we welcomed work from Eric Roux-Fontaine’s collection, Silences, alongside an assortment of sculptures by U.K. artist Beth Carter. Silences features mixed media paintings on canvas that depict dream-like woodlands dotted with lively flora and fauna. Eric Roux-Fontaine’s imagined forest landscapes with their dense foliage and vibrant colors reminded us of the newly dawning spring weather outside.

Eric Roux-Fontaine, la naissance de Versailles, 45” x 57.5”

Paired alongside the paintings from Silences, were Beth Carter’s bronze sculptures of animal-human hybrids. Drawing on classical myth, Carter’s sculptures explore themes of mutability, power, and vulnerability. They paired perfectly with Roux-Fontaine’s forest scenes; it were as though minotaurs and other mythological creatures were lurking amid the trees sprawled throughout the gallery. Check out the show here.

“I am fascinated by the poetic power certain animals have on our psyches.”

— Beth Carter

June

In June, we’re celebrating the start of summer with a solo exhibition of paintings by Brittany-born artist, Philippe Charles Jacquet. Depicting quiet misty vistas along the coasts of France, Jacquet’s paintings fit well with the beginning of beach season. The show, titled États D’âme, translates roughly to “states of mind,” or more literally, “states of the soul.”

Looking at his pieces, this rings true. They present a kind of in-betweenness that straddles both land and sea, and what is real and surreal. These shifting connotations remind us of the transition from spring to summer. Come to the gallery and see them for yourself! Learn more here.

Philippe Charles Jacquet, la fille laroche, 31.5” x 31.5”

“To paint frontage is like giving free rein to the imagination”

— Philippe Charles Jacquet

July/August

For the latter half of the summer, M Fine Arts is pleased to present a group show, featuring several new works by artists Stephane Joannes and Thomas Bossard.

Stephane Joannes, Tanker 24, 19.5” x 59”

In previous collections, Stephane Joannes renders images of cargo ships into large abstract swaths of color. These long horizontal pieces evoke both sky and water, but also dynamic forms of abstraction.

Thomas Bossard, Musée, 35” x 45.5”

Thomas Bossard creates figurative paintings of quintessentially French scenes: from chefs at a tasting to ballet dancers in rehearsal. Bossard dots his works with sprinklings of humor and self-referentiality as well, often caricaturizing his figures or incorporating canonical Impressionist pieces into the composition.

We look forward to seeing these two artists in conversation. Stop by in July and check them out for yourself.

We hope to see you soon! Happy summer!

Text by Alexandra Cirelli