“DREAM”: This painting by James Kearns is featured in “W. Carl Burger and James Kearns,” on view at the Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster January 17 through February 29. An opening reception, free and open to the public, is Friday, January 17 from 6 to 8 p.m.

The Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster has announced the opening of two new exhibitions, on view January 17 through February 29. An opening reception, free and open to the public, is Friday, January 17 from 6 to 8 p.m.

“REPRESENTING: Artwork of the County College of Morris Fine Art Faculty,” features the work of Clayton Allen, Marco Cutrone, Todd Doney, Patrick Gallagher, Andrea Kelly, Deborah Kelly, Barbara Neibart, John Reinking, Robert Ricciotti, Marisol Ross, Eileen Sackman, Keith Smith, and Leah Tomaino. The work of these 13 faculty members “spans a variety of media and styles, it is linked by exceptional craft and creative competence” says curator Keith Smith, from the Visual Arts Program at the County College of Morris.

The other exhibit highlghts the works of “W. Carl Burger and James Kearns,” who have been making art for seven decades. “Each artist, within his own studio practice, has touched on a number of ideas that helped shape the second half of the 20th century,” say curator Wes Sherman. “Burger’s paintings and drawings explore ideas of abstraction, or more accurately, they deconstruct, examining the external elements that make up an environment. Kearns’ art, in contrast, explores the psyche, mostly through humor, and how it is revealed in the human figure.”

W. Carl Burger studied at New York University, receiving a BS and MA in fine arts education. He took postgraduate courses at Columbia University, the Arts Students League in New York City, and Rutgers University. In 1993, he retired as professor emeritus of art from Kean University in Union. Burger has exhibited throughout the U.S., including the National Academy of Design in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Newark Museum, Montclair Museum, New Jersey State Museum, and the Morris Museum.

James Kearns studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, DePaul University, and at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1951. Kearns’s first one-man exhibition took place in New York in 1956. In 1960, Kearns became a professor at the School of Visual Arts, New York. His sculptures, paintings, lithographs, and etchings have been included in exhibitions at the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Pennsylvania Academy of fine Arts and at the Whitney Museum in New York. He can be found in museum collections that include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. 

The Center for Contemporary Art is located at 2020 Burnt Mills Road in Bedminster. For more information, call (908) 234-2345 or visit www.ccabedminster.org.