Bewitched and bewilder, step out of the shadows and into the half-light where imagination blooms in secret gardens as Victorian epochs and Renaissance iconography weave webs that bind. Join Haven Gallery this weekend, Saturday, August 26th, for the opening of solo exhibitions by Omar Rayyan, Benz and Chang, and Karly Perez – alongside “The Pre Raphaelites” group show! Four inspirational exhibitions that are sure to spark the creative whiles of your mental faculties like lightening from a night sky. Immersive artful narratives, tiny winged fae, and symbolic tropes seep in and let us linger in the compositional intensity each artist delivers.
Don’t miss these beautiful new bodies of work; view them in their entirety alongside all available inventory by visiting the Haven Gallery website! If you still need more and are looking to add to your personal collection, reflect upon past exhibitions and fuel your artistic wanderlust.
Benz and Chang
Rain House, 1929
Karly Perez
Ornithurae saprophyte
The Evening Visitor
Jennifer Hrabota Lesser
A Heart’s Solace
Omar Rayyan, Benz and Chang, Karly Perez
“The Pre Raphaelites” Group Show
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 26, 2023
Exhibition Dates: August 26 – September 24, 2023
Haven Gallery
50 Main St., Northport, NY 11768 | ph. (631) 757-0500
To inquire, please contact Erica at Haven Gallery via email info@havengallery.com
About the Gallery //
Haven Gallery is run by Erica Berkowitz and Joseph Weinreb. The gallery first opened in 2015 in the Carriage House of historic Northport, NY. Within two years, the gallery doubled in size and expanded into the entire Carriage House building. Through their successful in-house exhibitions and presentations at art fairs both domestic and international, Haven opened a secondary location at 90 Main St., in 2020, during the height of the Covid pandemic. It was at that point, that Erica and Joseph knew it was time to find a permanent location for their artists. In January of 2022, they bought the building at 50 Main st., and opened its doors as Haven Gallery’s perennial home.
Haven Gallery’s focus is on exhibiting emotionally, intellectually and imaginatively driven, representational artwork that connects the audience and artist with universal axioms and passions. We work with both emerging and established artists who transcend their medium and subjects by exploring the world around them as well as the one within themselves.
Omar Rayyan, Various and Sundry
August 26th – September 24th, 2023
Haven Gallery is pleased to present “Various and Sundry”, a collection of new, enchanting paintings by Omar Rayyan. “Various and Sundry” features thirteen oils inspired by traditional techniques and historical influences intermingled with Rayyan’s playful wit and captivating, imaginative, musings.
Mythological beings, anthropomorphic frogs and rococo ladies pose and frolic, bemusing and charming the viewer with their eccentricities and contrarian pairings. Rayyan’s mastery of paint is rooted in old fashioned subjects with delightful influences of storytelling stemming from his successful career in illustration. The pairing of the two result in strong narratives emphasized by adept compositions, bringing a contemporary balance to his work and a familiarization of the past.
Benz and Chang, Rain House
August 26th – September 24th, 2023
Haven Gallery is pleased to present “Rain House”, a collection of eight new, enigmatic watercolor paintings by Oregon based artist Benz and Chang. “Rain House” continues the artists study of subdued, antiqued palettes, mirroring old photographs, with an evolved addition of blue and purple hues, breaking his unusual mold of color. The addition of hue creates a further permanence of dimension, a motif that pervades the artists oeuvre.
Benz and Chang’s paintings are known for their merging of heterogeneous elements such as the interlopement of reality with the spectral, paint with photography and transparency and permeability with solid form. Illusionary yet grounded in deep thought and poignant emotion, each painting raises questions on corporeality, mortality and existence. Shrouded in existential intrigue through ethereal hazes and haunting narratives, one enters the “betwixt and between” of time and space, creating uniquely personal and thought provoking narratives.
About //
Highly inspired by Victorian photography trends and vintage imagery, Benz and Chang paints spiritual figures cohorting with the living, merging the planes of life and death. A deep connection is established between his sitters, adapting the paranormal into the normal. Levitation, anthropomorphic shadow and wrapped figures extend a supernatural bridge to the viewer, connecting us to secret spaces and transforming memories of the deceased into tangible presences.
Benz and Chang’s paintings serve as a channel to extend emotions of comfort and acceptance towards the more challenging and darker aspects of life. His motifs of verisimilitude suggest an overlapping of timelines and planes of existence beckoning the viewer to reconsider their own perspectives and realities.
Benz began having experiences with spirits and hauntings at an early age. These experiences have continued throughout his life. They have fueled his interest in dreams, ghosts, and clairvoyance from all angles, including the fictional, real, fraudulent, or imagined. Benz grew up in the American Southwest, and now enjoys living in the (haunted) Pacific Northwest. He has an extensive collection of odd photos from the early 20th century. Benz has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Chang is a fictional photography studio partner to Benz. He is a stuffed cat of the stuffed animal variety (not the taxidermy variety). Chang supplies the dark.
Karly Perez,Symbiosis
August 26th – September 24th, 2023
The idea behind Symbiosis is the interconnection, dependence and merging of different life forms – animal, fungal, bacterial within the cycles of life and death.
About //
Karly Perez is a sculptor of art dolls that balance on the natural and unnatural, the literal and the deconstructed. Her inspiration comes from the interconnected state of all life, the merging of human, animal, botanical, and fungal forms. Her sculptures are created using as many natural and textural materials as possible; from bits of roots and dried plants to naturally dyed and pigmented muslin and stone clay. Her dolls have been shown internationally in galleries and featured in magazines.
Artist Statement //
“Dolls as an art form has a unique allure. When finished, they provide not only a piece that is visually stimulating, but they can also morph into a type of companion. Each one, from their conceptual inception within my encephalon to the last finished stitch of their dress, has a distinct personality and voice that they seem to create on their own.
When they pass from my hand to another, their spirit can morph and grow to match the needs and desires of that who owns them. I love making them, but I also have the compulsion that they must be made. It’s as if there are incorporeal entities that cry for a physical form, and it is my ear they speak to.” – Karly Perez
The Pre Raphaelites Group Exhibition
August 26th – September 24th, 2023
Haven Gallery is pleased to present “The Pre-Raphaelites”, a group exhibition encoring artists to pursue a historical investigation of the styles, artists and themes of this period. “The Pre Raphaelites” defines a group of artists out of England, starting in the mid 1800s, who revisited motifs of the Quattrocento period of art (late Middle Ages through the start of the High Renaissance). Artwork featured the use of saturated color palettes and heavily detailed and involved narratives.
Linda Adair
We Are Our Choices
Jacob Brostrup
Absent Presence
Joanna d’Arc
Portrait of a Fairy
