Craven Contemporary: Two Voices in Tandem: Michael De Feo & Shira Toren

Two Voices In Tandem: Michael De Feo & Shira Toren

Craven Contemporary, Kent, CT

July 19 - September 14, 2025

For work availability, please visit Craven Contemporary on Artsy.

Craven Contemporary is excited to announce, "Two Voices In Tandem" featuring work by New York painters Michael De Feo and Shira Toren. The exhibition opens on Saturday July 19^th with a reception for the artists from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

Two artists with different histories and practices intersect and converse in their same overlapped interests. De Feo and Toren create paintings that explore chaos and order, organic abstraction, and beauty in the ephemeral. The artists seek to create living objects that are imbued with these ideas and energy.

Their output is physically manifested predominantly in the medium of painting on canvas. Toren uses Venetian plaster, pigments, and acrylics whereas De Feo uses oils and oil sticks. Both artists activate their surfaces by layering and building with their chosen materials. They have developed unique lexicons within their work, languages that were born out of their individual process-driven studio practices that tap into memory and perception. Although both artists employ additive techniques of layering as well as utilizing subtractive methods to partially or completely alter their surfaces, Toren's paintings are a mostly smooth, slick texture whereas De Feo's have pronounced or course texture. Constant change is embraced.

Renewal, loss and growth are frequent themes for both artists. De Feo has said of his work, "The perpetual spinning of the cycle of life and the idea of the temporary are major influences on me." Of her 2019 series, Stepping Stones, Toren has expressed, "There is a latent tension lingering between presence and absence."

Two Voices in Tandem is a presentation of two passionate artists who recognize that letting go can be synonymous with creation and progress.

Two Voices in Tandem 

July 19 - September 14, 2025

Reception: Saturday, July 19, 2025 - 4:00 - 6:00 pm

Craven Contemporary

4 Fulling Lane

Kent, CT 06757

+1 (646) 355-8142

For work availability, please visit Craven Contemporary on Artsy.