John Salt
		The automobile is the over-riding theme of John Salt's work. Moving to New York in the late 1960s, he 
		was impressed by the sheer scale of the American cars which came to dominate his work. Obsolete, 
		ugly and yet possessing a faded grandeur, he saw these cars as an intrinsic part of the U.S. landscape. 
		Salt worked from his own photographs of wrecked cars which had been abandoned and left to rust 
		alongside dilapidated mobile homes on the wrong side of town. With their crisp realism, the resulting 
		paintings have the quality of a documentary photograph, recording the feeling of waste and ruin which 
		has resulted from material prosperity. Latterly his work has become more romantic in spirit, featuring 
		spacious suburban houses with their long verandas and parking lots under a soft covering of snow.

		A huge amount of skill and patience is involved in producing each work. A small painting takes about 
		eight weeks to complete. The artist first makes a detailed drawing from slides which he projects onto 
		the paper or canvas. Then, referring to a color print, he paints directly onto the drawing using an 
		airbrush to achieve his sharp focus effect. For more detailed parts, such as branches and foliage, 
		he cuts stencils through which he sprays.

		John Salt was born in Birmingham in 1937 and trained first at Birmingham College of Art and then at 
		The Slade School of Art in London. When he arrived in the States he abandoned his early abstract style 
		in favor of a more representational approach, soon becoming one of the most popular and significant 
		artists of the American Photo-Realist movement. He has taken part in exhibitions all over the world 
		including Canada, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Japan.

		Excerpt from the exhibition brochure: "John Salt", Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK, Marguerite Evans, 
		April 1997.

		Marilynn Gelfman
		BI-FRONTAL FIGURES AND THE TENACITY OF MEMORY

		Evocations of characters from nursery rhymes, fairy tales and old stories are constructed in pairs, connected 
		back-to-back. Each figure is the obverse of its mated figural coin. Our first visual conjecture is based upon 
		aural/oral voices from a collective past, a visual amalgam which continues throughout our lives, embracing 
		later cultural icons. Each character reposes in a community of memories. In this exhibition, each figure has 
		been released in dorsal connection with another persona, in a shared American expedition constructed of 
		myriad objects that might have been discovered in Tom Sawyer's pocket.

		Marilynn Gelfman
		March 2000

	
		Ellen Stavitsky
		Memory is the subjective selection of images and emotions. My work evokes particular moments from my 
		life in which the essence is clear although the details are obscured.

		Combining Chinese joss papers, rice paper, book pages, oil stick, gouache, watercolor and graphite, I 
		create compositions on wood, which suggest faint traces of past emotions and thoughts.

		To suggest underlying ideas, I make calligraphic marks or write actual phrases on the panels. As I add 
		layers of paper and paint, the marks offer glimpses of past sensations. I am interested in subtleties which 
		are not easily revealed, in secrets concealed and emotions contained beneath the surface. A framework for 
		the residue of emotions left when memory is distilled, the pieces are repositories of meaning in my life.

		Ellen Stavitsky
		March 2000

		Shimon Okshteyn
		Shimon Okshteyn is undistracted. His work, his life, is focussed so obsessively, so tediously, so frighteningly, 
		that it is almost impossible to see what he is doing.

		When you see his studio you may at first conclude that he is sitting surrounded by huge photographs, then 
		you notice that his only materials are some pencils, no cameras, no lens, no film.

		Then you decide he is a madman.

		To take an object, mechanical perhaps, manufactured certainly, and then to render it in this fashion is such
		 an extreme act, so chaotic apparently in intention that you fear for the creator. Your question of How? Is 
		followed consistently by Why? Why indeed?

		The answer, maybe, is that Shimon wants to capture the essence, the form and vibration of an object. He 
		wants to give dignity to the mass produced. To use this facility for this task gives nobility to the humblest 
		safety pin or most intricate millinery. A safety pin is a wonder of this century, and Okshteyn is driven to reveal 
		that. He wants, as he says himself, to make icons and for him these icons are all around us and unrecognized. 
		His project is a Pop one - after all Warhol made the soup can an icon - but Okshteyn brings to his work a 
		powerful sense of alienation and a genuinely fin de siécle character of lament and celebration. A sadness for 
		the passing and glorious affirmation of human skill, drive and application, in his slow agonizing creations.

		This is a new kind of Pop Art. Engaging, shocking and baffling. Okshteyn's purpose is to focus the world 
		around him through an intense engagement with these objects and let nothing distract him in their 
		contemplation. He is after all pursuing a headlong, relentless and probably impossible task, but in this battle 
		to represent, to illuminate this past, this history, his being undistracted is a gift to us all.

		From	Shimon Okshteyn November 10, 1999 - January 7, 2000
		Robert Sandelson Gallery, London, England

		William Suttle
		My intention is to describe a place. I don't know what I will shoot. Obviously I look for situations that I find 
		visually compelling -- which are not always clear when they occur. And I am not entirely aware of what I've 
		seen until the editing process. I photograph quickly, continuously for as long as a situation unfolds -- as long 
		as I have to.

		I shoot a particular place over a long period of time -- months, even years. The editing process -- the choices 
		I make of individual photographs in a series -- is the loading of proof upon proof -- photograph by photograph 
		-- that this particular description is true. I aim for clarity.

		William Suttle
		March 2000