Miriam Cabessa | an•thro•pom•e•try
November 17 – December 22, 2015 - Gramercy Park - New York, NY
Opening Reception: Tuesday, November 17
Jenn Singer Gallery proudly presents an•thro•pom•e•try, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Brooklyn-based Moroccan Israeli artist Miriam Cabessa. Since representing Israel at the Venice Biennial in 1997, Cabessa has gained international recognition with work held in prestigious private and public collections including The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Haifa Museum of Modern Art; and The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
Noted collector, curator and philanthropist Tim Nye’s text on the exhibition offers perfect insight into Cabessa’s sensual, expressionist paintings: “I love the use of the term ‘anthropometry’ to describe the work of Miriam Cabessa. She is in good company with ‘Anthropometry Paintings’ as the description Yves Klein used for his trademark blue body prints of women. The cool scientific implication is offset by the incongruous combination of ‘poetry’ and ‘anthropology’”.
In creating her newest body of work, Cabessa used personal items – love letters, her favorite books, diary entries, etc. - coated in paint and then pressed onto panel or canvas. The imprints these emotionally meaningful objects leave behind are interestingly suggestive, sometimes erotic and sometimes reminiscent of scientific slides – alive with texture and patterns. Regardless of how they reveal themselves, the secrets of the artist are buried under layers of paint, turning fingerprints of nostalgia into abstract imagery.
Nye describes the new collection as “‘Memory Paintings”, writing that "...the imprint is more fossil than print, as she uses objects that should only reveal superficial contours. The words— the pulsing blood —through the mystical conjuring of the artist are also revealed… The halo of the image vibrates like a Rothko; but it’s as if her attempts to anchor the object on canvas are futile, and the memory does not want to adhere, but floats from the surface and retreats to the depths of the artist’s’ private interior”.