BIOGRAPHY

I am a sculptor working with figures and heads as an expressive form. I work from memory as well as from a lifetime of drawing. I work to imbue sculpture with a timeless quality through the form and materials I use.

 

I divide my time between New York City and Stephentown, NY.  I have shown work at Lori Bookstein Fine Arts, Alice Gauvin Gallery, Thompson-Giroux Gallery and galleries in New York State and New England. I recently showed bronze sculptures at the Equity Gallery in NYC which were reviewed in the New Criterion Magazine, December 2023 issue.

 

Born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island and began my career as a painter and sculptor attending the New York Studio School.  I earned an MFA from Parsons School of Design and a BFA from Swain School of Design in New Bedford MA.

 

SOLO SHOWS

2023, Personage, Equity Gallery, NYC, NY

2018, A Certain Light, Thompson-Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY

2015 Fairleigh Dickinson University Gallery, Teaneck, NJ

2013 Lincoln Hospital Sculpture Garden and Exhibition Space, Bronx, NY 

2011 Crowells Fine Art, New Bedford, MA
2007 The Old Schoolhouse Gallery, NYC
1995 The Painting Center, NYC
1990 Bowery Gallery, NYC
1988 University Press Books, NYC

 

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 

2023,    Sirens,                       Artists Equity Gallery,  NYC, NY 

 

2022     Part of the Story,       Thompson Giroux Gallery,  Chatham, NY, 

            

            The Back Room,        Alice Gauvin Gallery, 43 York St., Portland, ME  

 

            Back to the Figure,    Alice Gauvin Gallery, 43 York St., Portland, ME

 

            In the Same World,   Catherine Ramey & Mark LaRiviere, 1053 Main Street Gallery, 

                                                                                                       Fleischmanns, NY

              

2021    Looking Out, Looking In: an introspection, Alice Gauvin Gallery,  Biddeford, ME

 

2020  The Blues, The Painting Center, NY, NY 

 

2019 Function - Non Function Ceramic,  Tanja Grunert Gallery, Hudson, NY

 

2019  NYC-TOKYO, Nippon Gallery, NY, NY

 

2019 Clay and Wood, Saltbox Gallery

West Hartford, CT

 

2019 En Masse 2019, Thompson Giroux Gallery

Chatham, NY 

 

2019 Three Roads Crossing , Gallery X,

New Bedford, MA

 

2018 East Meets Midwest, Springfield Museum of Arts, Springfield, OH

 

2018, Rooms With A View, Westbeth Gallery, NYC 

 

2017    Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Gallery House , Brooklyn, NY, 

 

2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, En Masse, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY 

 

2017 East Meets Midwest, Andrews Gallery, William & Mary College VA

 

2017 Alumni Show, New York Studio School, NYC

 

2017, On The Shoulders of Giants, Westbeth Gallery, NY, NY  

 

2016 Alumni Show, New York Studio School, NYC 

2016 Nearer the Truth, Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham         NY

2014 Search Portrait, Thompson-Giroux Gallery, Chatham,           NY

2014 Body and Soul, Surmrit Gallery, Jersey City, NJ

 

2014 Heads-A Retelling, Salena Gallery, LIU, Brooklyn, NY,           Curator

 

2014 Alumni Show, New York Studio School, New York, NY

 

2012 Simon Carr, Mark LaRiviere, Thaddeus Radell,            
        Salena Gallery, LIU , Brooklyn NY

2010 New Bedford Art Museum, New Bedford, MA

2010-2011 EAST MEETS MIDWEST
        Andrews Gallery, College of William & Mary,                       Williamsburg, VA
        Westbeth Gallery, NYC
        Hoffman LaChancer contemporary, St. Louis, MO
        The Beverly Arts Center, Chicago, IL

2010 New Walls/Fresh Paint, The Painting Center, NYC

2010 Prince Street Gallery, NYC

2009 Opening a Word, Five Figurative Artists, the Painting           Center, NYC
2007 CONTEMPORARY FIGURATION, Westbeth Galley, NYC
2007 Lori Bookstein Gallery, NYC
2002 FOUR PAINTERS, Lori Bookstein Gallery, NYC
2002 - 2007 Trainstation Gallery, West Stockbridge, MA
2000 WATERCOLORS, Lori Bookstein Gallery, NYC
2000 175th Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design,         NYC
1999 GROUP SHOW, The Painting Center, NYC
1988 GROUP SHOW, Ute Stebich Gallery, Lenox, MA
1988 THE PERSISTENCE of PLACE, Dallas, PA
1997 LANDSCAPE, VISION and SPIRIT, LIU, NYC
1997 LANDSCAPE, The Painting Center, NYC
1996 PAINTING, The National Arts Club, NYC
1995 MINDSCAPES, Marine Midland Bank, NYC
1994 GROUP SHOW, Five Points Gallery, East Chatham, NY
1994 RECENT WORK, Mark LaRiviere & Riley Brewster, The         Painting Center, NYC
1994 DRAWINGS & PRINTS, Parsons School of Design, NYC
1993 PREVIEW SHOW, The Painting Center, NYC
1993 GROUP SHOW, Bill Bace Gallery, NYC
1993 A-Z, 0-9, E S Vandam Gallery, NYC
1992 167th Annual Exhibition, Nation Academy of Design,           NYC
1991 FOUR ARTISTS, Bill Bace Gallery, NYC
1990 TEN YEARS LATER, Parsons School of Design, NYC

REVIEWS AND PUBLICATIONS

2023  Another Bronze Age, Review by Dana Gordon, 

2022   Back to the Figure, Review by Jorge S. Arango, 

2018  A Certain Light,  Review by Simon Carr

2012 Salena Gallery Catalog, by Xico Greenwald
1996 PAINTINGS, by Martica Sawin
1995 MINDSCAPES, by Peter Pinchbeck
1995 FORM AS MEANING, The Paintings of Mark LaRiviere, by Peter Pinchbeck
1993 ALEA Number 3, A Portfolio of five woodcuts
1990 COVER, May issue, Review by Tom Savage
1988 ARTnews, April issue, Review by Gerrit Henry

 

Another Bronze Age,   Dana Gordon, The New Criterion, Dispatch, December 7, 2023

On “Personage: Bronze Sculptures by Mark LaRiviere,” at the New York Artists Equity Gallery.

 

There was a time when a “bronze” meant a sculpture, and a sculpture was something that examined a recognizable form, usually of a human figure. This tradition held for thousands of years, until Rodin and Picasso showed the world around the turn of the century that a sculpture needn’t be a well-rounded, discernible human figure, but could be instead an investigation of space by an assembly of planes. The concept began to expand in the 1950s when virtually anything three dimensional, even what looked like a pile of garbage, was called sculpture. In some circles, by the end of the 1960s, just the verbal description of a three-dimensional concept became accepted as sculpture. 

All the while, bronze figures in the original sense were still being produced by some artists. These were attempts to preserve figural sculpture by using the most refined, high-academic styles inherited from the nineteenth century. Most of these efforts failed as nothing more than slick, shallow imitations of the salon style. But other artists, like Picasso, Matisse, and Giacometti, created bronzes that both retained a connection to the past and relied mainly on modernist ideas regarding the figure and space.

 

Now there is an artist in New York, Mark LaRiviere, who is courageously helping to revivify bronze-figure sculpture. With a method that links the modern and the age-old tradition, LaRiviere goes beyond both and offers an exciting addition to the form in “Personage: Bronze Sculptures” at the New York Artists Equity Gallery (through December 23). LaRiviere’s process begins with his personal perception of his subject: he does not view his subjects as objects to be molded according to some rigid style or tradition. Of course, his perception must be influenced by every figure he has seen, touched, or imagined, in addition to every sculpture he has ever seen, from those of the ancient Greeks to the Chinese, as well as the Italian Renaissance, the likes of Rodin, and so on. 

LaRiviere has digested these various influences but works without allegiance to any single style, though his eye seems similar to those of the ancients. His work recalls their worn-out, bent bronzes dredged from shipwrecks and unburied from ruined cities. But the modern is essential to his idiom too: Degas, Rodin, Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, and Tucker are brought to mind. And his free marking, gouging, and flaying of the surface of the bronzes, like insults and caresses to human skin remind us of the medium of painting. As he has written, “I search for discovered rhythms, forms, and movements that become apparent as I work . . . with a sense uncertainty.”  

 

LaRiviere has thus produced a collection of unusual bronzes that look ancient but still manage to surprise. The field of bronze-figure sculpting could be revitalized by such work as this: it remains recognizably connected both to the high achievements of the past and the modern interventions, but is also utterly fresh, personal, whole, and current. Great accomplishments in art are not the products of attack and clever subversion, they are the results of rejuvenation and renewal. LaRiviere’s work fits this mold. 

I asked LaRiviere the following: “I get the feeling that these pieces at the Equity Gallery are not depictions of models or specific people you know, nor begun from them. But they do, of course, become very specific beings in themselves when you are done with them. Is this correct?” His answer: “You are correct. All made up, but hopefully depicting a kind of current specificity.”

Elsewhere, LaRivere has written that “forms emerge that live today and yet feel as if they have existed always . . . and always, the question remains: how can I bring forth these figures honestly, reflecting a sense of truth that feels in sync with our time?” He achieves this with great force, depth of form, and delicacy. His figures are both universal and personal.

LaRiviere has been making art in the New York scene for more than four decades. His focus for most of that time has been sculpture, but he began as a painter and was one of the founders of the Painting Center in 1993. His art shows the heights of human capability and empathy

Dana Gordon is an American artist. He lives and works in New York City.

Back to the Figure 2022
 Alice Gauvin Gallery, 43 York St., Portland

Review By Jorge S. Arango

 

Both LaRiviere’s drawings and sculptures are highlights of the show. Made with ballpoint pen, the drawings illustrate tremendous dexterity and fluidity. Two are clearly figures from classical paintings, the others original compositions. All telegraph a sense that they were created in a single sitting using one continuous circulating line. They recalled for me the perpetual drawing I did as a child with my old Spirograph (the circular motion of it, not the automaticity). One gorgeous piece in red pen, “In the Time of Corona IV,” looks almost like a classical composition of bathers.
And his sculptures – whatever the medium – have a wonderful sense of hand-modeling to them. The white-glazed ceramic figures are particularly interesting because they represent raw takes on the old art of blanc de chine, the white Chinese porcelain figures originating in the Ming Dynasty. These forebears were delicate and perfectly modeled. But LaRiviere does something more expressionistic with them that gives them tremendous tactile presence despite their diminutive size.

 

 

SIMON CARR'S REVIEW  A CERTAIN LIGHT  2018

 

This selection of Mark LaRiviere's work shows him in two lights, as a master of figurative expression , and a powerful abstract painter. 

 

His sculptures grow out of an intuative feel for his materials.  One can sense the artist's excitement and energy as he unlocks movement from a tree trunk or a block of clay.  Standing Woman (2018) strides confidently towards us, her elongated arms reaching out for an embrace. Though his figures have a great formal energy, they appeal to the viewer as unapolegetically and intimately human. 

 

The clusters of figures throughout the gallery balance his large abstract paintings on the walls, which are full of the luminosity and brilliance of the natural world.  While the sculpted figures seem to gesture and dance into our space, the paintings draw us into their world of light.  This fascinating exhibition

gives us the chance to compare one artist's vision in two different mediums.  

 

SALENA GALLERY CATALOG   By Xico Greenwald

 

A few years ago Mark LaRiviere, who had for decades focused on colorful, multiple-figure paintings, surprised even himself by turning his attention to sculpture. In his recent work, LaRiviere gives three-dimensional volume to the figures that have been the subjects of his paintings. With no formal training in sculpture, LaRiviere has embraced the physical and technical challenges of making three-dimensional form with newfound freedom, energy and playfulness. Using wood he finds around his upstate property, making molds from terracotta and wax, or sculpting directly with plaster, LaRiviere has introduced an element of surprise to his work, where cracks and blemishes in the materials become part of the final image, giving emotional depth to his figures, reminding us of Rumi's saying: "The wound is the place where the light enters you."

 

FORM AS MEANING, The Paintings of Mark LaRiviere, by Peter Pinchbeck

 

Mark LaRiviere's new paintings are swirling compositions of light and color that bears an unashamed debt to Impressionism. The differences, however, are as pertinent as the similarities; Mark has taken the Impressionist brushstroke and magnified it, giving greater volume and presence to a technique designed to catch momentary effects of light.

For Cézanne, as is well documented, the problem with Impressionism was its dissolution, or dematerialization, of form; he wanted to make of Impressionism "something solid and lasting." Mark has not only found a way of giving greater structure to Impressionism but by the process of abstraction has removed its dependence on a specific temporal situation. Originally a figurative painter, Mark has moved progressively toward the abstract, the removal of literal reference.

Like many of his contemporaries, he is grappling with an issue that also beset Cézanne: how to give form, rather than the mere representation of form (the object, figure or landscape). Abstract Expressionism brought the gesture to a painterly surface, but the particular structures of Pollock and de Kooning were not directed toward the issues of volume and depth. As the critic Adam Gopnik aptly put it, "Abstraction can only genuflect to de Kooning: it can't build on him." Gesture itself does not constitute a vocabulary of form.

As the work of Mark and other abstractionists decisively indicates, painting must reexamine past modes of expression in order to explore their potential for abstract imagery. The Cubist movement offers one example of how such a return to the past can be accomplished in the way it reverted to traditional modeling and somber color (in contrast to Fauvism). Likewise, contemporary abstraction with its openness to the past and its freedom from the restrictions of a specific program or agenda has the ability to infinitely absorb a variety of modes. The only truly dead ends, where closure manifests itself are the minimal (the reduction to blankness and objectness) and the decorative (the reduction to pleasing or beautiful effects).

Paintings like Mark's evoke the "intoxication of form" (Nietzsche) while denying the constrictions of formalism and by this feat disclaims those critics who never cease to fantasize the death of painting. As for abstraction being in a state of crisis, it will always be in a state of crisis: it goes with the turf. If it were trying to do something simplistic, there would be no crisis; nor can it conform to the beauraucratic edict that art should provide socially useful commentary. On the contrary, it desires to point away from what T.S. Eliot called the "panorama of chaos and futility of modern life." It seeks otherness, to create a window onto what has no obvious face, no literal vista, no repressed identity. Like the proverbial prophet in the wilderness, it searches for visions beyond the known, and visions are, after all, the very stuff of which paintings are made

 

 

PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE, National Arts Club February, 1996, Review by Martica Sawin

 

"Huddled presences seem to body forth out of LaRiviere's Guston-like manipulation of paint, asserting themselves in clear hues against surroundings of subdued tones. These presences hover on the edge of existence, on the verge of being reabsorbed into the richly worked surface, enigmas quietly provoking insoluble questions.
No painting is as pure as purists would have it, but my idea of "pure" painting is when it says things that can only or best be said in paint and when it reaches the mind through the delectation of the eye."

 

 

 

MARK LaRIVIERE AT BOWERY GALLERY, May 1990, by Tom Savage

 

Said Willem DeKooning, "I think that if an artist can always title his works, that mean he is not always clear." The paintings of Mark LaRiviere are usually untitled and clear. LaRiviere's paintings are composed of numbers and large blocks of colors. Sometimes the blocks are wider than they are long.
Abstract paintings always ask me whether or not I have the right to see in them forms recognizable to me. In one very abstract painting, I see the Manhattan skyline with one of the two rivers attached to it and one boat. Paintings are like rivers, except that they don't move.
Because they move the paintings of Mark LaRiviere are not at all like mirrors. Each time you look in a mirrors you see approximately the same thing. Thus abstract paintings move without moving. For as long as your cerebral and optical neurons keep pulsing, you can see something completely different each time you look at an abstract painting.
Some people think abstract painting is very cold- that is, unmoving. They should be locked in a room with the paintings of Guido Reni if they want "cold." This is Mark LaRiviere's first show at the Bowery Gallery I was very moved.

Tom Savage, Cover Magazine May 1990

 

 

In LaRiviere's oils, brilliant colors are wedged together into turbulent, fuzzy patchwork between more blended or muted areas, suggesting masses of blazing autumn foliage between earth and sky. In some, his sketchy, urgent strokes take on a windblown diagonal rhythm, yet his paintings are clearly under his control. He seems to be drawing a lovely analogy between the deliberately constructed shimmer of a pieced-glass mosaic and the glistening tossing of an autumnal hillside, animated by an energy that seams to have its own intent.

-Meredith Bergman

 

 

"Mark LaRiviere showed six paintings, abstractions based on New York City, but certainly not limited to it. His color recalled both the Fauves and the Abstract Expressionists; his brushstroke was broad and generous, making for watery fiery representations of the city as refined and revived through one artists sensibilities."

-Gerrit Henry ARTnews April 1988