NYAB Event - Barbara Friedman "Overlook Paintings"

Barbara Friedman "Overlook Paintings"

Michael Steinberg Fine Art

This event has ended.

Overlook Paintings, Barbara Friedman’s second solo show at MSFA, is both a continuation and a departure – a continuation of her work’s projection of uncertainty and transience, and a departure from the nearly cinematic sensibility of her earlier paintings into a more overtly theatrical exploration and reintegration of American landscape traditions.

Frequently employing a nearly vertiginous vertical format, Friedman’s Overlook Paintings invoke the panoramic vision of the Hudson River painters of the 19th century. The isolation of small figures within the dramatically scaled space of the work simultaneously indicates senses of awe and of alienation. This doubling of meaning is also inherent in the artist’s choice of a title. As Friedman notes:

“If all painting begins with looking, my recent paintings can be described as having their birth in a particular kind of looking, the overlook. The overlook combines a superior viewpoint with a distance that makes it hard to see anything. That is the subject of these pieces.

I chose “overlook” to describe my newest series of paintings because it is a word that can mean the opposite of itself. Just as what is left is what remains but what has left has gone away, “overlook” can describe a high complete vantage point but can also point to a neglectful way of seeing.”