 Identical/Variation (red, blue, green, black) no. 2, 2004 Oil and encaustic on panel, 36 x 36 inches Amy Ellingson Semper Augustus Charles Cowles Gallery is pleased to present Amy Ellingson's first New York solo exhibition. Using encaustic and oil paint, Ellingson creates works of incredible subtlety and elegance. Combining arrangements designed on her computer with laborious hand painting, Ellingson paints these patterns in layers which are then overlaid with encaustic to meld the layers into a unified composition. Ellingson writes, "the interaction of simple forms sometimes suggests other forms; thus, the intersection of perpendicular lines ultimately becomes a more efficient curve. The resulting oblong is a closed, autonomous entity - part of a larger system, but now distinct within the grid. I capture ephemeral, computer-generated images, ghostlike diagrams of mathematical relationships, maps of evanescent data streams. From them, I create objects that physically assert themselves through slow accretion, establishing the undeniable materiality and permanence of encaustic, the most ancient and durable of painting mediums". Many of the paintings in this exhibition are conceived as groups with the individual layers repeated in alternate configurations, giving them a familial resemblance, while "genetically" identical. Ellingson writes, "distinctions between related paintings address fundamental issues of digression versus conformity, divergence versus convergence, and individuality versus community". She likens this body of work to "the celebrated, ill-fated tulip at the heart of 17th century Dutch Tulipomania, Semper Augustus, whose abnormal beauty was a "break", or mutation, caused by a virus". Amy Ellingson's work is included in "Neo Mod: Recent Northern California Abstraction" on view at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento through January 30, 2005. Her work is also represented in the collection of the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. Exhibition: December 9, 2004 - January 15, 2005 Gallery hours: Tue - Sat 10 am - 6 pm Charles Cowles Gallery 537 West 24th Street New York, NY 10011 Telephone +1 212 741-8999 Fax +1 212 741-6222 Email info@cowlesgallery.com www.cowlesgallery.com |
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