Color: Sculpted and Painted will be showcasing the work of four different artists and exploring how their work is informed by their unique selection of color and materials. Cindy Millin’s paintings look like three-dimensional works. She adds layers upon layers of paint on plain backgrounds that reveal pops of bright colors. Dieter Kuhn work has a more controlled process using a vibrant palette to outline imaginary maps and mysterious scenes, Norbert Masal’s sculptures are interesting constructions where metallic structures are often gently wrapped in colorful shapes. Scott Reeds complicated method involves the hand bending of iron sheets and the bathing of the work in acrylic gesso. The results are enchanting wall sculptures that sparkle with their shiny and fluorescent colors. The new exhibition at Five Myles is from June 6, 2015 – June 28, 2015.
Dieter Kuhn born Switzerland but now lives and works in Astoria, New York. The self-taught painters extensive travels in Europe and the Americas have lead to extended stays or residencies in Rockford, Oakland, Brazil, Budapest and Hungary.
“I manipulate paint and play with forms and lines”. Says Dieter Kuhn on his work. “Like an improvising musician I take a figure, a loop, a lick and run with it.”
Kuhn aims to always create works that evoke different themes in his work like weightlessness and the defying of gravity; or something dense that filters and reflects the light; or even something layered and crowded like history. His large collection of maps and this fascination led to his love of the birds eye view, something he tries to use in his work.
Kuhn get a lot of his inspirations from simple acts like doodling, walking with no place to go, writing without words or just sitting and looking at the world around him. “My work has roots in music and language. What it shares with music is that meaning is not a given. From language I have learned that sense gets in the way of words. Adding and subtracting, erasing and watching: I love the intricacies of a process that takes me all over the map and ends when the thing I knew had to be there all along becomes visible”. –
Norbert Masal’s current body of freestanding sculptures use the process of assembling basic positive and negative shapes from reclaimed studio materials found in metal shops, mixed media studios, and his own workspace.
The negative shapes are made through the connection of geometric with the biomorphic. Angular metal fragments with splashes of color and light are assembled into three-dimensional objects. “The artworks interlocking of positive and negative spaces are symbolic of a mood or state of mind.” Says Masal
“My work is not about anything in particular except the process of painting.” Says Cindy Millin on her work. The physicality and the manipulability of paint and the concept of the process of painting being slow and open-ended intrigue her. She aims to always create paintings that don’t start with a final destination. She intuitively constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs to create dense and tactile, often awkward surfaces. The results after her working on a piece over and over are a ragged and broken, layered and uneven piece of work that reflect the residue of time.
Scott Reed attended Yale School of Art till 1979 to student a MFA in Printmaking, before going to the University of California at Berkeley, BFA, Honors Program in Sculpture till 1976. Reeds original sculptures used to be large, tongue-in-cheek, site-specific and slightly subversive pieces. But after 30-years in printmaking he has finally returned to his sculptor roots. Reeds new works are smaller in size and began somewhat by accident. “I was struck by the transformative properties of thick acrylic gesso.” This fascination was the premises to his recent work.
Each piece had a different and unpredictable outcome. First he twists and folds aluminum sheets with both hands before the metal is dunked in a tub of acrylic gesso until the desired contours are formed. When dried they are painted and emerge as a series of three-dimensional shapes.
FiveMyles will be exhibiting these works is from June 6, 2015 – June 28, 2015. 
