The Luminous Landscapes and Metropolitan Facades

Press Release

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present The Luminous Landscapes and Metropolitan Facades, an exhibition of recent paintings by William Engel and photographs by Becket Logan. A reception for the artists is on Saturday, January 15th, 5-8pm.

Over the last several years, William Engel has created an exceptional body of work that reflects deeply on his concern for light, color and texture. In his recent Luminous Landscapes series, he employs a combination of rigor and versatility to produce work that explore formal abstract expressionist sensibilities. Engel’s work is highly structured, complex and sophisticated. He may mix up to thirty colors into a flat canvas before he begins to create his own singular view of water and land against a vibrant horizon. By manipulating the canvas, Engel controls the blending and density of pigments thereby introducing new color tones and texture to the picture. Often, he applies as many as eight layers over time and then begins the process of editing often with a fine brush. The selections in this show are bold and assertive in their brilliance in luminous colors and they impress upon us a sense of adventure and discovery.

William Engel, presently a senior faculty member of the New York School of Interior Design has exhibited nationally since 1979 in numerous shows among which are Minneapolis Institute of Art, George Billis Gallery, New York and Ross Watkins Gallery, Palm Desert, Ca. His work is represented in several private and public collections including The Firemen’s Fund, New York. As a designer, his work has been featured in the New York Times, Casa Vogue and Mia Casa. He has also completed commissioned work for several individuals including singer/actress Whitney Houston and Giants Player Michael Strahan. His current project is a collaboration with two other NYC designers to redesign the New York location of Green Chimneys, a not for profit organization which provides a home and education for homeless Gay, Lesbian and Trans-gendered youth.

Becket Logan is a New York City-based photographer, best known for his striking portraits of artists, writers and poets such as Sapphire, James Broughton, Samuel Delaney, Allan Gurganis which have appeared in several publications and exhibitions

In this show, he will present a selection of black and white photograph of New York City in the 1970s. A mix of classic NY architecture and photojournalism, the collection has a moody film noir quality that is at once eerie and romantically nostalgic. This was a period of great social and economic transformation in the city as a result of a declining manufacturing base, rising crime and arson, crumbling infrastructure and labor unrest. Prosperity also flourished in the city and there was a wealth of creativity in art, music, theatre, dance and drama. It was also a decade of movie classics such as Dog Day Afternoon, Shaft, Annie Hall, Manhattan and Saturday Night Fever. The contrasts between tremendous wealth and rampant poverty and deprivation in the poorer neighborhoods were striking. The relations between nature and city, center and margin, participation and alienation are addressed in implicit manner in these images and they also emphasize the uniqueness of the city both in real terms and in the collective imagination.

Becket Logan’s work has been published in several publications such as New York Magazine, Architectural Digest, Horizon Magazine and Poets and Writers. He has also participated in numerous exhibitions including Murakami Gallery, New York, Akademie Die Kunst, Berlin and Christie’s Art Center, Sag Harbor. He received critical acclaim for his 1994 installlation “Beyond The Stone Wall” showing giant black and white portraits of Gay and Lesbian poets and artists from that era.