NYAB Event - Miriam Kley "Bas-Reliefs of Van Gogh paintings and of other subjects"

Miriam Kley "Bas-Reliefs of Van Gogh paintings and of other subjects"

Amos Eno Gallery

This event has ended.

It was after visiting Auvers-sur Oise in France, where Van Gogh spent the last months of his life, that Miriam Kley was inspired to make interpretations of his paintings in bas-relief, that is in three dimensions. Concentrating on self-portraits and children, she used the Van Goghs' as a starting point to experiment with the effect of three dimensions on the work.

There are many moods in the originals and at times the three dimensions add emphasis to a part of the relief as in the sculptured baby’s arm in “Mother and Child I”. At other times, the three dimensional concave and convex sculptural elements add another pattern to the whole relief as in “Two Children”. Here the children are linked by this pattern.

Kley has used color freely in this work, manipulated it so that the relief can be seen clearly. Sometimes she has cast the same piece twice and painted them in two different ways. For example in “Van Gogh as a Young Man”, one version is stark, painted in just brown and white while the other one is in earth colors and has a more relaxed mood.

The coming together of two and three dimensions, painting and sculptural relief are exemplified in the Van Gogh interpretations. Along with these works are a number of pieces which combine pencil or pastel with relief such as “Kim and Jared”. Again Kley is experimenting with the combination of the literal and the illusionistic in order to reach a vision of expressive reality.

All of the reliefs, with the exception of the bronze, are cast in hydrocal and either painted in acrylic or sometimes combined with gilt, pencil or pastel. The artist always models the reliefs in clay before casting, feeling it affords her the greatest plasticity and subtlety of surface.

Media

• Painting
• Sculpture

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