Messenger

Also on view in The Skirt: Rachel Klinghoffer "Suspended in My Masquerade" Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present Messenger, a two person exhibition of paintings by Theresa Bloise and George Boorujy, curated by co-director Nickola Pottinger. George Boorujy’s work explores our relationship to the environment and wildlife. Whilst Theresa Bloise paintings depict massive geological landscapes that are meta physical and defiant of the laws of physics. Though the artists have not collaborated before, their work has been engaged in a long conversation, and so birthed the ethos of Messenger. The elephant in the room is the reference to the impending environmental crisis which is shifting more rapidly than it ever has in human history. The wildlife and landscape depicted in this exhibition aims to raise awareness of the climate injustice that has continued to threaten us and our planet. Bloise’s large scale painting installation has a commanding presence. Extremely captivating and magnetic with its infinite blue, it reigns supreme in the gallery space akin to an apocalyptic figure. Towering high above the surrounding paintings, we find Boorujy’s painted portraits of species frozen and yet motion rendered with an insurmountable level of care and detail. Each of the creatures’ eyes are protuberant and magnetic as they are individually engaged in their own time capsule. The scale of the works are larger than life telling life stories. There is an intrinsic value in representing these species and landscapes because they will never be able to come back, and their decline is attributed to our global economic system. Theresa Bloise (born in Boston) received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied for a year in Rome as part of RISD’s European Honors Program. She recently completed a large scale immersive painting installation for the Wassaic Project’s “Vagabond Time Killers” exhibition. Her work has also been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Smack Mellon, Kentler International Drawing Space, PS122 Gallery and Governors Island. She has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Lower East Side Printshop, the Vermont Studio Center, the Wassaic Project, and the Bronx Museum. In 2010 she received a New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship. George Boorujy is an artist exploring our relationship to the environment, especially our interaction with and perception of wildlife. He has exhibited widely nationally and internationally and is represented by P.P.O.W. gallery in New York. He has had solo shows at P.P.O.W. gallery, the Baker Museum in Naples, Florida, and the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art. He is a member of the fine arts faculty at the School of Visual Arts. He has created work for the Wildlife Conservation Society, the New York Parks Department, the Audubon Mural Project, the Labrea Tar Pits, and for over a decade illustrated the Birdwatch column for the Guardian UK. A recipient of a NYFA grant in painting and a fellowship at the Smack Mellon residency, George Boorujy is a graduate of the University of Miami and the School of Visual Arts. Courtesy of the artist, and P.P.O.W, New York. Nickola Pottinger was born in Jamaica in the West Indies, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2008. She is a co-director of the artist run space, Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn. Her work has been written up in Contemporary Art Daily, Hyper Allergic, and the Epoch Times. Nickola has had a solo exhibition at Parker Gallery in Los Angeles, in Winter 2019. Her work has been shown in group shows at St. Charles Project in Baltimore, Mild Climate in Tennessee, Spring Break, Far X Wide, Deli Gallery and Ortega y Gasset Projects in New York. She was nominated twice for the Rema Hortmann Emerging Artist Grant in 2019 and 2018.