Nature And Humanity Harmonize in Exhibition Showcasing Katy Schimert's Glazed Ceramics and Ping Zheng's Oil Stick Landscapes

Imagine some ​​60 tons of dissolved minerals, including sandstones, limestones, and dolostones, sweeping over a 110-foot talus slope every minute, the erosive power painting the water mostly green. Now gaze out of a Brooklyn apartment window during the pandemic, surrendering to the balmy sunlight as it carves a winding path illuminated by green and blue emanating rays.

The two elegant, ethereal depictions engage in a dialogue, amplified by their creative coincidences. The clever curation by Dolly Geary draws together Katy Schimert’s glazed ceramic, Painted American Falls (2019), and Ping Zheng’s oil stick on paper, A Ray of Sunlight (2022). The undulating lines, the colors that evoke otherworldly nature, and the precise compositions, create a conversation between the works that meet for the first time at the joint exhibition, Katy Schmirt and Ping Zheng, on view at Geary Contemporary in Millerton New York, until October 1, 2023. The fortuity of artistic elements evokes a natural collaboration that both New York-based artists embrace.

“I first saw Ping’s work at Kristen Lorello (gallery on the Upper East Side), and when Dolly proposed it, I intuitively thought it would be a good idea. Then when I went to the gallery to help install, I was really amazed at how well our work went together,” Schimert said. “There's something a lot deeper happening between the two. It’s almost the vibration of the line quality in both of our works that seems to be on the same frequency. … (There is) a very intense back and forth that resonates.”

Both artists explore the relationship between interior and exterior worlds, and both bodies of work are imbued with a sense that the asomatous and the corporeal coexist in a fluid, rhapsodic realm where the connection between humanity and nature is dynamic and essential.

Schimert’s sculptural works are presented as both convex and concave, performing as body armor or breast plates, and her 2015 watercolor on paper works (With Caves, With Falling Rock, Caves, and Split Open with Sun) hint at anatomical drawings with joints (perhaps the articulations of the the tibiofemoral and patellofemoral knee joints) connecting the Falls. I especially appreciate the deliberate and meticulous nuance of Schimert’s ceramics, some with areas of intentionally or spontaneously exposed, unglazed clay, and others fully saturated. Painted American Falls conveys a painterly quality with a frame at the bottom where the glaze painstakingly ceases at a perfect border, almost like a waterfall haircut, save for one lucious teardrop of glaze that reminds us how imperfection is the intrinsic truth and beauty of nature and humanity.

Zheng’s painterly oil stick on paper pieces vibrate alongside Schimert’s dual media works, guiding our eye in and out as if we’re on her oscillating journey, both physically and metaphysically, through her intimate sunscapes. Zheng’s Go with the Flow (2022) transports us as if we’re luxuriating in a yoga inversion and we look up at the tiny sun as if it's our navel. I’m comforted by the clamshell-like split rib cage which reignites my passion for Schimert’s sculptural breast plates and transports me back to the late 15th century as a playful interpretation of Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Our voyage continues on a psychic plane with the geometric symmetry of Flying and Traveling, two works executed in 2022 and signaling our release from the pandemic.

“It’s about landscape, memory, and how to make work and present it in the space and how you feel in the space, and that calm you feel when you are making work and then how you feel when you see it in the (gallery) space,” Zheng said.

Following a walkthrough of the show, it’s gratifying to recognize how Dolly Geary captured the myriad genius serendipity between both bodies of work, which underscores the talents and scopes of both artists. This is a two-person exhibition that not only functions as its own third persona, but pleads for an in-person viewing. It’s exuberant to wonder how these works may pair at a major institution or corporate collection, or even a personal collection led by a keen eye. It would only build on the collective achievement of both artists, whose vast accomplishments include Schimert’s inclusion in Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950-2019 at the Whitney Museum of American Art (where I first encountered her work in November 2019), and Zheng’s presence in esteemed collections such as JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity Investments.

Take your time, as I did with my husband and son, to survey this two-person phenomenon and experience this Dutchess County village that may soon emerge as another art world destination, thanks to the Geary gaze.

“I got to know them both through Kristen Lorello, and they were both in a group show that (Kristen and I) put together about three years ago, with half the show here and half at Kristen's gallery,” said Geary, who co-owns the gallery with her husband Jack Geary. “When we saw the colors of these works, we thought they would work so well together.”