ON INTIMACY
February 18th – April 14th, 2024
Emily Bartolone
Laura Ruth Bidwell
Nydia Blas
Julia Callis
TR Ericsson
Jen P Harris
Scott Olson
Chen Peng
Shaun Pierson
Sophie Schwartz
Audra Skuodas
Mamie Tinkler
Roger White
Amani Williams
Carmen Winant
Ang Zhang
At a moment in which our civil society is in the painful throes of divisiveness, On Intimacy highlights a group of artists whose practice touches on the intimate and ideas of intimacy in both form, scale, content and narrative. Some of the work is critical, political, confrontational—but in quiet ways. The show invites viewers to consider their own relationship to the works in the gallery, an invitation to meet the artist and their subjects halfway.
Amani Williams and Carmen Winant both consider the female gaze within historical contexts of 18th century France and the women’s movement of the 1970, respectively. Williams inhabits a distended nude body of a libertine woman at leisure. Her frank address of the viewer challenges voyeuristic moments of pleasure, while Winant’s beckoning women from the covers of OUI magazine are faded and interrupted by the artist’s transformation of the newsprint into illusory floating images.
Intimacy is evoked by several means beyond the gaze in this group of work. Mamie Tinkler’s The Embrace, a tour de force watercolor, imagines intimacy between anthropomorphic dancing feathers, while Roger White’s self-portrait in the bathroom mirror details the items of the daily toilette while obscuring the facial characteristics of the main protagonist. Emily Bartolone’s delicate abstract colored pencil works continue her exploration of human form as mass and attitude, while Audra Skuodas’ lozenge drawing captures the universal and intimacy of the female form. Ang Zhang’s abstract paintings are drawn from her MFA studies. A musical performer herself, the artist treads lightly between the atmospheric and the concrete nature of her material surfaces.
In Audra Skuodas' 1990s painting Untitled (Yellow Hands), she treats a favorite theme—clasped hands holding a single bead, as another meditation of the micro and macro relationship of human beings to the universe.
Narrative approaches to memory and the instant in paint, drawing and photography.
Chen Peng’s ink on canvas painting recalls a memory of sharing soup with a dear friend in her native Taiwan. Sophie Schwartz’ photos of friends in Los Angeles are focused on the tangential and momentary nature of intimacy of bodies, as lovers and family. TR Ericsson’s print is from an image of his mother created with nicotine particles breathed onto the paper. Laura Ruth Bidwell calls her subjects muses; her portraits records of the instant in the photography studio that dissipates once the session is over. Ang Zhang’s abstract paintings are drawn from her MFA studies. A musical performer herself, the artist treads lightly between the atmospheric and the concrete nature of her material surfaces.
Shaun Pierson’s staged self-portrait explores themes of queer desire, self-reflection, and the surreal essence of familiar landscapes. The camera’s presence in intimate moments delves into the interplay of control and vulnerability. Jen P. Harris’s intricate colored pencil drawings reveal bodily forms hidden within and without a vibrant animated textured environment. The artist, currently exploring textile paintings as a new venture, employs impish forms from medieval manuscripts as ciphers and avatars in her work. How to hide and how/what to reveal are current themes in this thoughtful and increasingly complex work.
Julia Callis’s Definition of a Fragment examines the part to the whole, the individual to the group environment, all in this study of food. Scott Olson has made a singular study of expressing intimacy throughout his work–paintings on canvas, on prepared wood or works on paper. He continually considers how framing and proportion of the image to the ground affects the emotional tenor of his work. In these gouaches, framed as if seen through a peep window, the viewer is beckoned into close looking.
Nydia Blas’ self-portraits bring the viewer into her journey to trace her roots in Panama. Always adhering to the dreamscape vision, Blas only uses herself in her staged photography.