I'll See You Again, Soon

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery presents I’ll See You Again, Soon, featuring gallery artists Mishael Coggeshall-Burr, Susan Murie, Wilhelm Neusser, and Natalia Wróbel. The exhibition pulls together four unique styles that individually explore themes of nostalgia through personal experience. In his latest works, Wilhelm Neusser plays with perspective, using a combination of brushstrokes and etching to create a space that appears just out of reach. A chain link fence acts as a barrier between the viewer and a romantic landscape, suggesting a voyeuristic longing for an indeterminate place or time. Neusser paints his pieces in one sitting, etching the fence before the paint dries. This technique invites speculation on whether it rests in the foreground or background, creating a feeling of contextual limbo for the viewer that contrasts the idea that one is looking at a very particular physical place. Initially visualized during the pandemic, Neusser’s fence series builds on the idea of an untouchable landscape and the way humans interact with the natural world. Natalia Wróbel presents two of her newest artworks in the exhibition: First Breath, and I’ll See You Again, Soon. The former is a musing on the idea of the conditions present as something is forming, right before coming into being. While creating this piece, Wróbel was contemplating the miracle of life and all the elements working in tandem to create the whole, which was particularly inspired by the recent birth of her son and the awe and mystery she has felt from his powerful spirit. Wróbel created these two paintings together, and in I’ll See You Again, Soon, she further explores the magnetism of spirit through her strong relationship with her beloved grandparents, Zofia and Jerzy Zientra, who have since passed. Wróbel’s sweeping, vivid colors illustrate the warm visual memories of summers spent at their garden home in Warsaw. Mishael Coggeshall-Burr further explores the concept of nostalgic reflection through the integration of photography and oil painting. Coggeshall-Burr references images from his travels, selecting peripheral scenes with cinematic color and tone. His newest body of work further iterates these feelings of nostalgia: in La Parisienne (Blue Hour), we see a scene from the Latin Quarter of Paris at the end of a workday, as Parisians make their way across the busy Blvd St Germain, climbing out of the Odeon Metro, meeting friends for an aperitif at Le Relais Odeon, carrying themselves for all the world like actors on a set: handsome, ineluctable, intent on their purpose. This scene is common in Coggeshall-Burr’s works, which pull from memories. He integrates his personal experiences into the paintings while also leaving room for the viewer to feel nostalgia for the place. Susan Murie’s artwork is based in photography, capturing images with a camera to create the negatives assembled in floral compositions actualized through intricate cyanotypes. She explains, “As I gather imagery, I am drawn often to flowers, some animals, windows and doors, clouds, and found objects that have appeared out of nowhere and seem to bring me a message or meaning. These then become part of my thinking about the ethereal nature of things, fragile bonds and the materiality of cyanotype.” The deep Prussian blues offer the duality of allowing the viewer a total immersion, while also creating a vast visual distance between viewer and image. Murie’s practice serves as a visual record of her own thoughts and emotions at the time of creation, drawing from an archive of images that range from florals to household objects reminiscent of her life and her family. Each resulting cyanotype is a unique object in itself, and a record of time. When combined, the four artists’ work inspires a sense of introspection and examination of the transience of the past. They employ their own respective styles to capture a sense of nostalgia, using color, collage, and photography to transport the viewer to a place that will only exist in memory: places they wish to share.

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