A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Liberty, an exhibition of new works by Regina Granne. This new body of work encompasses a variety of mediums including large-scale landscape paintings and works on paper.

In past work, Granne focused on the political concepts and realities of war. Previous exhibitions such as Planes (2011) and Shadowed World, Shattered World (2007) used bold colors and radical perspectives to depict the horrors of war. Liberty is a contemplation of the present in the wake of 9/11. This new work is concerned with the continued disappearance of personal and public liberties and the current political climate of separation and bias that exists in the United States.

The works featured in Liberty began with small onsite colored pencil and graphite drawings of the Statue of Liberty from New York City’s west side waterfront. The Statue of Liberty is framed by the shifting New York sky with its billowing clouds and placid waters, a landscape masterfully achieved with subtle lines and tender blends of brown, blue, green, pink, and orange. In almost all of the work Liberty is diminished, overwhelmed by the sky. Like the images in past work, Granne does not editorialize and we are left to decide what this might mean.

It is a landscape that is familiar to us, and yet as it comes to us from the perspective of the artist, Liberty reflects ideas of stillness. Even as our liberties seem in danger or disappearing, like our access to nature and even the sky, in this highly urbanized and chaotic world Granne gives to us a kind of meditation, both philosophical and metaphysical. The Statue of Liberty itself simultaneously represents an overused icon and a diminishing concept. These works offer a means of viewing such images and enable reflection of our world, our nation, our politics, our person, our perspective, and our relationship to all.

Regina Granne lives and works in New York City. She received a BFA and an MFA from Yale University and has taught graduate painting and drawing at Parsons School of Design in New York City and the Milton Avery Graduate Program in the Arts at Bard College in Annandale, New York. In 2009, Increments: Drawing 1970-1995, a limited-edition retrospective collection of drawings was published by the Crumpled Press in conjunction an exhibition of the same name at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Granne’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad, and has been reviewed by the Boston Globe, The New York Times, Art News, and The Chronicle among others. Granne is represented by A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. http://www.reginagranne.com

A.I.R. Gallery is located at 111 Front Street, #228, in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. Gallery hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 11 – 6 pm. For directions please see www.airgallery.org. For additional information, please contact Julie Lohnes at A.I.R. Gallery at 212-255-6651 or jlohnes@airgallery.org.