Elizabeth in Her Sun Hat , 2019
NICOLE WITTENBERG (b. 1979, New York) currently living and working in New York, finds strong images that she works and re-works, discovering fresh ways to rebuild the image through the process of painting – varying her marks, thicknesses and colours. Through her unique method, Wittenberg is able to easily make connections to canonical works by way of building and reducing the image, in terms of colour, scale and form. Thus, her work is in the perfectly calibrated balance between realism and the abstract form. Her version of realism translates the visible world into a system of interpretive marks wherein one has a point of view, decides what is important and what to leave out. The pastel drawings were completed while Wittenberg was visiting islands in the Bahamas and Greece. The quality of her painting is extremely open; forms are not contained, their energy spreads outward, the effect of which is to direct our attention to the sun, to the temperature and time of the day.
Selected recent solo exhibitions include Tennis Elbow, Journal Gallery, NYC (2020); Powder Your Face with Sunshine, Ross + Kramer, East Hampton, NY (2021); Sunday Kind of Love, Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami Florida (2020) and Them, There, Eyes, Yours Mine Ours Gallery, NYC (2018). Among her selected group exhibitions are the Unnatural Nature: Post-pop Landscapes, Acquavella Gallery, NYC (2022); Shrubs, Night Gallery, LA (2022); Read Desert, curated by John Garcia, Rockaway Artists Alliance, NYC (2021); The Hawt Show II, Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Antina, Italy (2020) and Temple of Love, curated by Faye Wei Wei, Cob Gallery, London (2019).
PUBLIC & PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
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Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
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Aishti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon
- Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA
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The Albertina, Vienna, Austria