CMCA’s Late Summer Exhibitions: Lauren Henkin and Don Voisine

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) is excited to announce its 2016 late summer exhibition schedule at the art center’s new campus at 21 Winter Street, Rockland, Maine. CMCA’s striking new building, designed by internationally acclaimed architect Toshiko Mori, opened on June 26, 2016.

The new facility, located in the heart of downtown Rockland’s burgeoning arts district, provides more than 5,500 square feet of exceptional exhibition space for the presentation of work by contemporary artists. The complex also includes a gift shop featuring the work of Maine artisans and designers, an ArtLab classroom, and a 2,200-square-foot public courtyard displaying a monumentally scaled sculpture, Digital Man, by Ogunquit-based artist Jonathan Borofsky.

Late summer exhibitions at CMCA will showcase the work of artists Lauren Henkin and Don Voisine. A reception celebrating the exhibitions will be held on Friday, September 2 from 5 to 8pm; both artists will be present for the event.

Opening on August 28 and on view through October 23, 2016, the exhibition Lauren Henkin: Second Nature incorporates photography, video and installation to question our perceptions of nature in an age of increasingly digitized and virtual reality. Through her work, artist Lauren Henkin (b. 1974), a recent full-time resident of Maine, encourages the viewer to think about how the vast amount of imagery we see every day affects our engagement with the natural world at a time of great environmental uncertainty. Using a variety of photographic means, she raises questions about what is real in an increasingly filtered and re-presented age.

Now residing in Rockland after living in New York City, Henkin grew up in Maryland and attended Washington University in St. Louis, graduating with a degree in architecture. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally, including New York, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and Paris, France. Henkin states, “I’m thrilled to introduce my most ambitious body of work to date, Second Nature. Made over three years entirely in Maine, these still and moving images address our changing relationship with Nature, from engagement to simulation.” The exhibition is sponsored by Cold Mountain Builders.

On view from September 2 through October 23, 2016, is the exhibition, Don Voisine: X/V. The exhibition features work created in the past fifteen years by painter Don Voisine (b.1952), a native of Fort Kent, Maine, and now based in Brooklyn, New York. Rooted in the language of architecture, Voisine’s paintings, prints, and drawings convey a sense of shifting spatial interactions through the use of symmetry, color, surface, and precise, hard-edged forms. The exhibition Don Voisine: X/V is the first in-depth look at the artist’s work in his home state. A fully illustrated catalog with an insightful essay on Voisine’s work by fellow artist Ken Greenleaf, accompanies the show.

Voisine attended the Portland School of Art (now Maine College of Art) from 1970-1973, and in 1974, studied with William Manning at the alternative Concept Center for Visual Studies, a short-lived but important institution in the state’s art scene in the early 1970s. A central figure in abstract art in New York, Voisine has exhibited there since the early 1980s, along with exhibitions in San Francisco, Chicago, Paris, and Berlin. As Greenleaf writes in his essay, “To see a large group of Don Voisine’s paintings is to experience not only the basic important tenets of abstract art, but also to learn how the experience gets to the heart of why the best abstract art speaks directly to human perception.” Don Voisine: X/V is sponsored by the Hurley and Weindling Family Charitable Fund. 

In conjunction with the exhibition, Don Voisine has made available exclusive to CMCA, a limited edition print, Red, hot and cool. The edition consists of 30 numbered copies and ten artist’s proofs. Each print has been individually signed and numbered by the artist. All prints are dated 2016. Prints are available for purchase at the CMCA shop for $225 or online at cmcanow.org for $225 plus $25 shipping and handling. All proceeds from the sale of the prints directly benefit CMCA. 

CMCA is open Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm and Sunday 1 – 6pm. Admission is $6. For more information please visit cmcanow.org. NOTE: CMCA galleries will be partially closed for installation between August 15 and September 1.