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Nicole Wittenberg
Lily
2 (Berkeley, December 19, 2010) , 2010
oil on
canvas
18” x 24"
Courtesy of Freight + Volume, New
York
NICOLE
WITTENBERG
THE
MALINGERERS
May 24th
- June 30th, 2012
In
the video room: Noah Klersfeld’s
Payroll and I Can’t Get You Out of My
Head
In an
age of sound bites sandwiched by social media excess and
information overload, Nicole Wittenberg's
paintings are a refreshing antidote. Distilled down to their
essentials, Wittenberg's work - whether her “Skype” portraits,
her architectural interiors, or her landscapes – offers up a
complicated contemporary universe reduced to a skeletal
framework. Its elegant brevity is not dissimilar to symphonic
variations on a theme: one frame, presented in a multitude of
ways, a sure and pared-down message conveyed as directly and
with as much brevity as possible.
Wittenberg’s subject reflects her fascination with,
and personal experience of bohemia and high society. In works
such as Countess (London on March 19th, 2011) , we
are confronted by a decadent mask of aristocracy, gone awry -
at once chilling and certainly enigmatic. Her version, as it
were, of the classic Bunuel film The Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie resonates well with viewers familiar with
pulped news coverage of Lady Di’s final days; royalty obscured
by the paparazzi’s repetitive and blinding flash. Ironic for a
figurative painter there is a kind of facelessness here, a
distinct remove and distancing from emotion which Wittenberg
expertly captures; we cannot read the inner turmoil of her
subjects, we can only conjecture.
Like
a seasoned reporter, Wittenberg remains impassive and hidden
behind her fluid brushwork as she explores a jaundiced
generation. In works like Jean Eric 2, for example,
two couples are intertwined in spooned but frozen embrace; the
composition seems coolly choreographed. There is a Great
Gatsby-like sensibility to many of her tableaus, in particular
her ocean liner staterooms and the emptiness in works such as
Wallpaper Co-pilot. She appears to say: The party is
over, it’s 4 am, the guests have gone home and/or passed
out…but of course we know the party is never over, coffee will
be served shortly as well as the inevitable Bloody Marys and
Mimosas, and soon the moveable feast will pick up and resume
where it left off. Yet that still moment, that space in
between movement, is what characterizes Wittenberg’s best
work.
These
are deft, spry, stylish paintings, composing a narrative
unusual for an artist of her age - stories brimming with
intelligence and wit. Having recovered from a debilitating
spinal accident early on in life, the artist has emerged with
a voice and presence at once self-assured and sharply
insightful into human behavior.
Nicole Wittenberg was born in San Francisco in
1979. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art
Institute and held her first solo exhibition at San
Francisco’s Masterworks Gallery in 2003. She is represented in
the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
Mass. and Colby College Museum of Art, Bowdoin College Museum
of Art, the Farnsworth Museum of Art, and the Portland Museum
of Art, Maine. Recently she was awarded the American Academy
of Arts and Letters coveted John Koch award for best young
figurative painter. The award winners were chosen from a group
of 38 artists who had been invited to participate in the
Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, which opened on March
8, 2012. The members of this year’s award selection committee
were: Lois Dodd, Wolf Kahn, Alex Katz, Malcolm Morley, Thomas
Nozkowski, Judy Pfaff, Dorothea Rockburne, Peter Saul, and
Joel Shapiro (Chairman). Wittenberg was also recently featured
in this year’s edition of the Brucennial. She lives and works
in New York City.
In
the video room this month we are pleased to present two works
by Noah Klersfeld, a documenter as well as sociologist of
behavior and the human condition. In Payroll and
I Cant Get You Out of My Head, an invisible director
oversees the daily ebb and flow of pedestrians, cars, buses,
subway riders and other city inhabitants, as they go about
their daily life. The work shares a repetitive gesture and
passion for pattern with a classic Eisenstein film, bringing
that magisterial omniscience into sharp contemporary focus by
using a voiceover (presumably the artist’s) “choreographing”
the movements of the subjects – only added after the fact.
Like Wittenberg, Klersfeld shares a talent and desire for
impartial observation and minimalism: utilizing a
frame-by-frame dissection of society, he reduces the
interaction and directions of the players to their
essentials.
Noah
Klersfeld is an artist and architect living and working in New
York City. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor
of Architecture degrees from the Rhode Island School of
Design, and attended Skowhegan in 2003. He has recently
exhibited work at The Islip Art Museum (New York), The Museum
of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Side Street Projects,
Pharmaka Gallery and The Cirrus Gallery (Los Angeles), The
Centre of Contemporary Culture (Barcelona) and The Kustera
Tilton Gallery and Invisible Dog Gallery (New York City). His
recent screenings include The SIMULTAN06 Video and Media Arts
Festival (Romania), The 2010 Performance Intermedia Festival
(Poland) and the 16th Annual Chicago Underground Film Festival
(Chicago). His piece Payroll has been on two national tours
and has received awards from the Center on Contemporary Arts
(Seattle WA) and the ASU Film and Video Festival (Tempe AZ).
Noah recently completed a video commission with collaborator
Patty Chang at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and
is working now on a permanent installation with the 92nd
street Y in downtown Manhattan. He is currently a fellow at
the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio
Center.
FREIGHT +
VOLUME
530 W.
24th Street
New
York, NY 10011
New
York
T: +1
212-989-8700
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