Amanda Church “Recliners”

High Noon

[Image: Amanda Church "Soft Parade" (2019) oil on canvas, 32 x 36 in.]

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HIGH NOON presents a group of recent paintings by Amanda Church in her first solo exhibition with the gallery titled Recliners. In art history, the word could refer to works depicting the recumbent female form, in contrast to its more commonplace conjuring of a lounge chair in a typical family home. Church’s taut, curvilinear compositions elicit both of these “reclining” associations with a focus on her unique, erotically tinged blend of figuration and abstraction.

Her configurations of what could be either rolling hills or the curves of the human body are rendered in flat expanses of oil paint, punctuated by various geometric interludes, graphic stained-glass windows, and dark outlines. Describing her imagery as essentially a portrayal of “the body in landscape,” Church’s luminous pop sensibility interweaves fleshy mounds, architectural silhouettes, and an appropriation of corporate logos to mimic all-seeing eyes. Investigating and trying to understand the myriad means of perception is of significant interest to Church. In the words of Roy Lichtenstein, “My work … is about seeing. I’m excited about seeing things, and I’m interested in the way I think other people see things.”

Amanda Church has been showing throughout the U.S. and Europe for over 20 years, with solo exhibitions in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Louisville, San Juan, Prague, and Marseille. Recent group exhibitions include a three-person show CKR at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York; New New York: Abstract Painting in the 21st Century at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu; and Minimal Baroque in Copenhagen, for which she received a grant from the Danish Council on the Arts. She is also a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work is in many private and public collections including Deutsche Bank; The Chambers Hotel, New York; the Progressive Corporation, Cleveland; and the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton. Church lives and works in New York City.