NYAB Event - Vicki Sher “Always Bring Flowers”

Vicki Sher “Always Bring Flowers”

frosch & portmann

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frosch&portmann presents Always Bring Flowers, the gallery’s second solo exhibition by New York based artist Vicki Sher.

Always Bring Flowers marks the debut of a new body of work and is the result of the attainment of working with a new material, transparent cotton scrim. The inherent complexity of these recent paintings arises from a multilayered approach. Drawing, painting and video on two different planes overlap to a whole new imagery in Vicki Sher’s uniquely layered ‘boxes’.

Plants, flowers and vases are recurrent elements in Sher’s oeuvre; drawn to their formal beauty, the lines and shapes, Sher is equally drawn to their easy symbolism, contained versions of nature, romance, beauty and so on.
For many years, Vicki Sher has been interested in dualities and opposing forces: wild and domestic, inside and outside, animal and human, emotion and control. Potted plants and flowers are perfect talismans for these concerns, and act as stand-ins for everyday human experience, the controlled naturalism that we attempt to embody.

Always Bring Flowers (a title borrowed from a Camille Rankine poem of the same name) is a gentle reminder of good etiquette, a phrase that carries different meaning for women and for men. For women it is a reminder to be a good girl, to be polite and giving, to be nice. For men, a hint of warning, to remember love and affectionate gestures, possibly to come carrying an apology. The phrase can be taken further, as a general theory of life, to always remember the sensual and aesthetic, and to spread beauty.

In this latest series of paintings on transparent material, Vicki Sher layers these dualities: the quiet contemplative interior against the reckless nature, the emotional abstract against the deliberate contour. Stillness and activity vie for attention. The outside won’t sit still for the painting, our layers of experience happen on separate planes.

Born in Washington, DC, Vicki Sher lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her B.F.A. from the Cornell University, Ithaca, NY and her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.

[Image: Vicki Sher “What I have So Far” (2013) pencil, ink and acrylic on paper, 19 x 22.5 in.]