OPENING ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2013, 7 TO 9 P.M.,
AT THE ALDEN GALLERY 423 COMMERCIAL ST. IN PROVINCETOWN

The Alden Gallery will present “Alice Denison and Mark Palmer,” a two-person show, on Friday, September 6, 2013, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the gallery’s exhibit space at 423 Commercial St. Drinks and refreshments will be served at the reception, and the artists will be attending; the gallery is open to the public and free. The exhibit will be on view through September 26.

The first half of this show, “Alice Denison: 360,” takes the Boston-based Denison’s show last year at the Alden Gallery, “Vessel,” to a new dimension. In that exhibit, Denison distilled her idiosyncratic mix of old-master technique and modernist aesthetics and came up with a hybrid form of still-life, combining ceramic vessels and images of flowers – inked on the vessels, floating in the background, raised with gel as a layer on top of the surface. “If I didn’t believe an object could have a kind of soul,” Denison says, “I wouldn’t bother to paint.” The title “360” describes an installation of 12 vessel paintings, taken from points of view that rotate completely around the object. It also describes the experience of being surrounded by vessels throughout the gallery space. Denison’s rich florals have been showing at the Alden Gallery since it opened in 2007.

The second half of the show, “Mark Palmer: Facing Facts,” is the Buffalo-based Palmer’s “exploration of the raw emotional world of mental disorder,” he says. “Each of these works has a common thread in that it began as an abstract painting underneath with the face being created from elements within the abstraction. The series incorporates a repetitive process of building up and breaking down the materials and paint, leaving hints of what lurks beneath.” Palmer, who has exhibited in Washington, D.C., and Buffalo, is the former owner of the Mark Palmer Gallery in Paducah, Kentucky. He has been with the Alden since its inception in 2007.

The gallery is open Thursday to Monday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Friday and Saturday nights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Contact: Howard Karren, 646-483-8164 / hjkarren@mac.com

Blue Vessel, by Alice Denison, 20 x 20 inches, mixed media on board

The Longest Road, by Mark Palmer