PR first met painter Angelina Gualdoni in DUMBO a couple of years ago after she gave a talk about her work as a recent NYFA Painting Fellow. Since then, there has been a shift in her work from investigations of forgotten suburban utopian decay to a more direct engagement with painting without losing her sense of place or feeling. We arrived to find her Bushwick studio packed with new canvases, collage and drawings.

In her earlier work, Gualdoni used a stain or large color field more as the preliminary groundwork for paintings that eventually became scenes of architectural structures or abandoned shopping malls. The latest paintings are less about showing the viewer actual places that trigger an emotional response and more about capturing a moment that offers a glimpse of open-ended familiarity.

Untitled, 2009
oil and acrylic on canvas, 24” x 30”

Mise En Scene, 2009
oil and acrylic on canvas, 24” x 20”

This more intuitive and unpredictable approach of improvisation is what separates these paintings from her previous bodies of work. It's a natural shift that is playful and exciting because of it's uncertainty, but she still manages to sneak in moments of objects through loose, ghostly shapes and details.

The small works on paper arranged in loose grids on the wall read as nice punctuation marks of exploration and discovery. Using photos, hard-edge collage, and discarded scraps of painted surfaces really activates the space amongst the larger, fluid canvases.

collage assortment

Cast Over, 2010
oil and acrylic on canvas, 36” x 48”

paintings in progress

works on paper




In her own words:

"While the reading of color field painting being nudged into representational territory would echo this “distance” that the poet Ann Lauterbach talks about in her reading of As Is, I am much less interested in this historical polemic, than I am the conditions and challenges that this type of painting necessitates: working with in a loosely controlled situation, where outcomes can often surprise, frustrate and delight, and where happenstance forces me to reconsider what may be the object of my focus."

Untitled, 2010
acrylic and dye on canvas, 38” x 36”

drawing/writing

tools/swatches

the artist in her studio

Untitled, 2010
acrylic and dye on canvas, 51” x 48”

In addition to her studio practice, Angelina is one of the founding members of Regina Rex, an artist-run curatorial project space in Bushwick.

Past exhibitions include: It is Happening Again, (solo) Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; Gimme Shelter, Mixed Greens, NYC; Future Tense: Reshaping the Landscape, curated by Dede Young, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY.

She is currently showing as the debut solo exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery, through Nov. 6.

-Vince Contarino, 11.02.10