February/April 2025
USEful?: The space between art and function
BAYARD
CHERYL GROSS
DAN PEYTON
HAMEWS
JILL SCIPIONE
TINA MANECA
USEful?, our show for Late Winter 2025, offers the work of
six artists who, by chance or intent, work within this
constantly-changing space, making work that blurs the line
between function and frivolity, usefulness and absurdity,
the quotidian and the fantastic.
Jill Scipione
September 2024 / January 2025
END World's End
Our culture serves us up apocalyptic storylines on a regular basis and as
humans we consume predictions of our demise like hot, buttered popcorn. But within the anxiety and paranoia of our ‘big finale’ lies the thrum, fear and excitement of
everyday, incremental change. Do we therefore focus on the now
or the, perhaps, never to be?
March-May 2024
ARTIST TREE: Curation by Connection
For our March/May show for 2024 we used a self-curating formula to shape our
presentation. One artist, Athena Toledo, was asked to pick two artists who
were asked to pick two artists each. The connection between artists is based
on friendship, respect and a degree of chance. The work of these seven artists
whose work ranges from painting and quick sketch to collage and beyond,
creates a multi-layered body of work that has similarities and differences and
we believe accurately reflects the current state of the arts in Jersey City and
its surrounds.
December 2023/January 2024
20 / 20 Vision: 20 Artists under 20
Eonta Space presented the work of twenty artists under the
age of twenty. Ranging in age from four years old and upwards, each artist
presents a perfect reflection of their personalities, interests and talent.
Pablo Picasso famously said ‘Every child
is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up’.
September/November 2023
IS / IS NOT: Context and the Constantly Changing Eye
NOHI MEHROTRA, an abstract painter, has recently moved towards realism. Permanently? Who knows. We are showing her pathway from previous work as an abstract painter who suddenly found herself painting a realistic still life based on an abstract painting she had done.
MICHELLE MAYER, uses various formats and techniques to identify and question her heritage, family relationships and place in the world. As such the work moves around the globe, from India to Europe to America.
The artist known as HAMEWS, is a dancer, teacher and all round explorer of this physical dimension. Her recent SMUSH gallery summer residency is the breeding ground for this body based work. The essence is the skeleton, a deep dive into the interior and we are invited to literally follow her.
February/May 2023
Founders Day: Lauren Farber, Bayard and Dan Peyton
FOUNDERS DAY features the three Eonta Space co-directors, Lauren Farber, Bayard and Dan Peyton. Very individual artists present themes that seemingly work in sync on many levels. The work speaks of our changing times, the bruise of trauma and the need to adapt to those changing times. It represents work made as a response to life’s downturns while all the time reminding us that art retains the power to lift us back up. Creativity sparks the pleasure centers of the brain. This seems the perfect space in which to remind ourselves of Oscar Wilde’s timeless quote from Lady Windermere’s Fan, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
September/December 2022
AF/FA: Abstract/Figurative Figurative/Abstract
AF/FA or Abstract/Figurative - Figurative/Abstract, the new show opened on Friday, September 30th at Eonta Space for JCAST weekend, features work that moves back and forth between the descriptions cited. The title of the show uses words that are understandable and reasonable and yet looking at the work they provoke a dialogue, or quadralogue between what we are seeing, how we describe what we are seeing and what our brains do with the words our brains choose to describe the work before us.
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June/August 2022
TROUBLEMAKERS: A Group Show
TROUBLEMAKERS marks the return of Eonta Space, an art salon space in Jersey City. After a two and half year break for the COVID-19 lockdown, the gallery space is showing the work of 24 artists both local, not so local and international.
The theme comes from an epithet applied to Eonta by a local arts reporter who referred to us as ‘productive troublemakers’. Troublemaking is an essential part of art making and the arts have often been accused of antagonizing the more rigid parts of our society.
ADAM PITT
ALPANA MITTAL
ANDREA McKENNA
ANN RIVIERE
ANNE TRAUBEN
BARBARA SEDDON
BAYARD
BRUNO NADALIN
CHERYL GROSS
CHUCH NITZBERG
DAN PEYTON
EVAN LAURENCE
JILL SCIPIONE
JIM PUSTORINO
JONATHAN HARRIS
JULIE ALLEN
KATELYN HALPERN
KUBRA ADA
LAUREN FARBER
MARC FEIL
MEGAN KLIM
MICHELLE MAYER
NOHI
RICHARD ISGARD
WENDY SETZER
February/March 2020
The Precipice of Extinction: Cheryl Gross and Andrea McKenna
At first glance the work of Cheryl Gross and Andrea McKenna may appear at opposite ends of the contemporary art world. Cheryl, primarily an illustrator, comments fiercely about the environment with this large group of endangered animals and fish. Andrea's work is exotic in other ways, working with images of spirits or beings from the beyond, rendered with methodical precision but carrying an air of a crumbling gothic mansion or badly preserved Renaissance murals. Both artists see the world clearly and their art reflects their world views, but their tender approach to representation offers a glimpse into an emotional world of beauty, sadness and longing.
October-December 2019
Bayard: THEME M PURR PURSE KNEW CLOSE OR HE NAY KID MOTHER FAR CURR
Pursuing the examination of fairytales, bayard’s massive indoor and outdoor fiber sculptures scrutinize alternate brain function, dyslexia and social awkwardness in an attempt to better understand the human condition and the artist’s place within the human community.
August/September 2019
Jill Scipione: Undoing History
A celebration and memorial to human existence rendered as forty-seven pencil portraits of anthropological specimens. As Jill says, "Perhaps, the simplest answer is to say that the skulls represent, for me, individuals. They represent the essential singularity of each life. Each one is as unique as a finger print. They represent a specific person who lived at a specific time and in a specific place. Like everyone, external experiences and factors shaped them, their lives.
September 2019
SAGITTAL
Jonathan Harris’s SAGITTAL is a series of static auditory scenes arranged to evoke an awareness in the listener of how we as individuals engage, psychologically and physically, with different acoustical spaces. Presented in conjunction with Jill Scipione: Undoing History, the work is directly inspired by Jill's drawings of skulls.
May/June 2019
Adam Pitt: Work Day / After Hours
Work Day: speaks of long hours at the corporation, nervous, not accomplishing much but a paycheck, surrounded by other anxious people, reports, yelling bosses, deadlines, paperclips, computers, cell phones and unseen sweat.
After hours the antithesis: a beautiful woman, bright colors,
natural textures and voluptuous form to wipe away the work day.
February/March 2019
Winter Print Show
A comprehensive collection of local and international printmakers using high and low tech techniques to make: woodcuts, silkscreen, collagraph, monotype, etching, letterpress, rubber stamp, cyanotype, embossing, embroidery, sweet potato prints.
BAYARD
LAURA BYRNE
DEIRDRE NEWMAN
ALLISON CONLEY
BELINDA CHEVASSE
WENDY SETZER
DAN PEYTON
ADAM PITT
EILEEN FERRARA
BRUNO NADALIN
BARBARA SEDDON
LAUREN FARBER
CHARLOTTE MARINO
JAVIER BARRERA
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October-December 2018
The Eonta Space Biennial
Speaking horticulturally, biennial encapsulates a two year cycle from spark to fruition.​ Here our concerns are not as concrete as germination through seed (followed by death), but merely a framework, both rigid and wildly loose, that may guide or interrupt our understanding.​
Preoccupations with daily life tend to blunt our greater revelations but art is always a doorway.
Andrea Mckenna
Anthony Roselli
Bayard
Cheryl Gross
Dan Peyton
David French
Evan Laurence
James Pustorino
Jill Scipione
Jonathan Harris
Lauren Farber
Megan Klim
Meghan Mckee
Monika Zarzeczna
Steven Agin
August/September 2018
Monika Zarzeczna and Jonathan Harris: the stuff without not here
A two person show exhibiting faunae, 3 site specific sound works by Jonathan Harris, and of there, a site specific sculpture installation by Monika Zarzeczna. The show is a dialogue about the unnaturalness of the natural world and the border between nature and construct, and aims to expose hidden and conceal observable layers in physical and acoustical space, reorienting audiences’ connection to the present.
May/June 2018
Natalie Giugni: Bones of Flight
In this body of work, classical themes such as death and rebirth, resurrection, liberation, beauty, exploration and hope are examined in two and three dimensional works. In “Bones of Flight” a new life is given to bits and pieces of birds and bones through Natalie Giugni’s deconstruction and abstraction of their imagery.
February/March 2018
Dan Peyton's WATTLE AND DAUB
Self taught in early photographic chemistry and recently, basket making, Dan uses carpentry, sewing, natural products and defunct technologies to riff on themes of inter-connectedness and the passage of time. Eonta Space is showing both studies and finished pieces to track ideas from concept to fruition. Is what we have here a planned, defined collection of artwork with plainly stated intentions or a mad, metaphoric maelstrom?
November/December 2017
Isabelle Garbani's MASS SUICIDE
Presented as a growing exhibition of our collective consumerist by-products (peanut styrofoam, plastic bags, bottle caps and any soft materials that can be used as ropes). Brought by members of the public to Eonta Space and fashioned into a jungle of trash ropes (one of the most common ways for people to commit suicide) MASS SUICIDE robustly reminds us that we consumers are unable to think long term about the well-being of our planet, thereby committing mass suicide.
August/September 2017
BAYARD: 3 Bears 3
Goldielocks arrives for a sleepover with her crochet hook and is kept waiting so long she manages to create blankets for all and sundry, large and small. Child size beds and doll size beds play host to Bayards fibre throws paired with crocheted floor rugs, created from mathematical models that require counting, replication and rigid respect for the rules. Installed in the gallery as in a department store on the sixth floor 'bedding', they waver between delight and an air of unease. Why are we here? Where are the occupants of the beds? Are they for us?
May/June 2017
Steve Agin: A 40+ year retrospective
An exhibition of the work of Steven Agin spanning over four decades to be presented at Jersey City's premiere creative expression salon, Eonta Space. Steve's work reflects the changing times in which he has been painting, expressionism, pop, post modernism all appear filtered by his unique approach to color, line and texture.
