Love of Form by Mark Kingsley
(RED BANK, NJ) -- The Oyster Point Gallery presents Splendid Unended from February 3 through March 30, 2026. The exhibition was curated by George Bates. For his inaugural show, Mr. Bates has selected 18 artists from New Jersey, New York, and California to present a diverse and engaging showcase.
George Bates is a dynamic force in the world of illustration, hand lettering, and public art. Beyond his studio practice, he is a curator and a part-time professor of illustration at Parsons School of Design. George is the second curator invited to participate in The Oyster Point Gallery's Guest Curator Program, an initiative started by Ellen Martin, the Hotel's Curator, to introduce new artists and perspectives to their ongoing Exhibition Program.
"As a curator, I am compelled by the foundational motivations that drive an artist's practice—the underlying questions, impulses, and conditions that necessitate the act of making. If art functions as a frame around an idea, what is it that these artists ask us to consider—and more importantly, why? "Splendid Unended" explores these inquiries with an acute awareness of time, impermanence, and the evolving nature of artistic intent," said Mr. Bates.
Futa Wu Bluza by Alia Bensliman
Artists include Aimée McElroy, Alia Bensliman, Danny Maloney, George Bates, James Alicea, Jill Carlock, Lamar Vannoy, Maria Huang, Mark Kingsley, Pablo Tauler, Robert Melee, Sarah Schmerler, Scott Massey, Scott Szegeski, Simona Prives, Tanya Shparaga, and Warren Linn.
"The title Splendid Unended speaks to the ongoing, unfinished nature of inquiry—especially the kind that underpins a serious art practice. It gestures toward beauty not in resolution, but in persistence: the drive to keep asking, making, and revealing. Essentially—Inquiry as both method and subject," continued Bates.
The exhibit will run from February 3 to March 30, 2026. It is free and open to the public at all times. There will be an opening cocktail reception on Friday, February 13, 2026 at 6:00pm. The gallery is located inside The Oyster Point Hotel (146 Bodman Place) in Red Bank, New Jersey.
The exhibition also includes a site-specific video sculpture titled Perennial Unit 2, by internationally renowned artist Robert Melee. This new, site-specific sculpture showcases video and photographic portraits of Melee's beloved houseplants, displayed in a structure resembling a deconstructed home entertainment unit.
Melee lives and works in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His interdisciplinary practice finds its psychological analogues in the blurring of beauty and the grotesque, nostalgia and critique, often focusing on a repeated attempt at opulence through artifice and exaggeration. Whether he is celebrating and disrupting the integrity of the picture plane or testing the limits of autobiographical reference, he situates his practice at the intersection of high and low visual indicators of the human condition and social status, where they not only interact but also cross-pollinate. While incorporating cast-off quotidian items, his visual language draws significantly from the private realm of domestic environments, eliciting responses that are both uncannily familiar and sometimes disarmingly strange.
Orange Pot2 from Robert Melee's video installation
George Bates is a part-time professor of illustration at Parsons School of Design and has previously taught in the COMD program at Pratt Institute. At Parsons he was asked by the department head at the time, Barbara Nessim, to create a new course offering to address problems and shortcomings in contemporary Illustration education and training. Sketchbook Warehouse is the class he’s crafted and honed over the years to address these concerns as the best jobs, opportunity, and open doors in his diverse career have come directly from his exploratory sketchbook discipline.
Oyster Point Gallery Exhibitions, initially conceived by President Kevin Barry and currently curated by Ellen Martin, provide a prestigious and viable alternative gallery venue to artists from New Jersey and nearby locations.
Both emerging and established artists, many of whom are award-winning, have been included in the exhibitions that are shown in the public spaces of the first two floors of the Hotel.
The work is primarily two-dimensional and encompasses painting, photography, wall-mounted sculpture, collage, and collaborative work. The Gallery is an asset to both our community and the Hotel's guests.
