July 30, 2024
“A Particular Kind of Heaven” at Karma Gallery. Courtesy of Karma
Portland and mid-coast Maine have seen an influx of artists and art galleries that are enriching the state’s art scene.
During the pandemic, the art world rediscovered the possibilities of mounting contemporary art shows outside of urban centers and engaged—often for the first time—with various local art scenes across the United States. Many of the target areas boasted well-established cultural communities, some initially launched by artists relocating to seek quieter and more inspiring environments for their creative work. As we saw with the upstate New York art scene and the Hamptons art scene, the sprawling arts communities and cultural institutions of Portland and mid-coast Maine grew during the pandemic. The vibe has shifted in a post-pandemic world but the momentum hasn’t slowed, especially in the summer season. In late June, NADA art fair organized a weekend program that invited people to discover the expanding contemporary art scene in Maine, and among the newcomers this year are Los Angeles’ Night Gallery with an exhibition in collaboration with local art space Dunes. Below, we’ve compiled a list of five must-see shows and art spaces for those interested in checking out what’s going on in the Pine Tree State.
Karma Gallery in Thomaston, Maine
The New York-based gallery Karma opened here in 2021, in a beautiful summer location in a deconsecrated Catholic church owned by painter Ann Craven. Every season, they host a summer exhibition in Maine, where paintings establish a conversation with the space and the local nature. This year, there is a group exhibition, “A Particular Kind of Heaven,” hanging salon-style with nearly one hundred and twenty works by over seventy artists from the gallery roster and beyond. The exhibition is titled after a 1983 Ed Ruscha text painting that calls attention to the idiosyncratic nature of our visions of the sublime and our projections about and on to the American landscape. While the sky unites as a leading theme of all the works in the show, the exhibition is divided into sections that follow the transformation of the sky over the course of a day, going from dawn to night. Among the highlights are masterpieces as Barkley L. Hendricks’s Winter Season en plain air works as he was “following the sun to the Caribbean,” poetic night skies views by artists Matthew Wong and Alex Katz and apricot-tinted dusk skies by Dike Blair, who will also have a solo show at the gallery this fall.
