Press Release: Crowded Fields

Solo exhibition featuring Pelle Cass
February 11 – March 21, 2021

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Crowded Fields, a solo exhibition of photographs by Boston-based artist Pelle Cass. This exhibition features work from two recent series in which the artist combines thousands of images to form one dynamic composition of a sporting event. Working in opposition to traditional sports photography, Pelle Cass aims to capture not the emotion of a moment, but the chaos and physicality of the entire game, evoking a Baroque-like sense of movement and angle in his compositions.

MIT v Williams Pole Vault, 2019. Signed by the artist. Inkjet print on heavy matte rag paper

Armed with a digital camera and Photoshop skills, Cass sets out to create compositions that redefine our notion of what “street photography” can encompass. Though we see many of these defining elements in Cass’s work - the unscripted, unposed, authentic moments in time - Cass aims to break away from the practice that traditionally catches the subject unaware or photographed without permission. Rather than chasing to capture a singular moment, his work operates as an overwhelming, singular time lapse of an event. In a single glance, a pass is made and caught, a diver exits and enters the water. Teammates interact with each other (or even their own selves) in a way that does not follow the constraints of time, existing on a singular, chaotic plane. Drawing on art historical influences, Pelle Cass writes: “I think, sometimes, of Pollock’s swarms of paint and the coiled musculature of Michelangelo’s figures. I think of floating and flying in space--literal as a high diver and as elusive as the dizzying, disorienting abstract compositions of a Modernist like Malevich.”

Futures Tennis in Brighton, 2018. Signed by the artist. Inkjet print on heavy matte rag paper

Pelle Cass’s complementary body of work, Uncrowded Fields, works to evoke these same feelings in the viewer, all the while leaving out one of the most important components of the Crowded Fields series: the human subjects. Uncrowded Fields shows tennis balls flying without direction, evidence of the human presence and movement without actually including the human figure. The viewer can’t help but to draw a connection to the world of the pandemic. For so long, we saw an absence of human life, interactions modified for safety, and even the postponing of sporting events. When placed in conversation with a photograph from Cass’s Crowded Fields series, these balls behave as players that aren’t human, but through motion and composition hint towards the human presence.

Pelle Cass (1954) is a photographer from Brookline, Massachusetts. He’s exhibited at the George Eastman House, the Albright Knox Gallery, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the Metamorf Biennial for Art and Technology in Norway and has presented shows at Stux Gallery (Boston), Gallery Kayafas (Boston), and the Houston Center for Photography. His work is owned by the Fogg Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Polaroid Collection, the DeCordova Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the MFA, Houston. Cass’s photos have appeared in books such as Photoviz (Gestalten), Deleueze and the City (Edinburgh University Press), Langford’s Basic Photography (Focal Press), The Beautiful Sparkle: Optical Illusions in Art (Prestel), and in magazines such as Beaux Arts (France), McSweeney’s, FOAM, GQ, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, and many others. He’s received fellowships from Yaddo, Artists Resource Trust, and the Polaroid Collection.

This project has been supported by a grant from the Artist's Resource Trust.

Press Release: The Sixth Season

Wilhelm Neusser
October 14 - December 13, 2020
460C Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition by Boston-based painter Wilhelm Neusser. In this newest body of work, a thicket of forsythia or a chain link fence create a space just out of reach, suggesting a longing for an indeterminate place or time. The show’s title, The Sixth Season, refers to a mysterious missing panel in a series by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Like the work of this 16th century forerunner, Neusser’s paintings invite speculation. What or which time is lost? The Sixth Season contrasts our nature as social beings with the experience of a season lost, the pandemic spring of 2020.

Wilhelm Neusser, Downhill (#2023), 2020, Oil on linen, 48 x 40 in., Photo credit: Julia Featheringill Photography

Neusser’s latest paintings evoke a sense of isolation akin to his well-known cranberry bog series. Only this time, instead of distant figures, subtle details in the landscape elicit powerful emotions: a glinting sunspot off a chain link fence, a spontaneous splattering of forsythia that stands in stark contrast to the hazy background. Previous works like Neusser’s “Fruitlands/Interchange” bring to mind old masterful depictions of nature like Thomas Cole’s “View from Mount Holyoke.” In his new paintings, Neusser builds further on this theme, fluidly integrating the manmade and the natural world. In doing so, the artist invites a multisensory experience. Surrounded by the pollen haze of the flowers that symbolize the start of spring, the viewer relives a change of the season experienced by all of us so differently this year.

In light of the current pandemic and the political state of the country, we long for the days of the past and a return to a sense of normalcy. But what is it exactly that we long to return to? The “new normal” is left to each of us to contemplate and to define. Neusser’s paintings pay homage to isolation, to the loneliness that socially and physically distances us from the world. But the works do not stop there. Instead they add a shock of bright yellow or a playfully stripped piece of fabric to show us that there can be beauty even in times of darkness. Do these colors reflect a brighter, more equitable future? Neusser’s work allows us to reflect on this past year and move forward with strength amidst uncertainty. 

Wilhelm Neusser, Picnic (#2026), 2020, Oil on linen, 48 x 40 in., Photo credit: Julia Featheringill Photography

Wilhelm Neusser’s artwork has been widely exhibited and he has received numerous awards and fellowships. His recent museum exhibitions include the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, 2019), the Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, MA, 2019), and MASS MoCa (North Adams, MA, 2018). In 2020 he was honored with a finalist grant in Painting from the Mass Cultural Council. Additional awards and recognition include the MASS MoCA Studio Program (2017), Vermont Studio Center (2013), Finalist, Wilhelm-Morgner-Prize, Soest (2010), International Artist in Residence, Boots Contemporary Art Space (St. Louis, MO, 2009), ZVAB Phönix Art Prize (2007). Neusser’s work has been included in notable publications, including The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Artscope Magazine, Boston.com, and Big Red & Shiny.

Wilhelm Neusser was born in Cologne, Germany. He relocated to the United States in 2011, and currently lives and works in Somerville, MA.

Wilhelm Neusser, Bright Horizon (#2001), 2020, Oil on linen, 47.2 x 39.4 in, Photo credit: Julia Featheringill Photography

Press Release: Oh To Be a Painting

Curated by Katelyn Ledford
August 10 – September 13, 2020
Online Exclusive

Available artwork: https://bit.ly/2XCeXNi

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Oh To Be a Painting, featuring the artwork of Hangama Amiri, Destiny Belgrave, Sean Downey, Ada Goldfeld, David Heo, Nicolas Holiber, Joshua Jefferson, Erin Loree, Sean McGaughey, Kiernan Pazdar, Madeline Peckenpaugh, and Samual Weinberg. Our third online-exclusive exhibition, guest curated by Katelyn Ledford.

From the curator, Katelyn Ledford:

We didn’t need a pandemic to make us realize we view a great deal of art online. While the accessibility in doing so is extremely important and necessary, painters are constantly wondering, “Is it enough to view my work only online?”

Oh To Be a Painting addresses this question through 12 artists whose work begs the viewer to touch and feel them through the screen. Each artist’s unique handling of materials instills a longing to see them in person instead of zooming in on a compressed JPG. Subject matter and themes vary from portraiture to improvisation yet all offer a juiciness for the eye to feast upon. While these paintings exist strikingly as flattened images, they lose an integral part of being a painting, the ability to immerse the viewer. Artists are supreme adapters, ever evolving with their circumstances, but how do painters adapt their work to a virtual art world (or even should they)? I, as a painter, do not know. However, I do know that I wish I could see these paintings in person.

About the artists:

Hangama Amiri, as an Afghan refugee woman, produces textile works that evoke her personal diaspora as a means to investigate the politics of gender in Islamic culture, while also celebrating feminine subjects that have been deemed taboo. Her work begins by culling fabrics from stores in New York, which are imported from markets in India and bazaars in Afghanistan. She then cuts and stitches together various textiles, fabrics, and clothing into visually seductive compositions as a way of celebrating Afghan women’s feminism and identities in visual art. The act of sewing these different sources together in her work becomes a metaphor for uniting fragmented identities that have had to live in multiple geographies around the world. In these fabric installations, Amiri chooses to not only forefront women-dominated spaces, such as beauty parlors, but also subversive depictions of items banned by the Taliban, such as red lipstick, shiny fabrics, and nail polish. The artist uses these symbols to give Afghan women a sense of freedom and power in their own sensuality, sexuality, desire, and pleasure; this is in contrast to the Islamic norms of women’s bodies being something very private, secret, and hidden behind a veil.             

Hangama Amiri, Zhvandun (Life), 2019. Chiffon, cotton, silk, silk-screen fabric, white belting, lace, and found fabric. 146’ (H) x 124’ (W) in.

Hangama Amiri (b. 1989 Peshawar, Pakistan) received her BFA (Major in Fine Arts) from NSCAD University in Halifax NS (2012) and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT (2020). She was a Canadian Fulbright and Post-Graduate Fellow at Yale University School of Art and Sciences in New Haven, CT (2015-2016). She has exhibited her paintings nationally and internationally, recently in New York, Toronto, France, Italy, London (UK), and Sofia, Bulgaria. She won the 2003 Portia White Protégé Award, and in 2015, her painting Island of Dreams won a runner-up honorable mention at RBC Canadian Painting Competition.                         

Destiny Belgrave, Daddy In The Wicker, 2020. Papercuts, Gouache, Watercolor, Glitter. 14 x 11 in.

Destiny Belgrave was born and raised in Brooklyn NY and nurtured, with a Caribbean and African American upbringing. Currently she is based out of Queens, NY where she lives and works. She graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018 with a BFA. She is a current fellow of the A.I.R Fellowship Program and a current resident of the BRIC workspace Studio Residency and the BRIClab Residency. Belgrave was also a recent breakout star at SPRING/BREAK art show in NY, where she showed a solo show of recent works. Her work upholds and uplifts Blackness, family, and culture, along with domestic and familial activities, spaces, and objects. The works are often mixed media pieces but they almost always use papercuts as the primary medium.

Sean Downey, No Place That Does Not See You, 2020. Oil on panel. 14 x 11 in.

Sean Downey’s work considers our relationship to screens, and the screen’s relationship to, and origins in, painting. Images have always been, in part, an attempt to crush space and time and to lure viewers into an Orphic journey, or down a click hole. Much of the artist’s recent work is sourced from spaces built in virtual reality. He collages disparate forms, subjects, and images and then processes these sources through a very handmade approach to painting. VR spaces are treated as a still life or landscape that can be returned to repeatedly throughout the process, adjusted, and mined for visual information to serve the needs of the analog painting process. The confusion and distortion of source imagery has also become a way to keep his approach and response hovering in an abstract space even as the images remain for the most part recognizable. This in-between state seems to mirror Downey’s own experience, as a consciousness attempting to sift through and make sense out of a nonstop onslaught of thoughts, memories, and experiences.

Sean Downey received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from Boston University. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA) and LaMontagne Gallery (Boston, MA), and has been included in recent group exhibitions at Richard Heller Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA (Portland, ME), the Leroy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University (New York, NY), LaMontagne Gallery (Boston, MA), and Park Place Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). Downey is a founding member of the curatorial collaborative kijidome, winner of the 2015 James and Audrey Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. His work has been profiled in recent editions of Art Maze Magazine, New American Paintings, Maake Magazine, and the I Like Your Work Podcast. He currently lives and works in Fairfield, IA, where he is an Associate Professor of Art at Maharishi International University.                                                       

Ada Goldfeld, Quarantine Chair, 2020. Colored pencil on paper. 14 x 17 in.

Ada Goldfeld’s work explores quiet, everyday moments that are emotionally and often politically charged. In her studio, she spends time with the objects, people, and spaces she paints, discovering the textures, patterns, and atmospheric conditions that point to the underlying significance of the subject matter. Through this careful observation, she aims to make paintings that sting you with believability, as if to declare: this is what this experience was like, and now you have no choice but to see it. Now you have no choice but to feel it.             

Most recently, Goldfeld has considered how the pandemic has reshaped her life in New York City. While quarantined in a cramped studio apartment, she has faced a stillness that she notes “is foreign to me.”  Goldfeld has watched as chairs remain untouched for weeks, shirts accumulate dust, and magnets slip off her mini-fridge. One day bleeds into the next, each steeped with a sense of helplessness. Through drawing, the artist has recorded this passage of time.                                                                     

Ada Goldfeld currently lives and works in New York City. She graduated from the dual-degree program between the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, receiving a BFA in studio art and a BA in art history and religion. In 2018, she completed an MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Alongside her studio practice, Goldfeld is an avid teacher, instructing college and extracurricular art classes in the tri-state area.

David Heo, Exerting Agency, 2020. Construction paper, charcoal, crayon, colored pencil, acrylic gouache and painted paper cutouts on paper. 12 x 9 in.

David Heo’s artwork Exerting Agency was made to present a toxic dynamic he had recently witnessed. “It's unfortunate because it's this awful power dynamic that keeps perpetuating over and over again. I know everyone knows what I'm referring to. We've all experienced this unaddressed imbalance at some point, whether it's an intimate moment, a group hang, or within a professional platform. I hate seeing this. NOBODY should feel like they can't exert their agency because of the fear, anxiety, or consequences that quietly looms.”

David Heo (B. 1992, Georgia) is a Chicago-based artist. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In recent works, Heo commonly utilizes history, to illustrate a range of folklore from grand, mythic metanarratives to quiet frames of daily life. Heo renders the traditional into the contemporary as he processes his personal experiences at the moment. By using the symbology classic to historical paintings and illustrations of mythology and folklore—the horse, the tiger, the dog—Heo typologies the people he meets and interactions during nights out. Heo’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured in various publications.

Erin Loree, Tropics, 2020. Oil on panel. 20 x 16 in.

Through painting, Erin Loree explores themes of transformation, inversion, and duality, with an emphasis on the process as a journey of discovery. She works without references or a plan and engages in a dialogue with the work, allowing each mark to reveal the next while flirting with the edges of abstraction and representation. Working wet-into-wet, the artist builds up thick sections of paint using a variety of conventional and unconventional tools, and then removes and reapplies the material to create richly-layered surfaces that evoke emotional states and psychic spaces.

“My process a material and symbolic renewal of matter, form, energy, and meaning. I allow the work to continuously changes states as globs of paint move around the surface, dragging, shifting, and relocating, in search of their final destination. The images appear to have lived before settling down, unfolding out of themselves, in accordance to their own inner logic. The work does not follow prescribed formulae of conventional painting, but instead continuously tests and expands the possibilities by which a painting can occur and be experienced.

Drawing inspiration from the cycles of birth, death, growth and decay in natural world, my work reflects the notion that everything outside of us and within us is in a constant state of becoming and transitioning. Forms appear melt and morph into one another, making it difficult to tell where one ends, and another begins. The movements are cyclical, and the images, regenerative. Each painting conveys a vivid expression of energy and motion captured in time, where radiant light seems to emerge from within.”

Toronto-based artist Erin Loree received a BFA from OCAD University in 2012 and a Certificate of Advanced Visual Studies from OCAD’s Florence Program. She was awarded the 2012 Medal for Drawing and Painting upon graduating from the OCAD, as well as the Nora E. Vaughan Award, and an Ontario Arts Council grant. She has participated in numerous group shows including Kim Dorland-curated I ♥ Paint 2 at Angell Gallery in Toronto, Younger Than George: 12 Painters in their 20s and 30s at George Lawson Gallery in San Francisco, and ‘O Canada’ at Beers in London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include a museum exhibition at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound, Ontario, Forth and Back at Peter Robertson Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta, and Snakes and Ladders at Angell Gallery in Toronto. In the fall of 2016, she completed the Bill and Isabel Pope Residency in painting at NSCAD University in Halifax. Other residencies include Artscape Youngplace in Toronto and Sachaqa Centro de Arte in the Peruvian Amazon Jungle. Loree's work has been featured in MOMUS, the Toronto Star, CBC Arts, Beautiful Decay and the Huffington Post. She is represented by Peter Robertson Gallery in Edmonton, Canada.


Joshua Jefferson, Portrait of Sylvia Von Harden, 2020. Acrylic and flashe on canvas. 26.5 x 22 in.

Josh Jefferson has made visual art seriously since the late 1990’s with a singular drive that combines material experimentation and visual simplicity, comics, collage and a fetish for the lush verso of antiquated source material; a tactile, albeit intellectual result of his fondness for the past. He is as unafraid of forging a face from 3 strokes of brush, pen and ink splatter as he is of layering a dozen disparately drawn discards into a harmonious whole. Jefferson doesn’t seem to concern himself with end results, but the laboratory’s immediacy is his prevailing enchantment. He makes marks with learned abandon; he erases them with naiveté and concision. His practical approach is alternately reverent and iconoclastic, whether rubbing frottage over vinyl lettering, painting with a broad brush or concentrated draftsmanship, his work is a celebration of abandon and control.” --Scott Zieher

Joshua Jefferson has been the focus of numerous articles, including a full feature in the April 2016 issue of Juxtapoz. This year he received the highest level of Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in Painting. Recent exhibitions include one-man shows at Zevitas Marcus in Los Angeles, Gallery 16 in San Francisco, and TURN Gallery in New York City, as well as group exhibitions at Zieher Smith in New York City and Zevitas Marcus in Los Angeles.

Sean McGaughey, Group Hug with My Multiple Personalities, 2019. Oil on canvas. 36 x 30 in.

Sean P McGaughey’s paintings are indebted to the history of painting and pull from the vast history of image culture. His canvases built from a repetition of lines and forms pushing, pulling and confronting each other, while his sense of color works to subvert the action. A narrative built up from the action of lines and forms begin to dissolve, opening up a subconscious space for the viewer to insert themselves.            

Sean P McGaughey current lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Kiernan Pazdar, Dark Place, 2020. Oil on canvas. 16 x 12 in.

Kiernan Pazdar made the painting Dark Place while mercury was in retrograde, the United States was amidst a global pandemic, and protestors took to the streets to work to eradicate racial injustice.  No tiny samples from makeup companies, joints, alcohol, or clothing could help achieve equality and yet July’s SALE SALE SALE emails and flashing liquor store signs continued to promise help. Pazdar exists in a reality that is fraught with contradictions and cruel optimism. In her series Smoke and Mirrors, the artist has been using paint as a tool to help examine the tension produced by postfeminist aesthetics and neoliberalism in the United States. She is interested in common ways of coping with the anxiety of an American Dream which feels increasingly unsatisfying and impossible. 

“My time working as a textile designer in my early Twenties informs everything that I do. I look for hegemonic desires in imagery found in lifestyle magazines, Pinterest, in television. Historical and trendy textiles to help bring symbolism into the work. Like the Pictures Generation and Pop Artists, I am continually thinking about the ways our ideas of normalcy are manufactured and disseminated.”

Kiernan Pazdar (b.1992, Glastonbury, CT) lives in Providence, RI and works in Warren, RI. Her work has been exhibited with the 1969 Gallery, New York, NY; Field Projects, New York, NY; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; NHAI Sharon Art Center, Peterborough, NH; The Atwater Gallery, Kingston, NY ;The RISD Museum, Providence, RI; and Woods Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI. Her work is also included in the perma- nent collection of the Rhode Island School Of Design Museum and the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Pazdar earned her BFA in Textile Design from the Rhode Island School Of Design in 2014, and received her MFA in Painting at the same institution in 2020.

Madeline Peckenpaugh’s paintings mimic interconnected patterns, light, atmosphere, and pressure found in natural and urban environments. Peckenpaugh explores these formal elements through her photography practice, which she sees as a cataloging of events or situations that she can draw upon. “The matter of factness of my photographs and their peculiarity in relation to their subject sets up an obstacle for me to work through in my paintings. Through the process of painting, I transform these cropped realities into their own particular environments. I am interested in collapsing space as well as opening up deep dimensional sections; disrupting with gesture and weaving in material changes to dodge initial expectations.”

Madeline Peckenpaugh, Testing Sounds, 2020. Acrylic and pastel on paper. 23 x 22.5 in.

Madeline Peckenpaugh received an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She has recently exhibited at 1969 Gallery (NYC), Avery Galleries (PA), Woods Gerry Gallery (RI), and Palace of Fine Arts (CA). Her artworks is held in notable public collections, including Brown University, Woodmere Art Museum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her work was featured in Create! Magazine in 2020.

Samual Weinberg, Meat Balance. 2018. Graphite on assembled paper. 24 x 22 in.

Samual Weinberg’s series of paintings feature a series of variations on a single recurring character called the Pink Man/ Pink Men. They are cartoonishly rendered fleshy beings that are wide-eyed, like children, seemingly amazed by whatever befalls them; mischievously engaging in any number of contests, past-times and interactions that draw equally from art historical, television, and film references. The Pink Men’s stories are often influenced by archetypal sources, from school-age juvenile delinquency narratives and cult movies to urban legends and Internet forums, alternately focusing on the mundane or pedestrian moments in their world and adding to a larger ongoing narrative. This structure recalls the Sci-Fi television show, the X-Files, which would move forward with the central lines of the narrative, but often gave way to a “monster of the week” episode, each of which would stand alone but not apart. Taken as a whole, the series of paintings suggest an imagined world that seems at once familiar and a little off-kilter, where events continue to escalate towards ominous and uncertain ends.

The world the Pink Men inhabit is one that Weinberg assembles from the constant mining of sources at hand. To create these narratives, he begins by culling images from personal photos, art historical texts, screenshots from films or television programs he’s seen, and the millions of images that can be instantly conjured from a Google Image Search. A screenshot of a scene from a prestige cable television program may end up playing host to a Pink Man— matching the light and forms until he is indeed there— or unremarkable underwater photographs from an acquaintances’ vacation on Instagram may set the Pink Men in that same setting— adding to the ubiquitous nature of their exploits. “In my paintings, time and space are disjointed and relationships are tentative, as the Pink Men live in their own world only through the images of ours, they are at once a peculiar stranger, but also, they are us. Like an animator whose work passes through the Uncanny Valley between hyper-realism and horror, I am placing the Pink Men in contexts that provoke both anxiety and laughter in equal measures.”

As these uncertain narratives unfold, viewers are left unsure who or what to trust, and unsure who their protagonist is. Indeed, humor tempers the discomfort these suspicious subjects might provoke, and creates levity as viewers try to make connections between the familiar landscapes of their own lived experiences, the historic references that surround them online and in the world, and the outlandish suggestions of greater narratives that unfold in fantastical realms. The Pink Man paintings are built from, and so also reflect, the often incoherent, collective noise of our hyper-culture, as well as suggest a weirder world that may lie just behind it.

Press Release: Sacred Echoes

Natalia Wróbel
June 8 - July 19, 2020
Online Exclusive

Available Artwork: https://bit.ly/2MDM2Td
Musical inspiration: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/63xsBURqAAjPtXY2GSXY6t?si=3XLU_zbIRQeD9zDfZTn20w

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to present Sacred Echoes, a solo exhibition of paintings by Natalia Wróbel. This exhibition draws from a range of series created by Wróbel since 2017, allowing for a more holistic look into the artist’s practice, which incorporates mindfulness practices of deep listening and moving meditation that translate visually into her paintings. Much like the way we absorb the compositional elements of music, Wróbel’s paintings offer a synergistic melody when the details come together as a whole. Colors melt seamlessly to harmonize on the canvas, as brushstrokes crescendo across her compositions. Wrobel’s studio research also revolves around a fascination with our sub-molecular reality. She creates paintings that seem to be coming together and breaking apart all at once, mirroring the continual hum of atoms at a sub-molecular level. Her paintings “tap into the foundational rhythm making up our physical reality.”

This collection of works, Wróbel describes, “are largely inspired by the connection between sound and sight. Many pieces were painted by transmuting the sensations and interpretations of certain compositions into the visual field of a painted image. In this way, the paintings offer a visual translation of the immaterial realm of sound and what exists beyond our physical reality." The paintings reference many contemporary composers including Arvo Pärt, Phillip Glass, and Hania Rani among others, as well as the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, a longtime favorite of the artist.

PAINTINGS:

Oil paint on canvas, 60 x 60 in.

Metamorphosis II, 2019

Metamorphosis II is inspired by Phillip Glass' powerful composition, Metamorphosis II, which Wrobél listened to throughout the painting process. The mark-making is loose, raw and energetic, which reflects the artist’s authentic, natural response to Glass' resonating composition and the reflection on the idea of the “mirage of reality and the sacred sublayer embedded within and around us.”  

Oil paint on canvas, 60 x 48 in.

On the Edge of the Known, 2019

On the Edge of the Known contains a sweeping, joyful abandon in the paint strokes, and is inspired by the idea of the bounty of the natural world, particularly the ocean. For Natalia Wróbel, painting is a form of moving meditation and prayer. This painting is a prime example of the painting process as an act of mindfulness, gratitude, and awe at what exists within and beyond the physical world around us. “I listened to the album ‘Inner Oceans’ by contemporary composer Karl Prybyloski while painting this piece and found a deep connection between his composition entitled “Mermaids” and the movement and energy of this painting.”

Oil paint on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

Heaven is a State of Mind, 2019

Heaven is a State of Mind is inspired by “an illuminating conversation about being present where you are, and about what spiritually means in this day and age. The color palette and iconography has a two-fold inspiration- partly inspired by a Phoneacian glass vase we were gifted from the national museum in Beirut, and also peripherally by the Sea Castle in Sidon, an ancient city in Lebanon. The image of the ancient structure flanking the azure blue of the Mediterranean embedded itself deeply in my subconscious,” Wróbel writes. During the painting process, the artist listened to a set of six songs by two contemporary female Polish composers, Hania Rani and Dobrawa Chocer. Their rendition of ‘Nie Pokonasz Milosci’ resonated particularly strongly during the final days of painting this piece and encouraged the abandonment of a sense of time, space and physical awareness.

Oil paint on canvas, 24 x 30 in.

Bloem II, 2018

Bloem II was painted in Amsterdam and was the last piece Wróbel created in her Dutch studio before moving back to the US. During her time in Amsterdam, Wrobel experimented with translating the feeling, energy and movement of sound onto canvas. On her bike rides to the studio, Wrobel would listen to Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s hauntingly beautiful and minimalist composition, ‘Spiegel im Spiegel,’ and “watch the park-goers, the trees in different stages of bloom, and would soak in the feeling of biking freely on the wide straight promenade on the west side of the park, my head tipped back to the sky, mesmerized by the tree branch canopy above me.” “Bloem,” which translates to 'flower' in Dutch, is an homage to the beautiful botanicals throughout Amsterdam. Wrobel notes that “the movement from one form to the next in this painting is reminiscent of the subliminal feeling of the city itself- everything fitting together and flowing in a harmonious, symbiotic relationship.”

Acrylic, charcoal and sepia chalk pastel on canvas, 72 x 60 in.

Wake II, 2019

Wake II  [Musical component: ‘Eden,’ ‘Esja,’ and ‘Sun’ by Hania Rani] is about finding peace and solace in movement and transit. “This idea of movement and stasis has been a recurring theme of my work for the past decade. I am fascinated by the potential to create an image that appears to be at once coming together and breaking apart, especially how this optical illusion can convince your eye that a still image is moving. If you narrow down to the molecular level, everything is in fact moving, vibrating. This painting taps into the foundational rhythm making up our physical reality, inspired by the idea of what it might feel like to be born, of cells clicking together and about inevitable cycles of life.”

 

Oil paint on canvas, 24 x 36 in.

Unfold into Being, 2019

This piece is inspired by the following Rilke poem from his 'Book of Hours':

“I'm too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy.
I'm too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing---
just as it is.

 I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones---
or alone.

 I want to mirror your immensity.
I want to never be too weak or too old
to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

 I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight."

Oil paint on canvas, 24 x 36 in.

Days we do not know yet (Dni ktorych nie znamy), 2019

Days we do not know yet (Dni ktorych nie znamy) is inspired by Polish poetry-rock from the 1960s and 70s. Though most of these songs are characterized by a lilting and upbeat melody, they also have a hidden political undertone. This painting is titled after a 1970 song by Polish singer/songwriter, Marek Grechuta. The lyrics impress the importance of living and working towards a better future in the face of oppression. Given Natalia Wróbel’s family’s personal history resisting oppressive foreign regimes in Poland throughout the 20th century, this song taps into her genetic memory. The piece suggests a dreamscape that can be reached through resilience, hope, and perseverance, and celebrates resisting the status quo, especially in that face of injustice.

Oil paint and oil stick on linen, 59 x 39.4 in.

Looking with Eyes Closed, 2017

Looking with Eyes Closed was created at the beginning of Wróbel’s residency in Berlin during the fall of 2017. “I was interested in superimposing architectural forms, references to cell structures and botanical structures on top of one another to play with perception of space. The use of the thick white oil paint stick both breaks up the picture plane and creates a cohesive network throughout the composition. My later paintings in Berlin were focused on optical illusions using architectural and geometric tools, and this is a precursor to that series exploration. The colors are bright and along the positive spectrum akin to my 'Portal to Kairos' series, which was a series where I was inspired by images of neural networks of the brain during meditation, and the idea of "whole brain connectivity" where information flows freely, and by botanical structures- this painting is the natural evolution of that body of work.”

 

Oil paint on linen, 20 x 24 in.

Dream Weaver III, 2018

Dream Weaver III [Musical component: Cream by Claptone] was painted in Amsterdam in Spring 2018 to electronic dance music. “While living in Amsterdam, I focused on the ability to connect sounds to color and form. I see color when I listen to music, and painted the vibrant energy of the music. The painting has a fluid compositional structure but contains a subtle geometric scaffolding embedded throughout the composition that allows the fluid curvilinear movement of the painting to settle. Painting for me is a visual manifestation of what I believe exists beyond our physical senses- in this case, I believe there is a 'sacred scaffolding' that connects everything and everyone- this piece is a vibrant illustration of this idea.”

Oil paint on canvasl, 60 x 36 in.

Embody Me, 2019

Embody Me [Musical component: ‘Divenire’ and ‘Primavera’ by Ludovico Einaudi] is inspired by the following Rilke poem, leading Natalia to title the piece “Embody me.” In the final stages of the painting, Wrobel listened to Italian contemporary composer Ludovico Einaudi, and “felt a deep peace and sense that the process of painting is parallel to healing and transformation, and in this sense, a sacred activity.” This painting has a pronounced articulation of the "sacred scaffolding" that has interested the artist for years, where rectilinear marks complement fluid and gestural paint handling, so the energetic movement in the composition has a place to rest and there is a balance between this duality of chaos and calm, a metaphor for an inherent truth of life. 

‘Go to the Limits of Your Longing,’ by Rainer Maria Rilke (from his Book of Hours, I 59)

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.