LE DEUCE DEUCE: June 13 - July 5, 2020

East Hampton, New York - June 10, 2020 - The Arts Center at Duck Creek is pleased to announce Le Deuce Deuce, a two person exhibition featuring sculpture and paintings by Mason Saltarrelli and Bill Saylor. This exhibition will be open to the public on June 13 and will remain on view through July 5. Gallery hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 12 - 4pm. In compliance with Covid-19 social distancing restrictions guests, will be limited to 5 at a time. Masks and gloves will be made available to the public onsite, and a 3D virtual tour is currently on our website for remote viewing.

In 2017 Saltarrelli and Saylor presented an exhibition at Shrine Gallery in Chinatown, New York titled Le Deuce. Their 2020 exhibition at Duck Creek Le Deuce Deuce, reconnects the “shared mind” of their original collaboration while expanding the scale and mediums in a pastoral environment.

Originally admiring each other’s work through social media, the artists met for a studio visit in 2016. In that conversation they were surprised to discover that at different stages of their careers, both Saylor and Saltarrelli worked for Julian Schnabel, the artist and director who spends summers painting in his open-air Montauk studio. Duck Creek’s presentation of Le Deuce Deuce celebrates the methodologies and attitudes each artist developed whilst exploring and making art outdoors on the East End. 

During summers spent working in Montauk, Mason Saltarrelli developed painting techniques specific to working in nature which vary from methods he typically employs in his Brooklyn studio. The location and proportion of Duck Creek’s exhibition space compelled him to reinvestigate a looser, less “precious” approach to painting and to revisit the experience of creating outdoors. Saltarrelli’s four large scale paintings included in the exhibition are inspired by constellations. Addressing space figuratively and literally they also reflect his sensitivity to location in terms of making and exhibiting his work. 

Bill Saylor spends much of his studio time outdoors. With a family background rooted in both farming and road building, Saylor was accustomed to witnessing the effects of the elements on living things and materials.  Although he keeps a live/work space in Brooklyn, much of his work is executed on the property surrounding his home in Pennsylvania. Saylor’s subculture version of “plein air painting” involves a lean-to made of tarps which protect his paintings from the elements, while the rest of the yard extends as a large scale studio. Elements used for assemblage sculptures are pulled from the surrounding areas and molds for casting concrete are dug out of the soil that is the floor to his studio. 

Saltarrelli’s paintings have a consistent sensitivity to the open plane on which he delivers his distilled forms. The characters in his compositions are reduced to only their essential parts, and often repeat conjuring perceptions of hieroglyphics. The paintings of Boötes, Cassiopeia, Orion and Ursa Minor presented in the barn are particularly pared-down arrangements of color and shape that utilize the expansiveness of the canvas and open literal and figurative conversations about space.  

In contrast, Saylor’s paintings reveal the wildness and energy of the studio where he paints. Creations inspired by marine biology figure prominently, emerging out of spirited displays that fill the surface and hum with gestural abstraction. Imparting his interests in anthropology, natural history and weather patterns, Saylor has defined a personal iconography that merges the past and the present by blending techniques which call to mind cave paintings and expressionism.

Mason Saltarrelli was born in 1979 in New Orleans, LA and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His recent solo exhibitions include Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, Be; Turn Gallery, New York, NY; Bjorn & Gundorph Gallery, Aarhus, Denmark; Marvin Gardens, Queens, NY, and a two person exhibition with Bill Saylor at Shrine Gallery, New York, NY. Group exhibitions include Morán Morán, Los Angeles, CA; Rental Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, Sweden; Feuer Mesler, New York, NY among others. For information on available work by Saltarrelli please contact Turn Gallery at ap@turngallerynyc.com.

Bill Saylor was born in Willow Grove, PA in 1960 and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Magenta Plains (NYC), Peter Makebish (NYC), Leo Koenig (NYC), The Journal (Brooklyn), Chinati Foundation (Marfa, TX) and Loyal Gallery (Stockholm); and he has been included in group shows at Ceysson Benetiere (Luxembourg), The Brant Foundation (Greenwich, CT), Mier Gallery (Los Angeles), The Yerba Buena Art Center (San Francisco) and Hiromi Yoshi Gallery (Tokyo). For information on available work by Saylor please contact Magenta Plains info@magentaplains.com.

For further information or images please contact Jess Frost at duckcreekarts@gmail.com

The Arts Center at Duck Creek will be open to the public Friday, Saturday and Sunday, from 12 - 4pm, and by appointment. In compliance with NY State Covid restrictions, visitors will be limited to 5 people at a time and be required to wear a mask indoors. All guests on the property must practice NY State defined social distancing at all times.