Grey Cube Gallery proudly presents the first Black & White show for the month of February 2020. The show encompassed a range of artistic styles and mediums (photography, digital, mixed media, collage, oil on canvas, acrylics, oil on linen, ink, graphite, watercolor, pastel, charcoal). Each submission has been judged based on the following elements of artistic expression: orginality and quality of art, overall design, creativity, interpretation of the theme, demonstration of artistic ability and usage of medium. Out of all entries, 65 artworks were shortlisted for inclusion in the show. The competition attracted entries from many countries across the world: USA, Canada, Italy, Greece, Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Armenia, Isreal, Japan and India. Enjoy the show and thank you for expressing an interest in our competition.

"I am concerned with communicating a sense of harmony, balance, order and spirituality. We are all confronted on a daily basis with the fragmentation of our non-linear lives, trying, as in a puzzle, to make the pieces fit together to make sense of it all. My paintings, works on paper, and sculpture depict imagery of personal events and psychological issues. They are expressed through geometric shapes, color, light, space, texture, edges and movement each interplaying with one another engaging the viewer to participate. Most recently, I have embarked on a series of white paintings that abandon my signature bold palette. These paintings, from the "Elements of Peace" series, pay homage to people who have been affected by war. White is soft, quiet, spiritual, unadorned and full of infinite possibilities. My intention is to create an architectural space for rest, retreat, connection, reflection and identification. The multi-dimensionality and multi-layering of my work reference what one must uncover to penetrate the illusions of reality and reach the mystery and essence of the soul."

Eugene Kuperman is a published and an award winning artist. Eugene’s work is in many private collections including in a private collection of Robert Harris Rothchild who has many notable works in his collection by artists like: Rembrandt, Chagall, Dali, Ernst, Lichtenstein, and many more. An art catalog came out in 2012 featuring many of those artists as well as the work commissioned from Eugene. From 2010 to his passing in 2014, Eugene Kuperman studied with a renowned Russian artist Leonid Steele whose works are in many museums in the world, including pieces in the notable Tretakov Gallery in Russia. One of Leonid’s former teachers was a student of a famous Russian landscape painter: Isaac Levitan and another teacher he had, was a student of the famous Russian artist: Ilya Repin. From the end of 2014 since Leonid’s passing, Eugene studied painting with an award winning artist Lance Richlin until 2016 whose technical lineage goes back to the French Academic Masters of the 19th century and one of the teachers that he studied under taught Norman Rockwell.

My work uses the visual medium to render images inspired by a combination of direct observation and photographic research material. They depict moments in time of places and events that no longer exist but are regenerated in paintings. I use variations of painting-drawing technique where combinations of carbon, charcoal, graphite, oil paint, glue and ink are applied in multiple, sequential layers that create richly worked surfaces of subdued monochromatic tonality that balance a thin line between photographic depiction and the work of the hand. These works emphasize dark, atmospheric tonalities that speak to time passage, mortality and a sense of an ephemeral moment and a fleeting impression.

The Dead Zone series was inspired by media reports of the rapid rise in industrial and agricultural runoffs occurring in oceans, lakes, rivers, esturaries and deltas worldwide. Over fishing in the past 50 years has driven the population of large fish down by 90 percent. Add in climate change acidifying and warming the waters, this lessens its ability to hold oxygen suffocating marine life. But there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Scientists have stated that dead zones due to human activity are reversible if their causes are reduced or eliminated. Surely a challenge and an uphill battle.