 Crashing the Canyon, 2003 oil on canvas, 51" X 75" Olive Ayhens Bridges In celebration of environments, both personal and immediate and those invented from her mind and experiences, Olive Ayhens reflects a reality wherein the actual intermingles with creatively imaginative innovations. Ayhens works in connected series of paintings. In her last show, "The Aesthetics of Pollution", reviewed in Art in America issue 5, 2002, at the Gary Tatintsian Gallery (Feb. 2002) she positioned the urban (New York Cityscapes) in juxtaposition to extremes of nature, a kind of apocalyptic poetry. It also included work inspired from her residency at the World Trade Center, which for her was like studying New York under a microscope – the city becoming an evolving phenomenon, which weaves its intricacy for organic purposes of its own. Her new group of paintings are involved with volcanic imagery and bridge structures, featuring the kind of geysers found in caldrons, as in Yellowstone National Park, manifesting dazzling, beautiful color but composed of deadly acids. Color is a love for Ayhens; a language used with power, sometimes harshly and at other times to create a lyrical beauty. The bridges contain dimensional layers of luminosity, surrounded by varied light sources and different times of day, which evokes a mystery of ambiguous shapes. Her work is filled with lush visual surprise; scale is a passion for the thrill of absurdity. The most recent painting, "Crashing the Canyon", plays off a deep canyon, which is bridged by the cars from an urban landscape and includes a Bristlecone Pine (oldest living thing on planet earth). Olive Ayhens incorporates metaphors on such themes and ideas as lust, love, fragility, and journeys end. These themes take on such forms as trashy architecture in juxtaposition to important monuments, endangered plants and animals, and embracing nature. She is very concerned about the fragility of our planet and the possibility that humans have brought the sphere of life to the brink of disaster. April 11th - June 7th, 2003 Hours: Tue-Sat 10 am - 6 pm Gary Tatintsian Gallery 526 W. 26th Street, Suite #214 USA-New York, NY 10001 T: +212 633 01 10 F: +212 633 17 43 E-Mail info@tatintsian.com www.tatintsian.com |
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