 Jenny Dubnau: Self-portrait as Liar, 2005 oil on canvas, 46 x 32 inches Jenny Dubnau Recent Paintings Portia Munson Flower Mandalas In Jenny Dubnau's first solo exhibition at P·P·O·W Gallery, she will fill the walls of the gallery with her exquisitely painted self-portraits executed in a photo-real manner. In her previous work, Dubnau photographed friends and painted them in unidealized close-ups, exposing their flaws both physical and psychological. This time Dubnau turns the camera and the paintbrush on herself, and now the imagery is more extreme. In each painting Dubnau rocks her own mug shot format, by dressing herself in slapstick disguises or by inflicting herself to strong physical phenomena - like wearing a silly tinsel wig, or plastering herself with mud and leaves. In spite of the sitter's situation, Dubnau maintains a deadpan facial expression in every painting. The contrast between the cool expression and the absurd situation creates a moment of emotional vulnerability in each work. By tracing the line of realist portraiture from the Northern Renaissance, to Manet up through to Alice Neel, Dubnau attempts to create a portrait of what is really there, capturing a fleeting moment, a piece of time, a psychological state. Jenny Dubnau received her M.F.A. in painting from Yale in 1996, she has one person exhibits in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Boston and San Francisco. In 2004 Dubnau received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a Pollack Krasner Grant.  Portia Munson: Fritillaria, 2005 pigmented ink on rag paper, 44 x 66 inches Portia Munson is best known for her saturated pink plastic installation at the New Museum's "Bad Girls" show 1994. In her first exhibition at P·P·O·W Gallery entitled "Flower Mandalas", Munson creates compositions from her garden that contain the same immensity of detail and over-saturation of color. Munson collects these flowers at their peek, and lays them out on a flatbed scanner in concentric patterns close to the traditional symbol of the mandala used in both Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the universe. These flower arrays are captured in high-resolution scans and printed on watercolor paper with pigmented ink. Each print is a sharply detailed kaleidoscope that mixes the utopian beauty of the Garden of Eden with the dizzying visuals of a psychedelic acid trip. The flowers seem to burst out like that of a pyrotechnical climax. Portia Munson had her first one-person show at White Columns in 1993 and has exhibited in numerous group shows as well as had two solo shows at Yoshi Gallery since 1990. She lives and works in upstate New York. Exhibition: November 17 - December 23, 2005 Gallery hours: Tues-Sat 11 am - 6 pm P·P·O·W 555 W 25th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues) USA-New York, NY 10001 Telephone +1 212 647-1044 Fax +1 212 647-1043 Email info@ppowgallery.com www.ppowgallery.com |
 |