Dali
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Fini
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Bachelier
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Nowak
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Parkes
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Hart
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Rops
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Fields
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Lichtenfels
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Bubacco
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Von Bayros
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Andrei
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Apocalypse
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Individual Work
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Jewelry
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Objet
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Perfume Factice
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Books
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Posters
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Exhibitions
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Beyond the White Cube and Through the Looking Glass:
CFM Gallery Comes to Chelsea
The
work on setting up the gallery may not be completed, but the magic is
already there," Jeannie said on the way down in the elevator, after
we had visited Neil Zukerman, the owner and director of CFM Gallery, in
his new space on the fourth floor at 236 West 27th Street.
"It's
already a cabinet of wonders," I agreed, using our old term for the
gallery's former space at Soho. "Well, just because he moved to Chelsea,
we didn't expect Neil to create a typical white cube, did we?"
"No way!" my wife declared. "Everywhere I looked, fascinating
objects seemed to peeking out from behind the packing crates and from
different corners and crevices like little creatures in a garden at twilight.
It was as though they were all waiting to take their proper places. A
bronze lizard, I think it was, by Ailene Fields was already comfortably
ensconced on a brocade pillow, and there were so many other things scattered
around on boxes, on the floor, and on shelves that, if it wouldn't have
been rude, I would have loved to just go rummaging among them."
Of course, we should have known that CFM Gallery would turn out to be
"a moveable feast," to borrow Hemingway's memorable phrase,
since the kind of contemporary surrealist and symbolist art that Neil
Zukerman both exhibits and collects is inseparable from his life. After
all, the rambling apartment that Zukerman shares with his longtime partner,
the innovative jewelry designer Tom Shivers, whose pieces in precious
metal and stone are on permanent display in vitrines at CFM, has always
been an extension of the gallery, filled with room after room of treasures.
Paintings, drawings, and prints by gallery artists like Leonor Fini, Salvador
Dali, Anne Bachelier, Michael Parkes, and Aleksandra Nowak, as well as
by older masters such as Felicien Rops, Franz von Bayros, and numerous
others that Zukerman collects and sometimes exhibits, cover the walls
salon-style. Pedestals, tables, shelves, and floors boast a dazzling profusion
of fanciful and sensual bronzes by Ailene Fields and Frederick Hart; fantastic
glass sculptures by Lucio Bubacco; and eerily lifelike figures fashioned
from fabric by Lisa Lichtenfels, among so many other diverse works as
to be impossible to take in during a single visit -- or even several,
as Jeannie and I have learned over the years. The couples' elegantly cluttered
home is a place of constant discovery, since Zukerman is forever discovering
new things to add to it in the course of a life that, as my perceptive
wife puts it, "is a life inseparable from art -- a veritable work
of art in itself."
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Even
his annual trips to Carnival in Venice with his partner -- most recently
in the company of Anne Bachelier and Ailene Fields and their husbands
-- for which they have opulent new costumes custom-made every year,
seem to be extensions of the art that he exhibits and collects. Most
serendipitous in this regard is the 2009 oil "La Fiesta
Miracolosa II," by a neo-surrealist known as Andrei, a relative
newcomer to CFM, meticulously depicting an orator addressing a festively
costumed throng in Venice, while the sky above peels back to reveal
a supernatural vision.
For
one of the things that distinguishes Neil Zukerman from run of the
mill gallerists is that he actually seems to believe in magic, visions,
and miracles. Indeed, he has retained a sense of wonder that is reflected
in a personal library filled with books of fairy tales, as well as
in such professional
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ventures
as his creative collaboration with Anne Bachelier on deluxe, lavishly
illustrated editions of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and
"Phantom of the Opera," among other classics published under
the CFM imprint.
He has also written and published monographs on Leonor Fini, his friendship
with whom and the collection of whose work launched his career as an art
dealer. So in celebration of the recent publication of the first English
language biography of the artist, "Sphinx: The Life of Leonor Fini"
by Peter Webb (which is being offered for sale by the gallery at a special
price), CFM will be presenting a major show of her work in March, immediately
following its inaugural Salvador Dali exhibition in the new Chelsea space
in February.
Featured
along with other original works from the Fini estate and important private
collections, including Zukerman's own, will be the large oil "Rasch,
Rasch, Rasch...Mein puppen werten," in which five Lolita-like nymphets,
one nude, others in various states of dishabille, lounge around languorously
in what appears to be the anteroom of some sort of surreal sensorium,
while a woman behind a glass partition kneels to adjust the puff-shouldered
garment of a petite androgyne who may be a young lad in drag.
Through the looking glass, indeed!
Ed McCormack,
Gallery
& Studio Magazine.
September-October 2009
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Exquisite
technique coupled with artistic vision defines our user-friendly
presentation of figurative fine art paintings, sculptures and original
graphics. Contemporary symbolism at its apex in the traditions of
Bosch, the Italian Renaissance, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Viennese
and German Secession and the symbolist movements with an edge of
surrealism.
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