Walter Wickiser Gallery
375 South End Ave. 6M
New York
10280
New York
United States
Phone: (212) 945-0711
Email : [email protected]
URL : www.walterwickisergallery.com
Walter Wickiser
Sabrina Sakai
Shenny Wang
About
Wickiser's career as an art dealer formally began in 1990 in Soho, NY, when he became the first director of the first gallery to be established in the United States from mainland China. This led to establishing his primary direction as a gallery director to exhibit work by American and Asian-American painters, as well as artists from China, Japan and Korea. It has always been the focus of the Wickiser Gallery to create a visual dialogue between various cultures, and simultaneously reminds us of the ability of art to transcend cultural boundaries. Today the focus has shifted to midrange and Post War international artists.
Since 1993 Wickiser Gallery has worked with the United State State Department and Art for Embassy's Program. Wickiser's artist’s have exhibited in United States Embassy's in Seoul, Korea, Moscow ,Manila, Philippines Qatar, Bucharest, Romania and Cypress, to name a few. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations invited Wickiser to the White House for Art for Embassy's events.
Since 2003 The Wickiser has exhibited at dozens of International Art Fairs including Art Aspen, Art Busan, Art Hamptons,Art Miami , Art on Paper Art Toronto, Houston Fine Art Fair ,LA Art Show, and the Seattle Art Fair to name a few.
Clients and visitors to the gallery have included Will Barnett, Leo Castelli, Michael Douglas, Wolf Kahn, Alex Katz, Phillip Pearlstein, Sally Avery, Sarah Kuniyoshi, Ted Koppel, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sam Lefrak and Paul Volker.
The Wickiser Gallery has received numerous reviews in Artnews, Art In America , Art and Antiques ,the Washington Post ,Tampa Bay Times and many other internationally recognized publications. The Wickiser has had many online reviews in publications such as the. Huffington Post. Work by many of the Wickiser’s artists have been exhibited at American museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the High Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the New Britain Museum of American Art.
Soile Yli-Mäyry Burning Heart
Thomas Kelly Ice Cream Shop
Soile Yli-Mäyry Asphalt Pearl
Soile Yli-Mäyry Your Number
Thomas Kelly Developer
Kiyoka Yamagata Blue Bird
Kiyoka Yamagata Departure
Soile Yli-Mäyry Flower
Kiyoka Yamagata Landscapes of the Heart
Kiyoka Yamagata Melody of the Stars
Kiyoka Yamagata Mezzopiano
Kiyoka Yamagata Moonlight Cat
Kiyoka Yamagata Rhythm Cat
Kiyoka Yamagata Sonic Dog
Kiyoka Yamagata The Thief of Time
Kiyoka Yamagata When the Wind Blows
About the Artist
Soile Yli-Mäyry is a Finnish artist with an impressive international CV. Immensely energetic, she has had more than 250 exhibitions worldwide. Her work reflects this energy. Made with a palette-knife, it is physically bold, one might almost say impatient, in its handling of the artist’s material.
Finland had a tradition of mythic and symbolist painting. Its best known painter of the Early Modern period was Akseli Gallen-Kallela [1865-1961], who made illustrations to the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. His paintings have a Symbolist element, but this is much stronger in the work of a younger and shorter-lived contemporary, Hugo Simberg [1873-1917]. Simberg once defined the function of art in this way: He said it was ‘the ability to transport oneself from the midst of a cold winter to a lovely summer’s morning and sense it all, feel how nature awakens and your own harmony in tune with it. That is what I require from a work of art. It must say something and say it so loud that it carries us away.’ I suspect that this is a sentiment with which Soile Yli-Mäyry would agree.
Simberg’s affinity was with the artists of the Vienna Secession, Gustav Klimt [1865-1918] and Egon Schiele [1890-1918]. After a period of quasineglect, these two painters have beeen catapulted into the limelight again by a series of enormous prices at auction, which mark a shift in public taste away from the masters of the Ecole de Paris and towards Austrian and German Symbolism and Expressionism. One can easily see that Yli-Mäyry has links with both Symbolist and Expressionist impulses. Her work combines strong color and impulsive handling with an interest in patterning that recalls some of Klimt’s techniques in particular. When she paints the human figure, however, she gives in a tense wiriness and angularity that recalls some of the early drawings of Schiele. One can also perhaps detect some influence from the work of another Viennese artist of the same epoch, Oskar Kokoschka [1886-1980], whose handling of paint is much looser than that of either Klimt or Schiele.
One of the hallmarks of the first decade of the 21st century has been a return to figuration, often of a slightly twisted and eccentric kind. However, there has also been a lack of direction, especially [it seems to me as a European] in the United States. A recent issue of Vanity Fair, devoted largely to the New York art world, hymned a new group of young artists as ‘international, unpredictable, deeply individual.’ In journalistic terms, this amounts to saying that no-one at this moment knows which way the cat is going to jump, or even if it has any power to jump left in it. To be blunt, the Modernist/Contemporary project looks as if it is in trouble, sustained more by hype and wishful thinking than by any discernible or definable new departure.
It is situations of this sort that provide genuinely international artists like Soile Yli-Mäyry with an opportunity to strut their stuff. She is a genuinely international painter. She can pick her influences and exemplars from wherever she choose. She has no obligation to belong to any school. The paintings in this exhibition are the product of a purely personal impulse. That, without question, is their strength.
Edward Lucie-Smith
“Thomas Kelly paints not the America we have, he paints America as we would like it to be. His paintings give us hope, like a modern Norman Rockwell.” -Walter Wickiser, 2023
Thomas Kelly is an award winning, New Jersey based painter. Widely collected, his work has a signature style, which has its roots in Expressionism. His colorful, narrative, acrylic paintings on canvas, often create a dialogue with the viewer. His deceptively simplistic paintings are both critically acclaimed and very approachable by everyday viewers. More than 350 of Kelly’s original paintings have been collected. Kelly has exhibited in New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia. His work is in private and public collections in the US, Europe and Asia.
“My paintings are of common scenes, everyday occurrences in which people struggle to establish and maintain relationships. It is these universal emotions and situations which most interest me.”
“The paintings are acrylic on canvas, which lends to the way I work. The idea begins from a tiny sketch. That sketch will have the emotional feeling or gesture that first intrigued me. I encourage viewers to participate in the narrative by placing themselves inside my scenes and characters. When asked by viewers if their interpretation is the true one, I say, ‘The paintings must stand on their own.’ I don’t tell them that their stories often rival my own.”
“I am not and do not wish to be, the artist with the best technical skill, recreating realism that wows the masses. I wish to be the one who connects well with the way people feel. I wish to have the viewer say about themselves, when they see my art, ‘This is about me, this is about my life.’ This is how I wish to connect. The universal feelings we all have is what I am trying to portray.”
Soile Yli-Mäyry is a Finnish artist with an impressive international CV. Immensely energetic, she has had more than 250 exhibitions worldwide. Her work reflects this energy. Made with a palette-knife, it is physically bold, one might almost say impatient, in its handling of the artist’s material.
Finland had a tradition of mythic and symbolist painting. Its best known painter of the Early Modern period was Akseli Gallen-Kallela [1865-1961], who made illustrations to the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. His paintings have a Symbolist element, but this is much stronger in the work of a younger and shorter-lived contemporary, Hugo Simberg [1873-1917]. Simberg once defined the function of art in this way: He said it was ‘the ability to transport oneself from the midst of a cold winter to a lovely summer’s morning and sense it all, feel how nature awakens and your own harmony in tune with it. That is what I require from a work of art. It must say something and say it so loud that it carries us away.’ I suspect that this is a sentiment with which Soile Yli-Mäyry would agree.
Simberg’s affinity was with the artists of the Vienna Secession, Gustav Klimt [1865-1918] and Egon Schiele [1890-1918]. After a period of quasineglect, these two painters have beeen catapulted into the limelight again by a series of enormous prices at auction, which mark a shift in public taste away from the masters of the Ecole de Paris and towards Austrian and German Symbolism and Expressionism. One can easily see that Yli-Mäyry has links with both Symbolist and Expressionist impulses. Her work combines strong color and impulsive handling with an interest in patterning that recalls some of Klimt’s techniques in particular. When she paints the human figure, however, she gives in a tense wiriness and angularity that recalls some of the early drawings of Schiele. One can also perhaps detect some influence from the work of another Viennese artist of the same epoch, Oskar Kokoschka [1886-1980], whose handling of paint is much looser than that of either Klimt or Schiele.
One of the hallmarks of the first decade of the 21st century has been a return to figuration, often of a slightly twisted and eccentric kind. However, there has also been a lack of direction, especially [it seems to me as a European] in the United States. A recent issue of Vanity Fair, devoted largely to the New York art world, hymned a new group of young artists as ‘international, unpredictable, deeply individual.’ In journalistic terms, this amounts to saying that no-one at this moment knows which way the cat is going to jump, or even if it has any power to jump left in it. To be blunt, the Modernist/Contemporary project looks as if it is in trouble, sustained more by hype and wishful thinking than by any discernible or definable new departure.
It is situations of this sort that provide genuinely international artists like Soile Yli-Mäyry with an opportunity to strut their stuff. She is a genuinely international painter. She can pick her influences and exemplars from wherever she choose. She has no obligation to belong to any school. The paintings in this exhibition are the product of a purely personal impulse. That, without question, is their strength.
Edward Lucie-Smith
Soile Yli-Mäyry is a Finnish artist with an impressive international CV. Immensely energetic, she has had more than 250 exhibitions worldwide. Her work reflects this energy. Made with a palette-knife, it is physically bold, one might almost say impatient, in its handling of the artist’s material.
Finland had a tradition of mythic and symbolist painting. Its best known painter of the Early Modern period was Akseli Gallen-Kallela [1865-1961], who made illustrations to the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. His paintings have a Symbolist element, but this is much stronger in the work of a younger and shorter-lived contemporary, Hugo Simberg [1873-1917]. Simberg once defined the function of art in this way: He said it was ‘the ability to transport oneself from the midst of a cold winter to a lovely summer’s morning and sense it all, feel how nature awakens and your own harmony in tune with it. That is what I require from a work of art. It must say something and say it so loud that it carries us away.’ I suspect that this is a sentiment with which Soile Yli-Mäyry would agree.
Simberg’s affinity was with the artists of the Vienna Secession, Gustav Klimt [1865-1918] and Egon Schiele [1890-1918]. After a period of quasineglect, these two painters have beeen catapulted into the limelight again by a series of enormous prices at auction, which mark a shift in public taste away from the masters of the Ecole de Paris and towards Austrian and German Symbolism and Expressionism. One can easily see that Yli-Mäyry has links with both Symbolist and Expressionist impulses. Her work combines strong color and impulsive handling with an interest in patterning that recalls some of Klimt’s techniques in particular. When she paints the human figure, however, she gives in a tense wiriness and angularity that recalls some of the early drawings of Schiele. One can also perhaps detect some influence from the work of another Viennese artist of the same epoch, Oskar Kokoschka [1886-1980], whose handling of paint is much looser than that of either Klimt or Schiele.
One of the hallmarks of the first decade of the 21st century has been a return to figuration, often of a slightly twisted and eccentric kind. However, there has also been a lack of direction, especially [it seems to me as a European] in the United States. A recent issue of Vanity Fair, devoted largely to the New York art world, hymned a new group of young artists as ‘international, unpredictable, deeply individual.’ In journalistic terms, this amounts to saying that no-one at this moment knows which way the cat is going to jump, or even if it has any power to jump left in it. To be blunt, the Modernist/Contemporary project looks as if it is in trouble, sustained more by hype and wishful thinking than by any discernible or definable new departure.
It is situations of this sort that provide genuinely international artists like Soile Yli-Mäyry with an opportunity to strut their stuff. She is a genuinely international painter. She can pick her influences and exemplars from wherever she choose. She has no obligation to belong to any school. The paintings in this exhibition are the product of a purely personal impulse. That, without question, is their strength.
Edward Lucie-Smith
“Thomas Kelly paints not the America we have, he paints America as we would like it to be. His paintings give us hope, like a modern Norman Rockwell.” -Walter Wickiser, 2023
Thomas Kelly is an award winning, New Jersey based painter. Widely collected, his work has a signature style, which has its roots in Expressionism. His colorful, narrative, acrylic paintings on canvas, often create a dialogue with the viewer. His deceptively simplistic paintings are both critically acclaimed and very approachable by everyday viewers. More than 350 of Kelly’s original paintings have been collected. Kelly has exhibited in New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia. His work is in private and public collections in the US, Europe and Asia.
“My paintings are of common scenes, everyday occurrences in which people struggle to establish and maintain relationships. It is these universal emotions and situations which most interest me.”
“The paintings are acrylic on canvas, which lends to the way I work. The idea begins from a tiny sketch. That sketch will have the emotional feeling or gesture that first intrigued me. I encourage viewers to participate in the narrative by placing themselves inside my scenes and characters. When asked by viewers if their interpretation is the true one, I say, ‘The paintings must stand on their own.’ I don’t tell them that their stories often rival my own.”
“I am not and do not wish to be, the artist with the best technical skill, recreating realism that wows the masses. I wish to be the one who connects well with the way people feel. I wish to have the viewer say about themselves, when they see my art, ‘This is about me, this is about my life.’ This is how I wish to connect. The universal feelings we all have is what I am trying to portray.”
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Soile Yli-Mäyry is a Finnish artist with an impressive international CV. Immensely energetic, she has had more than 250 exhibitions worldwide. Her work reflects this energy. Made with a palette-knife, it is physically bold, one might almost say impatient, in its handling of the artist’s material.
Finland had a tradition of mythic and symbolist painting. Its best known painter of the Early Modern period was Akseli Gallen-Kallela [1865-1961], who made illustrations to the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. His paintings have a Symbolist element, but this is much stronger in the work of a younger and shorter-lived contemporary, Hugo Simberg [1873-1917]. Simberg once defined the function of art in this way: He said it was ‘the ability to transport oneself from the midst of a cold winter to a lovely summer’s morning and sense it all, feel how nature awakens and your own harmony in tune with it. That is what I require from a work of art. It must say something and say it so loud that it carries us away.’ I suspect that this is a sentiment with which Soile Yli-Mäyry would agree.
Simberg’s affinity was with the artists of the Vienna Secession, Gustav Klimt [1865-1918] and Egon Schiele [1890-1918]. After a period of quasineglect, these two painters have beeen catapulted into the limelight again by a series of enormous prices at auction, which mark a shift in public taste away from the masters of the Ecole de Paris and towards Austrian and German Symbolism and Expressionism. One can easily see that Yli-Mäyry has links with both Symbolist and Expressionist impulses. Her work combines strong color and impulsive handling with an interest in patterning that recalls some of Klimt’s techniques in particular. When she paints the human figure, however, she gives in a tense wiriness and angularity that recalls some of the early drawings of Schiele. One can also perhaps detect some influence from the work of another Viennese artist of the same epoch, Oskar Kokoschka [1886-1980], whose handling of paint is much looser than that of either Klimt or Schiele.
One of the hallmarks of the first decade of the 21st century has been a return to figuration, often of a slightly twisted and eccentric kind. However, there has also been a lack of direction, especially [it seems to me as a European] in the United States. A recent issue of Vanity Fair, devoted largely to the New York art world, hymned a new group of young artists as ‘international, unpredictable, deeply individual.’ In journalistic terms, this amounts to saying that no-one at this moment knows which way the cat is going to jump, or even if it has any power to jump left in it. To be blunt, the Modernist/Contemporary project looks as if it is in trouble, sustained more by hype and wishful thinking than by any discernible or definable new departure.
It is situations of this sort that provide genuinely international artists like Soile Yli-Mäyry with an opportunity to strut their stuff. She is a genuinely international painter. She can pick her influences and exemplars from wherever she choose. She has no obligation to belong to any school. The paintings in this exhibition are the product of a purely personal impulse. That, without question, is their strength.
Edward Lucie-Smith
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Yamagata started drawing when she was 5 years old. It used to be her little secret until she was encouraged to show her work in 2009. Since then she has been consistently showing her works in galleries and art fairs in New York, Europe and Japan.Yamagata uses vivid colors to paint her journeys to a better state of mind.
The act of painting the situation is the process of studying and translating the meaning of what has happened. All of the motifs and figures in her paintings are fighting to reach for her hopes and dreams in this cruel world. She paints what has happened in her life both good and bad, suffering and adoring.
Exhibiting Artists
Other Represented Artists