Alyssa Monks "New Paintings"

DFN Gallery

poster for Alyssa Monks "New Paintings"

This event has ended.

DFN Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Alyssa Monks. These works continue her bather series, an update of the classic image of the bathing nude. Formerly done as self-portraits, Monks has added friends and family as subjects which are often shown through a distorting veil of steamy wet plastic or pebbled glass.

Tightly cropped compositions of faces and torsos force us as viewers into the bathers’ intimate realm only to be pushed back by the translucent barriers. These surfaces balance lavish, painterly strokes, and hyper-realistic illusion.The result is fragmented forms and obfuscated expressions. It is poignantly used to a Dorian Grayesque effect in Mom and Mosaic Mom. The enigmatic bathers in both Fragment and Hands seem to be suspended in acts of sacrament by their protective, yet suffocating aquatic cocoons, while the women of both Laugh and Laughing Girl burst forth, rejuvenated by the water’s cleansing power.
Long concerned with the layered meanings and metaphors evoked by this timeless subject, Monks wants us to identify with these subjects as real women.

[Image: Alyssa Monks "Hands" (2008) oil on canvas 48 x 56 in.]

Media

Schedule

from April 09, 2009 to May 02, 2009

Artist(s)

Alyssa Monks

  • Facebook

    Reviews

    All content on this site is © their respective owner(s).
    New York Art Beat (2008) - About - Contact - Privacy - Terms of Use