BELLWETHER is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Laura Newman.
Laura Newman's spare, color-saturated paintings describe theatricalized spaces in which abstraction and representation are fused. Geometric figures are made multivalent--a road in perspective is not only a triangle but also the fulcrum of a seesaw formed by the horizon. Space is warped; color is intense and flat; lines are active and almost three-dimensional. The scenes are reduced to sets, pressed against the picture plane, but at the same time imply vast, frictionless landscape spaces. The paintings bring together geometric abstraction and stage set illusionism.
In some works, spiderwebs of paint, suggesting lightning storms or cracked glass, traverse pastel fields of color. In these and other pieces, Newman opens color field flatness and compositional rigor to new narrative and spatial readings. Architectural in scale, the paintings invite and resist the viewer simultaneously.
Newman's recent paintings will be the subject of an article by Judith Linhares, to be published in the Spring 2002 issue of Bomb magazine. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Tenri Gallery and Victoria Munroe Gallery in New York, and at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie last year. Her paintings have appeared in group shows at the New Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth Harris Gallery and Exit Art among others.
Newman has been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She currently teaches at Vassar College.
BELLWETHER is an artist-run space in support of emerging artists.
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