AMY FELDMAN

HEART ARTS

23 SEPTEMBER – 29 OCTOBER 2023

REVIEWED BY
TWO COATS OF PAINT
29 SEPTEMBER 2023

SVENSKA

Anna Bohman Gallery is pleased to present HEART ARTS, an exhibition with the New York-based American painter Amy Feldman. The exhibition, her fourth at the gallery, consists of a series of new works where the artist continues to explore the concept of duality in all its forms, all within the range of her grey-scale signature.

Feldman’s practice both stems from and dynamically reforms the tradition of abstract painting. The elements of form in her works are visual manifestations of physical and psychological experiences, connecting the human emotion with the rationality of the actual physical painting. A bond forms through her work, where the artist enables a connection with the viewer. Feldman’s pictorial language oscillates in the dichotomy between control and impulse. She departs from sketches and studies, meticulously laying out the ground rules. However, the transformation of these preparatory works into often large-scale canvases is more fluid and the execution of the mark is a quick definite. Feldman never goes back to edit or rework. So even if the process of applying the paint on the canvas appears to be a precise action, the artist allows for the uncontrollable to present itself. Hence, the process becomes a metaphor for life itself; the preparation is only possible to a certain degree.

Using the body as a reference for many of the figurations and forms, there is an abstraction and conceptualism in Feldman’s decision to envision only a part of it or its movements. A distilled detail is often enough to convey a more complex concept, and Feldman’s work thus becomes visual manifestations of the semantics of abstraction.

Feldman builds her paintings in many layers. In recent years, she has incorporated printed backgrounds by preparing the canvas with silkscreen ink. The printed background has shown the enlarged grid of an untreated canvas, creating an optical illusion of depth. In this new body of works, Feldman has introduced more layers of prints, presenting scribbles, brushstrokes, fingermarks, and lines. Despite the differences in painting versus printing, the two practices operate concurrently to create a vibrant dynamism. The duality of the processes draws attention to the question of truth and authenticity.

The fingermark appears as a new element in both printed and painted form. The fingerprint, as the earliest form of identification or signature, speaks of inimitability. By working with paint as well as print, using the most unique of pressure marks as a motif, Feldman relates to the philosophical subject of the real. With an elegant reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Feldman’s fingerprints become a visual demonstration of the interpretation of reality and reality itself.