Barbara Ellmann: So Here So There

April 7 - April 30, 2019 | Opening Reception: April 7, 2 PM - 4 PM

Barbara Ellmann's large grids of encaustic paintings explore the way that we process and catalogue our visual experience of space/place by using varying degrees of abstraction and kinetic juxtapositions of form, color, and pattern to suggest fleeting impressions, connections, and memories.

Artist Statement:

"My series of large grids of encaustic paintings on 24 inch square wooden panels catalogue my process of responding to place and making sense of space. Primarily abstract, the paintings chronicle my lived experience as a New Yorker and a world traveller confronting an overabundance of visual stimulation. The installations I create are site specific and unfixed, so that individual paintings may appear and reappear in entirely different groupings. The grids in this exhibition will be composed of some of my most recent work as well as parts of older installations, allowing for unique interactions among visual records of places I've inhabited in the near and distant past.

Though the subject matter of these paintings relates directly to my personal experience, when brought into conversation with one another in the gallery the grids present opportunities for visitors to bring their own associations to the abstracted imagery. Viewers are invited to construct their own meaning by navigating a visual pathway from panel to panel—following the juxtapositions of color, shape, and composition and using their own lived experiences and sense of space as a guide."

Bio:

Barbara Ellmann was born in Michigan and lives in New York, where she works as an educator at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum. She has been selected for residencies at Yaddo, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, and Haslla Art World museum in Gangneung, South Korea. She has also produced public works for the Van Siclen Avenue subway station in Brooklyn, a bus shelter in Summit, NJ, and The Cambria Heights Branch Library in Queens. Ellmann's work is in numerous corporate and private collections including those of Peter Norton; Peter J. Sharp Foundation; Leonard Nimoy; Four Seasons Hotel and Resort; Marrakech; Morocco; Haslla Art World Museum, Gangneung-Si, So Korea; and the United States Embassy in Kampala, Uganda. Her travelling exhibition AN OPEN BOOK was most recently shown in Palm Desert, CA in 2016.