© Nadine Rovner/Courtesy of Gallery 339. Above: “In Her Own,” 2008.

With About Face, Gallery 339 is pleased to present an exhibition that concentrates on recent portraiture concerned with the face. There are few things more varied and interesting than the face. It embodies our individuality and projects it to the world in a way that nothing else does. Yet at the same time, there are few things more ubiquitous than a face. The artist must work with a constrained but complex formula of physical features and expression to unlock something that surmounts the ordinary and connects the viewer to the subject. While diverse in style, scale and process, all the images in this exhibition take the mystery, subtlety and individuality of the face as a primary subject. About Face is on view until September 10, 2011.

© Edward McHugh/Gallery 339. Intake, 2010, Wax-Diffused Pigment Print

Surface Tension, an exhibition of lush landscape images by Edward McHugh, is currently on view at Gallery 339 in Philadelphia. Similar to his earlier photographs, the straight-forward beauty of the landscapes belies their underlying complexity.  Informed by 19th century painting and photography, abstract expressionism, minimalism and a range of other sources, McHugh is able to layer these diverse and at times dissonant ways of seeing into cohesive pictures.  Ironically, these painterly pictures could only be photographs, as McHugh uses the camera’s ability to capture the spontaneous and the uncontrived.  Working at this point of so many intersections, the blurred territory between painting and photography, McHugh is able to instill his images with a genuine sense of mystery. The exhibition is on view until July 9, 2011. To see more of McHugh’s work click here.

-courtesy of Gallery 339.