From Brooklyn to Bridgeport. URSA curates museum quality exhibitions that inspire and spotlight our current times in arts and culture.

Current

EXHIBITIONS

Ephemeral Utopia

A Contemporary Art Show curated by URSA at Colorblends

1 April–8 May 2022, Tuesday-Sunday 10am-4pm

Opening Reception: 23 April 2022, 2–5pm

Colorblends House & Spring Garden

893 Clinton Ave

Bridgeport, CT 06604

Ephemeral Utopia, a contemporary art show curated by URSA and inspired by the springtime blooms at Colorblends House & Spring Garden, showcases the works of eleven artists whose dynamic visions resonate with notions of ephemerality and gesture: Mario Baez, Tara Blackwell, Cris Dam, Paul Eis, Francisco Mandujano, Sooo-z Mastropietro, Sui Park, Christine Romanell, Jeff Schneider, Marlene Siff, and Emily Teall. The exhibition will unfold as a choreographed experience throughout the rooms of the restored 1903 Colonial Revival mansion at Colorblends. Like the evolving display of spring ephemerals in the Jacqueline van der Kloet-designed gardens, Ephemeral Utopia will provide a constellation of ideas and ideals that capture the beauty inherent in life’s fleeting moments.

To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key.

COLORBLENDS House & Spring Garden features a half-acre garden with thousands of spring bulb flowers that bloom in a curated sequence over a six-week period each year. The garden was created in collaboration with Dutch designer Jacqueline van der Kloet; the 1903 Colonial Revival, set among other beautiful houses in the Stratfield Historic District, was purchased by Colorblends in 2014.

Colorblends House and Spring Garden

Colorblends House & Spring Garden

Tulips

An Exhibition of Contemporary Art curated by Jeanne Ciravolo

16 April–28 May 2022

Opening Reception: 30 April 2022, 4–6pm

Abstract Orbit, an exhibition of contemporary art curated by Jeanne Ciravolo, presents work by six emerging and mid-career artists whose playful, elegant, and experimental approaches revolve around abstraction in the forms of sculpture, print, works on paper, and painting: Fritz Horstman, Noe Jimenez, John Richardson, Ruth Sack, Laurie Sloan, and Sarah Stewart. An exciting selection of archival digital prints, chunky paintings as artifacts of making, folded paper cyanotypes, oil paintings as poetic meditations, and the spatial interplay between drawing, relief, and sculpture characterize this engaging presentation of works by Connecticut-based artists. Ciravolo is an educator and visual artist whose work is included in White Columns Curated Artist Registry and published in the forthcoming Manifest International Painting Annual 10. Ciravolo is the Interim Curator of the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at the University of Connecticut Avery Point in Groton,

Horstman_Folded Cyanotype 179 copy	Ursa Sack.Phantasm F. (1)	Sloan_3 copy
Stewart_Little Yellow Arch copy	Ursa Jimenez_GREENBOX copy	White_relief_10 copy

A Squirrel from Memory

16 April–28 May 2022

Opening Reception: 30 April 2022, 4–6pm

A Squirrel from Memory is an ongoing project by artist Douglas Degges comprising two divergent image-making

processes that explore familial relationships, distance from home, and the pressure to possess a singular voice or vision within a creative practice. The project was born out of the artist’s decision to work with increasingly personal and localized imagery while tending to creative practice as a collaborative activity. Since 2019, Degges has been working primarily from cell phone photos supplied to him by his immediate family in an ongoing group text; they share the things they do and see near his childhood home in Louisiana. While not included in this exhibition, a significant portion of the project consists of small drawings on paper: literal, time-intensive translations of photographic images, mostly of landscapes and animals found in the southeastern United States. As a foil to the drawings, the paintings, like the ones included in this exhibition, are crafted primarily from the memory of making the drawings and are approached in a fast paced and painterly way.

11 November 2021-

5 March 2022

Extended through May 2022

The Coral Reef Principle

Ursa Gallery is pleased to present SHIM Eco: The Coral Reef Principle, a seminal show of over one hundred works to focus on eco-activism and its transformational sensibility. It is the inaugural exhibition of SHIM Eco, the world’s first art community to concentrate solely on climate change and its economic and social disruptions. The participating artists hail from nearly a dozen countries—including Finland, Argentina, France, Italy, Greece, Africa, England, and the US—and present works in digital and analog formats to spotlight in myriad ways the urgent issues around sustainability and social engagement. 

The exhibition is titled after the coral reef, a complimentary biosphere and the largest undesigned structure in the world. Crucially in this model there is no master architect, nor the need for one, because the structure literally builds and maintains itself once all the correct conditions exist. It is this concept, or “principle,” that the exhibition mirrors. At URSA, the actual installation of the art will also mimic the ways a coral reef operates by connecting larger works on walls with other smaller artworks that engage with the space of the floor, ceilings, and other in-between areas, and these works in turn will connect remotely via videos to other artists around the world. Featured artists include Ken Butler, whose hybrid musical instruments of repurposed and humble materials inspire transformation; Kathleen Vance, who sets miniature bucolic landscapes inside vintage suitcases, conjuring the sublime from the avant-garde; and German Pitre, who employs controversial symbols through recycled materials to challenge our perspectives.

SHIM ECO exists as an online exhibitor group of the SHIM Art Network Artsy site page to allow artists to sell their sustainable eco-based artworks directly to collectors without the need of a gallery affiliation. Now, with this event at URSA, Eco will begin to exhibit their group member artists in analog galleries and art fairs around the world. Eco was formed to include not only visual artists but also writers, designers, poets, and creators of all types interested in developing a sustainable way to make and promote their works. 

100 artists

List of organizers and participating object based artists

Executive Curator

Peter P. Hopkins

Associate Curator

Sarah Olson (U.S.)

Curatorial Team

Alexandra Mas (France) | Marco Tassini (Italy) | Hannah Hardenbergh (U.S)

Courtney King (U.K.) | Christina Kyriakidou (Greece)

Gaïa Adduccio

Irene Andreou

Leslie Ayers