Events Calendar

"Scherer & Ouporov: The Revival of Egg Tempera Painting & Twenty Years of Collaboration"

Jan 14, 2012

$20; Reservations required.

This lecture includes admission to a demonstration of egg tempera at the Amrory Art Center on Friday, January 20, 2012 at 1:30 p.m.  Click here for demonstration details. Call (561) 805-8562 or contact campus@fourarts.org for more information.

Egg tempera is renowned for its luminosity, making it an ideal medium for rendering the human face. Widely used in the Renaissance, egg tempera has had a revival in the contemporary art world and with such artists as Andrew Wyeth and the Magic Realists. Since meeting at the renowned Moscow Surikov State Academic Institute in 1989, Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov have worked together as a team in the production of their diverse art.  The artists will discuss their unique history, collaboration, and the evolution of their work over the past two decades.  Ranging from drawings, prints, photography, video, sculptural installations and most notably, richly detailed egg tempera paintings. The entire process, symbolism and history behind the iconic approach they use in egg tempera painting will be discussed. The couple will explore the conceptual grounds of language and communication, dreams, spirituality, and the interconnected nature of the world we inhabit.   Raised on opposite sides of the Cold War divide, American Scherer & Russian-born Ouporov together embody the bridging of opposites that is a strong component of their art. 

Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov are a collaborative team who met while studying at the renowned Moscow Surikov State Academy Art Institute—one of Russia’s two institutions of higher arts education and part of the Russian Academy of Arts established in 1757 by Peter the Great.  Scherer earned a BFA from Florida State University, an MFA from Brooklyn College, and received an International Research & Exchanges Board Award to be the first American visual artist accepted into the Russian Academy of Arts during the Soviet period. At the age of 11, Ouporov won admittance into the Moscow State Academy Art Lyceum, graduated at 18, and earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Moscow Surikov State Academy Art Institute.

Scherer & Ouporov have received national and international recognition for their collaborative works. Museum exhibitions include the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Goldman Warehouse and Bass Museum, Miami; Historical Museum of the City of Vienna; World Financial Center, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Passage de Retz, Paris; Boston Center for the Arts; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Kansas City; and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle. Their works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard University Fogg Art Museum, the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, NY, and The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, among others. They are one of ten international artists featured in Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections monograph that explores Klimt’s influence among today’s leading contemporary artists. Their work has been reviewed extensively in many publications such as Art In America, ArtNews, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and featured on PBS and Public Affairs Television.  Awards include a NY Artist’s Fellowship, Mid-Atlantic Visual Arts Grant and a South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists. A comprehensive hard cover publication, As Above, So Below: Recent Work by Scherer & Ouporov, was released in conjunction with their solo exhibition at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. The artists’ paintings are represented by ACA Galleries in New York and Arden Gallery in Boston.  Their original prints are represented by the Mezzanine Gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
 

Event Location

The Four Arts King Library, 2nd Floor

http://www.fourarts.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.one&content_id=1027&x=5466500

 

"The Peacock Room" was featured October 31, 2011, on the front page of the Palm Beach Daily News--the main Palm Beach Society newspaper .
 
 

"Twilight" is featured in the October, 2011 issue of American Art Collector in an article by John O'Hern, "The Art of the Nude".

 

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Armory Faculty Exhibition
October 7-November 11, 2011
Reception: November 4, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Language of the Birds" is featured on the cover of Maggie Paul's recent publication, "Borrowed World"

Borrowed World
Poems by Maggie Paul


Praise for Borrowed World:

"There is a kind of lyric poem that concerns itself with luminous moments, where the poem is like a jewel you look through, and the world takes on a new light and is transformed. It is these luminous moments that one encounters again and again in the poems of Maggie Paul. She writes in a voice that does not flinch at sorrow or loss, but attempts to make poetry of them—poems that find a sanctuary, that try to hold on to love and family and compassion as if our lives depended on them, poems that can find solace almost anywhere: 'To see what I mean / take a small thing, / the bend in the brook, / that branch's shadow. / That's how I rescue / the broken day.' Coming from a religious childhood, Maggie Paul is a poet who searches for the sacred in a secular world, and finds 'the Kingdom of Heaven is where you plant it.' In Maggie Paul's poems there are no linguistic fireworks, no rhetorical hyperbole; this is a poet who quietly goes about her work the way 'sunlight seeps through the honey jar on the sill.' "
—Joseph Stroud, author of Of This World: New and Selected Poems

"'I was born into the season of death,' Maggie Paul says to open this compelling book, and then proceeds to combat that season with a lyrical voice that can assert 'we have flocks of birds within us / who flutter and fly out when summoned.' Indeed, herons, doves, crows, all kinds of images of flight suggest for her a way to transcend these issues with a haunting and gorgeous lyricism. This is an amazing book that makes us rethink the very nature of what poetry can do."
—Richard Jackson, author of Resonance

"Maggie Paul's poetry is an act of radical translation. In Borrowed World, she negotiates the treacherous region between the world as we imagine it, and the world as it really is—the world of potentiality, and the world of stark inevitability. Maggie Paul is 'haunted by the souls / of things beneath words,' and like a child opening one nesting doll after another, she is after an irreducible world; the one hidden behind the confusion of obfuscating pretenders."
—Gary Young, author of Pleasure

"Precise in their construction, tender in their attentions to the world, and mature in their knowledge of our 'borrowed' time, these songs and meditations radiate a refreshing spiritual consciousness."
—Mark Cox, author of Natural Causes

Maggie Paul was born in Boston, Massachusetts. After working for ten years on Madison Avenue in publishing and advertising, Maggie completed her B.A. in English at Rutgers University. She then received her M.A. in Literature from Tufts and an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. The mother of a daughter and son, Maggie lives in Santa Cruz, where she teaches Writing and Social Justice at both the University of California and Cabrillo College.

Borrowed World by Maggie Paul
72 pages, paperback, $15, ISBN 978-0-9792567-6-9

 

Click on image to order from us online

 

As Above, So Below, an exhibition of recent work by Scherer & Ouporov at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, offers an intimate look at their compelling art. Borrowing its title from an ancient dictum that describes in part a mirroring of macrocosms with in the microscopic, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue address the many dichotomies that take form, and are dispelled, within the artists' work. Since meeting at the Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute in 1989, Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov have worked together as a team in the production of their diverse art.

Click on image to order from Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art Store

As Above, So Below: Recent Works by Scherer & Ouporov

August 28–November 27, 2010
Bill L. Harbert Gallery and Gallery C

Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov create complex works of art imbued with delicate beauty and near-animate energy. The couple's fully collaborative efforts produced under the joint appellation Scherer & Ouporov encompass drawings and prints, photography, video, sculptural installations, performance art and, foremost, egg tempera paintings. The latter are minutely detailed compositions, often embellished with gold leaf and gemstones, which draw upon a long tradition of figurative art from medieval icon painting to contemporary practices. Since meeting at the V. I. Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute in 1989, Scherer, an American raised in Florida, and Russian-born Ouporov have worked together as a team in the production of their diverse art.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Scherer & Ouporov's work is their intensely intimate process of artistic collaboration. Each partner engages equally and interchangeably at every step in the creation of an object. They share tasks and exchange ideas on individual works as though they were truly one artist. In painting, one picks up a brush where the other had left off, with negligible variance in technique or style. Each work of art, no matter the medium, is the product of rigorous preparation, labor and reflection, engaging four hands and two minds in complete unity.

Installed in the Harbert Gallery and Gallery C, As Above, So Below presents thirty-six works assembled from several private collections and from the artists' studio, and includes a large-scale video installation in addition to egg tempera paintings, silverpoint drawings, etchings and photographs. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated hard-cover catalogue, available in the Museum Shop.

Please join us on September 24 at 6pm to hear Scherer and Ouporov discuss their work. This talk and following reception is free and open to everyone. Please RSVP to 334.844.3085.

Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov,
Talking Tree, 2006,
egg tempera and gold leaf on wood panel, 13 x 17 inches,
collection of Dr. Rick Daigle		 Scherer & Ouporov,
The Dream of the White Peacock, 2007, egg tempera, gemstones, and sterling silver on wood panel, 24 x 18 inches,
collection of Dr. and
Mrs. Joseph Gretzula

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

exhibition images

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To view the full article, click on the link below

http://www.northlightshop.com/product/print-issue-the-artists-magazine-november-2009/
 

 
 

Scherer & Ouporov are one of ten international artists featured in the Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections publication that "explores Klimt's influence among today's leading contemporary artists" and also includes Vanessa Beecroft, Peter Doig, Ellen Harvey, and Vik Muniz, among others.
 
 

 

click to enlarge

978-3-7913-3834-7  
GUSTAV KLIMT
The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections
480 pages, illustrated
Edited by Renee Price
9 1/2 x 11 1/2 in.
Cloth bound
$65.
This publication accompanies the exhibition Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections, which presents paintings and drawings from the collections of the co-founders of Neue Galerie New York. Together, these collections comprise the finest gathering of works by Klimt in the United States.

Essays examine Klimt's earliest patrons; his studios; the role of photography in his erotic work; profiles of the most important women in Klimt's life; his relationship with Gustav Mahler and Auguste Rodin; his never-before-published 1917 notebook; and an interview by Neue Galerie director Renee Price with Maria Altmann, heir to the five Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazis that were recently returned to her by the Austrian government. This lavish volume on Klimt's life and art also includes an exploration of the influence Klimt has had on popular culture.

 

The Museum of Contemporary Art Miami, MOCA at Goldman Warehouse is featuring New Art: South Florida, an exhibition highlighting the recent works of Scherer & Ouporov and 13 other recipients of the 2007 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowships for Visual and Media Artists, from September 8-October 27, 2007.

In the video, Tree-Rain, Scherer & Ouporov investigate relationships between nature and language. By making reference to Russian art history and literature, they combine text and images to formulate symbolic reference.

Coral Springs Museum of Art is presenting a survey of Scherer & Ouporov’s rich collaborative body of works from 1999 to 2007, with over 40 paintings, drawings, etchings, photographs, video, and interactive installations.  The majority of works are on loan from private collections all over the United States.  Entitled One Voice, this solo exhibition, runs from September 7 until November 17, 2007. 
 
Scherer & Ouporov are exhibiting their latest installation, Glossololia, and photographic works as a part of Florida Atlantic University 's 2007 Biennial Art Faculty Exhibition from September 8 to October 27, 2007 in the Schmidt Center Gallery.
 

Scherer & Ouporov's work is included in Art & Psyche: The Freudian Legacy, at CDS Gallery, New York from September 14 to November 29, 2007. Curated by Lynn Gamwell, author of Dreams 1900-2000-Art, Science, and the Unconscious Mind, this exhibition traces the complex, evolving relationship between the visual arts and psychoanalytic thought throughout the 20th century and up to present day.  According to this  thoughtful survey, the works of  Jonathan Borovsky, Max Ernst, Eric Fischl, Lucien Freud, Arshile Gorky, Roberto Matta, Jackson Pollock, and Scherer & Ouporov, among others, served as visual manifestations of Freud’s “unconscious” musings.&nb sp; Gamwell states:  “…Scherer and Ouporov and Jonathan Borovsky examine the fraught relationship betwee n dreams and the waking life."

Participating artists:

Nicolas Africano, Jonathan Borofsky, Charles Brown, Julie Cockburn, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Timothy Cummings, Edmund Engelman, Max Ernst, Eric Fischl, Gonzalo Fonseca, Lucian Freud, Arshile Gorky, Marcel Jean, Leon Kelly, Roberto Matta, Charles Matton, Jorge Michel, Odd Nerdrum, Jackson Pollock, Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov, Kurt Seligmann, Hedda Sterne, Christian Vincent

Click here for press release and exhibition checklist.
Scherer & Ouporov's recent photography work is featured in the Cultural Quarterly , A Broward County Board of County Commissioners Publication, Spring, 2007, pp. 30-35, including two full-page fold out sections.

         
Scherer & Ouporov were selected as 2007 recipients of the highly coveted South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists.  Based solely on the quality of the artists' work, the recipients were selected by regional and national arts experts Regina Bailey, The Wolfsonian, Miami, Kelly Gordon, Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., David Cabrera, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Bill Fagaly, New Orleans Museum of Art among others.  An exhibition featuring their work will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami, in September, 2007.
 
 

Opening April 13th, 2007, the artists will present new work in a two-person exhibition entitled  Silver and Gold  along with fellow egg tempera painter Fred Wessel at the Arden Gallery, Boston.  The April issue of Art News features works and details about the show.
 

Scherer and Ouporov are preparing for a major solo museum exhibition opening at the Un iversity of Mary Washington Galleries in Fredericksburg,VA from March 15-June 3, 2007 and traveling to the Coral Springs Museum of Art in Coral Springs, FL, September 7-November 17, 2007. 
                                                      


The artists' solo exhibition, Tree of Life, opened on May 4, 2006, at the  Jenkins Johnson Gallery,
 521 West 26th Street.  The show consisted of paintings, silverpoint drawings, photography, and a DVD projection. A catalog is available with essay by John O'Hern for $25 USD.  The Tree of Life installation and several new pieces have been selected for the Eighth Annual Realism Invitational, on view from June 1-July 15, 2006, at both  Jenkins Johnson Gallery's New York and San Francisco locations.
 


The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin featured five Scherer and Ouporov paintings in the exhibition Dreamscapes which ran from September 25, 2005-January 28, 2006 (below).


        

Scherer and Ouporov's solo exhibition, "Celestial Alphabet", at the Turner Carroll Gallery was reviewed in the April, 2005 issue of Art in America by Sarah S. King (below).






The artists' successful solo exhibition at the Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, July-August, 2004, was met with good critical response. 








Scherer and Ouporov's diptych, Death Portraits, Suzanne and Pavel, were recently acquisitioned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, NM, where they are currently on view in the exhibition Contemporary Works on Paper from the Collection.  The prints are also in the permanent collections of the New York Public Library, Library of Congress in Washington DC, and the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
 


 From June 11 through July 12, A Tribute to Robert Blackburn and the Printmaking Workshop, at Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art, New York, the artists works were included in a show featuring some of the most accomplished printmakers from the legendary Printmaking Workshop which Robert Blackburn had founded and supported for more than 50 years, before his death in May, 2003.

Steps, 1999, intagl io on paper, 22 x 20.5 in.

From June 28 through September 7, 2003, Scherer & Ouporov's work was on view in Genetic Expressions: Art After DNA at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York. Commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Watson and Crick's Nobel Prize-winning discovery, Genetic Expressions featured biology-inspired art along with images from science and popular culture to explore the myriad ways in which cracking the genetic code has changed our world.  Scherer & Ouporov's painting, The Family of Apes, was reviewed in the New York Times, Sunday, July 27, 2003, by Helen A. Harrison and featured on the cover of the weekend section of the New York Newsday, June 27, 2003.
 
 

The Family of Apes, 1994
egg tempera on wood panel, 16 x 20 in. Private Collection.








Scherer & Ouporov's prints have been selected for the traveling exhibition Creative Space: Fifty Years of Rober t Blackburn'sPrintmaking Workshop, A Library of Congress exhibition in Collaboration with International Print Center New York (IPCNY) and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. The exhibition runs through January 25, 2003 at the IPCNY in Chelsea and opens at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC on February 26, 2003. The Library of Congress recently acquisitioned six Scherer & Ouporov prints for their permanent collection.
 

The artists have five of their paintings included in the traveling museum exhibition, Tempera /New Temperaments at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle WA opening March 7, 2003 through June 1, 2003. The exhibition is accompanied by a full color catalog with essay written by Director, John W. Streetman III.

The artists' painting "Guillaume" was featured in the Critics' Picks section of the Seattle Times, March 9, 2003.
 


January 18 thro ugh May 10 Scherer & Ouporov are exhibiting in Magic Realism at Sangre De Christo Arts Center in Pueblo, CO.



An in-depth interview and photos of the artists and their works are included in the recent publication, Intimate Creativity: Partners in Love and Art, by psychologists Irving and Suzanne Sarnoff, published by The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. The celebrated couples profiled here include Scherer & Ouporov, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, and Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel. The authors also draw on historical and contemporary literature about similar couples, ranging from Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber to Gilbert and George to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.




To order the publication "Intimate Creativity: Partners in Love and Art" go to http://www.amazon.com




Several of Scherer & Ouporov's paintings are included in the important traveling international exhibition and accompanying hard cover publication, Dreams 1900-2000, Science, Art and the Unconscious Mind, edited by Lynn Gamwell with essays by D onald Kuspit and Ernest Hartmann, published by Cornell University Press, Binghamton University Art Museum, State University of New York, 2000.








To order the publication "Dreams 1900-2000: Science, Art, and the Unconscious Mind" go to http://www.amazon.com