Anoka Faruqee “Rainbows and Bruises”

Koenig & Clinton

poster for Anoka Faruqee “Rainbows and Bruises”
[Image: Anoka Faruqee "2016-01 (Circle)" (2016) acrylic on linen on panel, 33 3/4 x 33 3/4 in. Photo: Johanna Case-Hofmeister, New Haven.]

This event has ended.

Koenig & Clinton presents Rainbows and Bruises, Anoka Faruqee’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Delving further into her trademark patterns Moiré, Circle, and Wave series of paintings, Faruqee pushes her technique to polarize the illusory visual effects of her highly material work.

By carefully calibrating the color relationship between paint layers Faruqee employs the principles of visual interference to slow down and allow for a chromatic complexity that signals light, atmosphere, and volume. Paintings of similar pattern vary widely. A painting with greater light/dark contrast will create the effect of a reflective topographic surface, whereas another painting with minimal contrast creates the atmospheric effect of diffuse white light passing through a lens or prism. The most atmospheric paintings in the exhibition emulate the qualities of rainbows as signs of femininity, alterity, optimism, and inclusiveness.

In contrast, color also amalgamates. Folds are weighed down by the contrived heft of topology. Blood collects as the bruise forms. Dermal associations parallel the surface imperfection or ‘glitch’ that appears regularly in many of Faruqee’s hand-combed paintings. Although these events are often remnants of the human hand, they also result from delimited tools and materials: the imperfect and unpredictable translations from the virtual to the physical.

All of these events are captured in an uncanny spatial picture plane that is almost as impenetrable as the screen. The paintings’ smooth milled surfaces indulge an insidious desire towards digital and material perfection. While these moments of accident are still available, they are sublimated: it’s often unclear whether you’re looking at a spill or the simulation of a spill.

Inspired by Bridget Riley’s writing about Georges Seurat, Faruqee notes Riley’s focus on Seurat’s transition from higher contrast in drawing to less contrast, or the “Impressionist mid-tone,” in his painting. The drawing effect is one of volume, while the painting effect is akin to low light or dusk.

These paintings confuse the distinction between color and drawing.

Anoka Faruqee (b. 1972, Ann Arbor) earned her M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art in 1997 and her B.A. in painting from Yale University in 1994. In April, her work will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Secession, Vienna. Her work has also been exhibited in the U.S. and abroad at venues including: MoMA/PS1, Long Island City; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; Björkholmen Gallery, Stockholm; and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco; among others. Faruqee directs graduate studies in painting and printmaking at Yale School of Art. She lives and works in New Haven, CT.

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Schedule

from February 23, 2017 to April 08, 2017

Opening Reception on 2017-02-23 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Anoka Faruqee

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