Coming To the Surface:

Coming To the Surface: an intriguing and unique experience of painting styles opening reception: Saturday May 1, 2004 7-10 with Greek flavored appetizers Show runs until May 29th

The Hygienic galleries are pleased to present Coming to the Surface a retrospective both past and present local and national. The paintings of Yannis Maltezos founding member of abstract expressionism in Greece will be showcased along side two up and coming painters Roy Rossow and Art Ballelli. Maltezos a leading founder of the abstract expressionist movement in Greece lived and worked in paris from 1959 until his death in 1987. Maltezos was born in Smyrna, Turkey and at the age of six fled to Crete and later to Athens where he studied at the University of Athens School of Art. Prior to W.W.II Maltezos worked as set designer for the National Greek Theater,until the end of the war when his innovation and experimentation in art took precedence. Roy St. Christopher Rossow born in Montigo Bay Jamaica, came to the states in 1984 on a medical visa. Nurtured artistically since the age of nine, Rossow grew up in Ellington Ct and furthered his education in Newport Rhode Island earning two degrees From Salve Regina University. Working with web design and print material in the recent part of his life Rossow has worked with some of the Nations top companies as artist/ animator and designer. Rossow currently lives in Manchester Ct where he paints full time, and works as a freelance artist while managing a small urban clothing company. Art Ballelli currently living in Westerly Rhode Island where he grew up graduated from Salve Regina where he met Rossow. He worked for the next two years in a wallpaper mill, mixing the colors. Ballelli continued on to the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth earning a masters of fine arts in painting. Coming to the Surface showcases not only the individual artist but a relationship of past and present, in a traditional and an innovative format. Rossows work displays a classical rhythm and subject matter using paint to convey a traditional reality. Working with elements of light color and space Rossow articulates that reality with a refined sense of paint application. Maltezos who worked with an ingenious drive used an abstract method to deliver universal concepts. Often working with metallic paint and innovative application, the surface presents an intriguing two dimensional image with a three dimensional reality. Ballelli combines the above in a contemporary fashion. Holding true to traditional subject mater, his portraiture, most often derived from sculptures are classically rendered, however the surfaces are contrary. Ballelli's art, stemming from a respect of recycling, creates images on Berber carpet with modeling paste and acrylic paint