Spanierman Modern is pleased to announce the opening on March 3, 2009 of The Mark of the Hand, an exhibition curated by Marilyn Rosenberg of works by five contemporary artists. Rosenberg says: “in this age of photography, video, and performance, it is important for this curator to seek out the mark of the artist’s hand.” The show presents “five distinct voices, each with a unique vision, that were selected because of their love affair with materials and process.”

Born in British Guiana, Frank Bowling belongs to the generation of British artists that came of age in the sixties. After graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1962, along with David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj, he, like Hockney, found his artistic identity in America. However, unlike Hockney’s art, Bowling’s is rooted in abstraction owing to the abstract expressionist tradition of Mark Rothko. Vigorously dripping and pouring paint, he creates lustrous, texturally complex paintings that are intensely evocative of sublime landscapes.

Nancy Cohen, who received her M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1984, uses found and scavenged objects to explore the fragility of life, while reflecting on the human condition. In Gurney shecreates a sturdy vehicle, made from cast glass, cement, rubber, sand, and lace, which manifests an inherent tension in her work. Cohen offers up the requisite balance of delicacy and strength as well as a healthy dose of whimsy and thoughtfulness.

Another graduate of the M.F.A. program at Columbia University, Katherine Parker, has been committed in her painting to the essential vocabulary of geometric abstraction and has thrived within its rigorous confines. Carving, dripping, and scraping, Parker makes marks that inform the surface of her paintings. Archetypical signs and symbols add emphasis to the canvases. Parker’s lush works are both personal and female.

To speak of Maurizio Pellegrin, one must speak of Venice, which he has explored relentlessly in his work. He states that he is excited “by the possibility of exploring my Venetian roots in those places that are repositories of our collective memory.” Color is key to the artist, serving as visual sensation or the reflection of a frame of mind. He often uses the color black, which is the sum of all colors and the absence of light. In The White Gloves of My Destiny he seduces us with a quiet pathos.

For several years now, Martha Posner has been creating “unwearable garments”-dresses and cloaks fashioned from fabric, fence-wire, raw fleece, feathers, and other elements from her farm in rural Pennsylvania. Posner treats the theme of garments as metaphor for the absent human figure, also a theme explored by Louise Bourgeois. In the haunting installation, Lupe’s Daughter, made from fabric, chicken wire, beeswax, and pigment, Posner invokes ghostly memories of the dresses’ former inhabitants.