Wizardry of Sorts

Lorimoto Gallery is pleased to open its fall exhibition season with Wizardry of Sorts, a group exhibition featuring the work of Peter Hildebrand, Jeff Feld, Steve Voll, and Kurt Steger.

Each of these artists has spent decades refining a deeply personal visual language. Though their work spans painting, sculpture, woodworking, and ceramics, they are united by a rare fluency of execution. Years of sustained dedication have transformed technical mastery into intuition, allowing each artist to pursue new ideas with confidence, precision, and independence.

The title, Wizardry of Sorts, is less about illusion than effortlessness. It acknowledges that peculiar moment when decades of work become invisible. The difficult begins to look natural. Yet beneath this apparent effortlessness lies a depth of experience and accumulated knowledge that gives the work its richness and complexity. Decisions become instinctive, intuition and experience work in concert, and years of accumulated knowledge are distilled into an intuitive way of making. What appears effortless is, in fact, the visible result of decades of invisible labor.

Peter Hildebrand is a painter and graphic artist based in Red Hook, Brooklyn. A longtime presence in New York's downtown art community, he gained recognition in the 1990s through his association with the legendary alternative space Exit Art and Pierogi Gallery. Working almost exclusively with One Shot enamel paint—a medium more closely associated with traditional sign painting than fine art—Hildebrand has remained unwavering in his practice. In an era dominated by acrylic and oil, his choice of enamel feels both singular and quietly defiant. His studio survived the devastating Red Hook warehouse fire that destroyed neighboring artist studios and workshops, reflecting the resilience that has long characterized his career.

Jeff Feld creates abstract work across a range of media. His greatest achievement lies in the natural ease of his compositions. While abstraction often risks becoming overburdened by theory or gesture, Feld's work resists pretension. Its subtleties unfold patiently, revealing thoughtful relationships between form, material, and space. His work asks for attention rather than demanding it, rewarding sustained looking with emotional and intellectual depth.

Steve Voll is an abstract painter whose work has been exhibited at Lorimoto Gallery in Brick Layer (2018) and Bad Plaid (2021). We have long admired his exceptional command of composition, color, and process, and consider him among the finest abstract painters working today. His large-scale paintings demonstrate extraordinary technical precision while remaining fundamentally experimental. Voll continually embraces new materials and technologies, proving that mastery is not the end of curiosity but the freedom to keep questioning one's own practice.

Kurt Steger is a sculptor whose work in wood and ceramics reflects decades of extraordinary craftsmanship. After many years in Brooklyn, he relocated to Lake Peekskill, where he established a remarkable creative environment encompassing woodworking and ceramics studios, a sculpture garden, and a thriving artistic community open to the public. His practice extends beyond the making of objects; it is equally invested in creating spaces where artists and visitors can gather, learn, and engage with one another. He has also established a free woodworking program for children in Peekskill, with plans to expand it into a full crafts school. This commitment to sharing knowledge and fostering creativity is an extension of the generosity that runs throughout both his work and his life as an artist.

Rather than presenting four artists connected by style, Wizardry of Sorts brings together four practices connected by something far more uncommon: the confidence that comes from a lifetime of creative pursuit. Their work reflects the kind of fluency that can only be earned through decades of sustained practice. Each artist has arrived at a point where craft and intuition have become inseparable, allowing them to continue experimenting and developing their practices with remarkable freedom.

We warmly invite you to the opening reception of Wizardry of Sorts on Friday , September 12, from 6:00–9:00 PM at Lorimoto Gallery.