Nicole Wittenberg – The Yellow Kiss
September 11 – October 16, 2016
Opening reception: September 11, 6 – 8 PM
Nicole Wittenberg, The Yellow Kiss, 2016, oil on canvas, 72 by 120 inches
Press Release
Installation Images
2016 Wittenberg Two Coats of Paint
2016 Wittenberg ArtDaily
2016 Wittenberg Artspace
2016 Wittenberg Bedford + Bowery
2016 Wittenberg Vogue
yours mine & ours is pleased to announce its inaugural project, The Yellow Kiss, a comprehensive view of a single painting by Nicole Wittenberg.
The Yellow Kiss presents an investigation into the medium of paint and a series of drawings that construct a singular gesture. Through a process of constructed studies, the painting is built from the artifacts of a single video still. What results is an image that has been mined and distilled, and recreated, not from imitation but from imagination. The Yellow Kiss recreates Wittenberg’s studio process in the gallery with one large-scale painting on the main level and a group of works on paper in the lower gallery.
Wittenberg uses amateur pornography as source imagery by way of Giotto’s Meeting at the Golden Gate. Seeing delicacy and humor in the intimate flashes, she maintains equal interest in painted and cinematic sources.
Wittenberg’s practice commences, in this instance, with a loose watercolor painting on paper, then oil and acrylic, collapsing into a line drawing, and then, finally, monotype printing. Her process, at its core, is open, allowing for the image to change over time and develop. Through this method, Wittenberg is able to easily make connections to canonical works by way of building and reducing the image, in terms of color, scale and form. The large painting becomes a snapshot from a greater, longer trajectory.
Akin to watching an athlete, the final painting is quickly executed, but so well practiced that it hums with the ease of knowing.
Nicole Wittenberg lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions include The Female Gaze, Part Two, Cheim & Read, New York, NY; Nice Weather Skarstedt Gallery, New York, NY; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. She was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters John Koch award for best young figurative painter in 2012. Her work is included in the Aishti Foundation, Beirut; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. Wittenberg received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003.