For Immediate Release
June 2012

Janice Nowinski
Recent Paintings

May 22 – June 16, 2012
Opening Reception: 6-8pm on Thursday, April 24, 2012

Janice Nowinski has never shied from confronting the past—her investigations have ranged from Old Master works to the tradition of painting the still life—but in her newest body of work she risks a more personal and somewhat confessional approach. A collection of snapshots from a summer idyll with a complicated friend instigates many of the works in the show. Shrouded, distant and ambivalent in meaning, the paintings bring a past event to the present for a closer and more reasoned examination. The paint handling is brusque and urgent. The subject is treated without nostalgia. The paintings refuse to be springboards into reminiscent longing and memorializing. In holding their ground, they transmit through paint all of the situation's ambiguity resolutely and in the present tense.

These personal images of a male body are juxtaposed with another series inspired by erotic picture postcards of ladies from the late 19th century. Nowinski's naked women are as provocative and confounding as any models who posed for Courbet or Manet. Stripped down and anonymous, Reclining Nude, 2012, carries on the tradition of painting the female body minus the veneer of the male painter's gaze. The paintings in this exhibition explore issues of the public and the private, the hidden and the exposed. They are personal, saucy and opaquely narrative.

Janice Nowinski received her MFA from Yale University. She has exhibited at the Bowery Gallery, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, The National Academy of Design and Lohin Geduld Gallery. An artist's reception will be held on Thursday, May 24 from 6 – 8 pm. The gallery is located at 530 W. 25th Street, 4th floor in Chelsea. Please preview her upcoming exhibition at www.janicenowinski.com

Gallery hours are 11 AM to 6 PM, Tuesday through Saturday. For more information contact the gallery at 646-230-6655 or info@bowerygallery.org

Back