paintings

Love Songs

Millree Hughes — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:00:00 +0000

Love Songs Millree Hughes September 27, 2021 - 10:00

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Scenicscape, 2021 Oil on Linen Courtesy of the Artist and Fredericks & Freiser, NY

Jenna Gribbon: Uscapes

Fredericks & Freiser, NYC

September 9 - October 30, 2021

"In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Laura Mulvey, 1989

In many of Lisa Yuskavage's paintings we often see the female subject reacting to being looked at with detached self-consciousness. It's even more the case in John Currin's paintings where increasingly his women's glassy out-of-it ness seems almost satirical.

Jenna Gribbon's new show of paintings at Fredericks & Freiser are also about desiring a woman. But they are filled with the very present presence of the love object.

In the front gallery are a suite of large paintings on a single theme -- Gribbon's girlfriend Mackenzie Scott, creator of indie rock band Torres. We, the viewer, are in the place of the artist, our Mons Venus rising up to meet the lower third of the painting with Scott looking at/into us from between our legs. It's a moment of cunnilingus interruptus. A deeply intimate moment. On a plateau of desire for both parties with options on how to proceed. This journey from arousal to orgasm is finite for men (the ultimate beginning, middle and end narrative) there's no room for sensually endowed downtime between orgasms. No room for imagining the paint quickened by the Waters of Yin.*

Sometimes the large paintings take on the composition of the Yoni.

Gribbon's legs playing the role of the labia majora while her lover's arms balancing on her knees, completes the diamond shape, turning McKenzie's head into the clitoris. Her mind and the artist's body as one, in the pursuit of pleasure.

Three characteristics intermix to separate her work from the work of other mimetic painters. It is loose; as if working fast and still being accurate proves that figuration does not have to be the laborious re-representation of reality. It could be something new, something fresh. Gribbon's great skill at rendering form makes a beautiful woman magically appear on this glossy surface, like Vivian's^ the Lady of the Lake.

Secondly the camera is constantly in play, not as the replacer of representational painting but as its servant. She exploits how the camera phone has infiltrated our most intimate realities so that we almost don’t notice it. Blorking# the image can push its contrast or light levels. And photos can help an artist speed up choices about form and light from different perspectives.

Thirdly, she has absorbed the lessons of abstraction. A field of yellow splodges a "spot painting" anywhere else, is also blossom here, giant yellow ornamental onion gone to seed. Abstraction's instantness is used so that the image can be read just for what it is initially, loose marks or patterns of marks on a surface.

Full bloom moon, 2021 Oil on Linen Courtesy of the Artist and Fredericks & Freiser, NY Photography by Adam Reich.

Jenna's pallette in the first room -- the statement room -- is flesh, pink and beige. Lilac in the shadows on a leg or saffron yellow reflexive light, bounced onto a tummy. And behind the figure a darkened room in green gray, spot lit by an iPhone flash. Mauve dusk and the first rays of morning after a night of sex

In the back room her color range opens out again. Gribbons is all sunlit gardens and interiors that flash with objects that are sometimes just flickers of colored paint. Mackenzie is still the subject as the artist wonders at all the ways that she can "be."

The show is a love song. Painted in an oily caress. The loved one in your viewpoint, your sights (like a wild doe), under surveillance, in adoration, every way that you can look.

The smaller paintings are not a vision of women behaving badly, not if they're really free to be themselves. What's "bad" about that? Without caveats about tummy fat and saggy boobs and all the murderous demands that the media makes on "the female" form.

The artist doesn't "own" her. muse. This is a woman and a woman after all, the ancient rules of the dominant male and his mate don't have to apply. Jenna Gribbon side steps the detaching or reifing tendency of erotic painting by reducing the distance between the subject and the viewer both physically and emotionally. We know that the subject knows she's being seen but she’s not in thrall to the gaze. She's not posing or acting

The "gazer" has just touched the subject. It just happened, the loved one is in mid touch. And the artist is the toucher not just the viewer. Reification hasn't had TIME to happen.

*Each of the Five Elements has a Yin (feminine) and a Yang (masculine). WATER nurtures wood and is absorbed by it (trees and plants). Water puts out fire. The yin (feminine) energy is a lake or pond, deep water or ebbing tide.

^Viviane is a corruption of the Welsh word chwyfleian (also spelled hwimleian, chwibleian, et al., in medieval Welsh sources), meaning "a wanderer of pallid countenance."

#Blorking a slang term used on the FB Page Involuntary Painting about an image, pushed and distorted by the phone's various filters

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Woman: Mother, Daughter, Wife, Friend…

Mary Hrbacek — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 18:03:38 +0000

Woman: Mother, Daughter, Wife, Friend… Mary Hrbacek October 12, 2016 - 14:03

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Woman: Mother, Daughter, Wife, Friend…

Curated by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos

President's Gallery -  John Jay College of Criminal Justice , NYC

September 15 - November 4, 2016

The exhibition "Woman: Mother, Daughter, Wife, Friend," curated by Thalia Vrachopoulos, investigates the diversity and complexity of women’s multiple roles in their private and public lives as they confront societal constraints, requirements and misconceptions with their own strategies. The participating artists, George Pol. Ioannides, Orestes Kourakis, Lena Morfogeni, Dongyeoun Lee, Vangelis Rinas, Frandy Jean, Jason River and Helene Pavlopoulou, respond to the theme with images that resound with deep sincerity, sympathetic rendering, and uncliched, unbiased depictions. The eight international artists, who hail from Greece, Haiti, America and South Korea, bring their individual cultures into focus, bypassing the generic stereotypic impact of "globalization" in art. There is no trace of the usual gratuitous images of sexuality or abuse, ubiquitous when women’s issues arise. There are no nudes on view.

Some artists explore the entrenched customs of their cultures as they evolve in the present day. Dongyeoun Lee creates hanging scrolls depicting almost life sized young woman clothed in traditional Korean dress, juggling the latest in technological devices. Its burgeoning affluence and ultra-modern skyscrapers that have transformed its cities obscure the conservative underpinnings of South Korean culture. In beautifully rendered images, the girls appear at ease bridging past and present, satisfying societal expectations without the rebellion typical of Western youth. Similarly, Helene Pavlopoulou's painting "Parallel Universes," 2016, (image top) portrays a dignified young woman in traditional apparel juxtaposed beside images of poppies, the main ingredient for heroin. There is irony within a culture that coexists with the specter of drugs while it maintains its conservative traditions. The subtle rounded forms of the cylindrical poppy plant are repeated in the imaginatively conceived floor cum background set behind the striking figure.

Greek artist Vangelos Rinas's unique imagery displays semi-obscured female features in faces with muted external boundaries, which seem to merge and float into the background and foreground of the formats. Thick lines jut inward from the edges of the pictures into the area of the undefined faces; these works suggest an identity crisis where one merges one’s self-image with the identity of others. Women are often denied their individuality by being submerged within a group such as “sisters,” not appreciated for their own achievements or personal merits.

In her forthright depiction of female emotions, Lena Morfogeni focuses intimately on expressive facial features in paintings that extend over a psychological range from calm to tears. Frandy Jean's restrained watercolor paintings of a distressed child, and of a young woman contemplating the devastation of a city block, evoke a universal sense of sadness which factors into the daily lives of individuals who experience the aftermath of an earthquake. (image above) Frandy's clear, sensitively wrought portrayals are moving and sympathetic, beautifully rendered and pure in feeling.

In his black and white photograph, "Mal & Amy," (image below) Jason River juxtaposes black and white skin tones that highlight the increasing social acceptance of inter-racial relationships in Western culture. River's compressed photographs stress the intimate, emotionally expressive quality of diverse hands of different individuals united in a unique form of expression. His striking images offer a glimpse into a domain of rapidly disintegrating social-racial divisions.

In contrast, Frank Gimpaya's photographs explore women as they carry on with personal tasks in private moments of fleeting solitude. In works that delve into conflicting emotions, Orestes Kourakis displays women in clown attire, whose unhappy faces in mirrored images reflect their true, far from funny feelings. George Pol. Ioannides explores female inequality in pictures where dripping blood symbolizes their suffering.

The impact of the paintings and photographs in this exhibition is delivered by the personal focus, which each artist so truthfully conveys. The works are by and large devoid of cliches, forced “cleverness” or gimmicks. In an exhibit that could have been oriented narrowly toward women’s obvious sexual and maternal functions, a multi-dimensional kaleidoscope of authentic moods, moments, and poetic visions spins generously. By juxtaposing past traditions with present skills and powers much of this art reaches the viewer on myriad levels capable of eliciting complex responses. The quality and message of the works allows viewers to relax their emotions and their minds rather than scramble to escape the usual turn-offs in the form of repellent or sordid images. On balance, the exhibit has a joyful effect; its intensions have a genuine regard for the integrity and diversity of the women subjects it celebrates.