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23 February – 31 March |
| DRISS
OUADAHI |
| In his
first solo New York exhibition, Algerian Driss Ouadahi paints lush, gridded abstractions that refer- ence architecture found on the outskirts of urban Europe. Cities like Paris and Berlin built huge high-rise housing developments on their peripheries to accom- modate growing immigrant populations. Without revealing the inhabitants, the paintings nonetheless bring to mind the politics of class, religion and ethnicity embodied within these structures. Drawing upon a lifelong interest in architecture, Ouadahi creates a hybrid language of structural design and abstract painting that infuses rich color and light into the rigid form of monotonous buildings. Broad, multi-colored brushstrokes define volume and depth in the paintings’ repetitive geometry. The lushness of paint creates a seductive but impenetrable surface, leaving us wondering about the life behind the walls. |
| JUTTA
HAECKEL Shadows and Tattoos |
A leisurely nostalgia pervades the work of German
painter Jutta Haeckel. Fenced-in parks and yards, a house tucked into a forest, skeletons of roller coaster s peeking over lush trees, colors a little too bright and shiny. Wistfulness makes room for a stranger mood, not quite ominous, not quite reassuring. Haeckel is interested in the psychological space that is formed by the contradictions of shrinking borders due to globalization. Drawing upon her own travels, she references thousands of her own photographs to “filter” the lines that are blurred between nature/ artifice and original/copy. Both gorgeous and unsettl- ing, Haeckel’s locales force the questions of time and place while benignly suspending recognition. |
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| Building
Shell I, 2006 |
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| Die dunkle Seite des Mondes, 2006 |