Monster Bathers, Blue Scribble and Others

Beginning November 16th, Oko is pleased to present Ella Kruglyanskaya: Monster Bathers, Blue Scribble and Others, a group of paintings and drawings that focus on the New York-based artist's signature treatment of the female figure. Showcasing the various formal turns that typify Kruglyanskaya's practice, the works on view will include intimately scaled paintings on board, densely worked drawings on paper, and oversized canvases executed in media ranging from graphite and oil paint, to oil bar and egg tempera. Monster Bathers, Blue Scribble and Others reveals Kruglyanskaya's varied compositional strategies. Her work encompasses both closely cropped imagery and loose, almost deliberately unfinished figuration; her varied formats and techniques define the distinctive artistic territory she has carved out for her practice in recent years. Though images of women dominate Kruglyanskaya's canvases, there is often the suggestion of a masculine presence in the voyeuristic nature of the artist's narratives. Men come to us not as explicit figures, but as a series of signifiers that include monstrous faces adorning clothing, disembodied mustaches, and foreboding shadows. Though the women portrayed are brash and active, they often convey psychological lapses. Their pictorial status is rendered unstable as they alternately burst from and are subsumed by the surfaces of Kruglyanskaya's paintings. The exhibition has the feel of a bygone era, bringing to mind such popular paraphernalia and fashions as pre-war pinups; comic strips; old cinema posters of starlets; vintage design; and patterned novelty fabrics. The abundance of such source material suggested by her paintings attests to the rich visual vocabulary that is condensed into her ingenious figurative approach. Monster Bathers, Blue Scribble and Others suggests that Kruglyanskaya is highly attuned to traditional painterly preoccupations - among these are genre tableaux, illusionistic devices, and the monumental figure - while she also privileges the graphic tendencies of the historical avant-garde. The artist draws her influences from more obscure artistic figures like Jean Hélion, and echoes the sardonic undercurrents found in the biting socio-political observations of Neue Sachlichkeit artists Otto Dix and Max Beckman. On the occasion of Ella Kruglyanskaya's exhibition, Oko will be organizing a panel discussion on the subject of figuration with a group of contemporary artists. Date and location will be announced shortly. About the Artist Ella Kruglyanskaya (b. 1978 in Riga, Latvia), currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She obtained a BFA from Cooper Union, New York, and an MFA in painting from Yale University, New Haven, in 2006. Kruglyanskaya has shown in numerous exhibitions, including recent solo presentations held at White Columns (2011), Salon 94 (2011), Gavin Brown Enterprise (2012), and Kendall Koppe Gallery, Glasgow (2013). An upcoming residency and solo exhibition at Studio Voltaire, London, as well as a publication are forthcoming in 2014. About Oko Located in an East Village storefront, Oko (oko is the Russian-Polish word for 'eye') is a project by Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, curated by Alison Gingeras and conceived as a venue for curatorial experimentation. Deliberately modest in scale, this ground floor venue in a typical tenement building on East Tenth Street draws its inspiration from the iconoclastic spirit of the neighborhood and the district's history as an incubator for innumerable cultural breakthroughs. Oko is located on 220 E 10th Street, New York, NY. It is open to the public Thursday through Saturday, from 12-6PM and by appointment. For press inquiries please contact Andrea Schwan: info@andreaschwan.com +1 917 371 5023 For all other inquiries please contact Tamar Margalit: tamar@okooko.org +1 212 460 5321

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