“Making art is a way of arriving at knowledge that is not subject to cross-examination.” William Kentridge

Curator’s Statement:

The paintings and drawings in this exhibition reveal a unique sense of truth in relation to place and time.

Though seemingly quite different at first pass, both artists overlay a sublime mixture of emotional content and juxtaposed iconography onto layers of discovered information in a way that allows the resulting imagery to be equally and satisfyingly tangential to their inspirational sources.

Sources that are masquerading as, or asserting to be, or might be, factual.

There is a finely weighed mixture of historical fiction, documentary, and the front page of yesterday’s newspaper in both Moninski’s and Abbatiello’s work.

We, and the artists, take a Flaneur-like psycho-geographical walk through these historical environments, finding those spaces and connections of personal interest that reveal everything of momentary importance.

What they give us so generously and beautifully is the privilege to constantly revisit those places of reflection and poignancy, yet never remember or rediscover them in the same manner or from the same direction.

-Kenneth Ragsdale, Curator