The Rice Polak Gallery  first exhibition of the 2014 season, featuring the work of Ben Matthews, Nick Patten and David Prifti.

Exhibition Details:
July 3rd – July 16th
Opening Reception Friday, July 4th, *6:00pm
Preview Thursday, July 3rd

Ben Matthews

Ben Matthews’ masterful paintings capture, in a funny, fantastic way, unspecified periods of Americana. The paintings are a synthesis of Victorian carnival posters, 1950s advertisements and zany botanical subjects, all approached with irreverent humor. Matthew’s attempts to make the paintings look realistic by gouging their surfaces, letting ghost images shine through, and literally tearing their edges. « I try to provide an artifact from a time that can’t be placed », says the artist.

Nick Patten

Nick Patten is often described as an American Vermeer bringing beauty and mystique to everyday scenes. In his current exhibition Patten is featuring all new interiors many of which have a twist. These recent paintings have a piece of art on the wall – an iconic Provincetown scene. Patten has taken a photograph and then printed the image on fine rice paper from Nepal. He then mounts the photograph to the painting, embellishing the image thus creating depth and a sense of place.

David Prifti

David Prifti once wrote that is was his desire to explore his life through the things that shaped his life. These formative elements were his relationships, his memories, his sense of family, rites of passage, aging and death. The creative process that led to all of his photographs was indirectly a very personal journey for him. Two years ago, David Prifti died at age fifty of pancreatic cancer. This marked the end of a renowned photographic career and 25 years of teaching at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School.