A Digital Pastoral
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce A Digital Pastoral, an exhibition of recent paintings by 2021-22 A.I.R. Fellow Michele Abramowitz. This is Abramowitz’s first solo exhibition in New York City.
Positioned within the art historical tradition of pastoral landscape painting, A Digital Pastoral reimagines this genre from the perspective of a far-future, fully-digital painter. Abramowitz’s paintings in the exhibition evoke both physical space and computer space: they look as if a sentient Mac screensaver read China Mieville and listened to Radiohead. The textured weave of the canvas transitions into smooth, black gesso shapes through the appearance of cast shadows, created by embedded black dust from sanding. Her painted CGI-like gradients abut glossy, reflective surfaces. She floats waxy, opaque paint over diffuse washes of color. Her shapes themselves are clean and defined, but just beyond recognition, like a visual tip-of-the-tongue or a future still coming into form.
Artists
Michele Abramowitz
Brooklyn-based painter Michele Abramowitz (b. 1984, CA) works in oil on polyester canvas. She uses gessoed and un-gessoed surfaces to explore the material and spatial effects of paint in abstract compositions. Her paintings often reference themes of the future-as-history, psychology, and confrontation. She graduated from the Milton-Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard (MFA, Painting, 2017), Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, Painting, 2010), and Pomona College (BA, Neuroscience, 2006).
About A.I.R. Gallery
A.I.R. Gallery is an artist-run non-profit arts organization and exhibition space founded in 1972. A.I.R. supports the open exchange of ideas and risk-taking by women and non-binary artists in order to provide support and visibility. A self-directed governing body, the organization is an alternative to mainstream institutions and thrives on the network of active participants.