About the Artist
Shadowed World, Shattered World
A.I.R GALLERY

New York, NY
 
New York, N.Y., September 12,2007 – A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce, Shadowed World, Shattered World, a solo exhibition of new work by Regina Granne. The exhibition will be on view from October 9th to November 3rd, 2007. The opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 11th from 6 to 8 pm.

In “Shadowed World, Shattered World, “ Regina Granne paints the military moves and motives of war. Her oil on linen paintings and pencil drawings are quite literally “nature mort.” Granne goes about “constructing a painting,” by creating a model, or a still life to work from – complete with plastic soldiers and folded paper airplanes. Each map and bar graph she depicts is derived from an atlas or newspaper clipping one might have glanced at in the New York Times but passed over. The forms of ghostly toy soldiers and their looming shadows are haunting in their facelessness. These “Shadowed Worlds” lie somewhere between real space and war-town toy lands. By re-contextualizing the information and data on the horrors of war, Granne’s masterful paintings bring meaning back to the overload of information with which we are saturated. The viewer is reminded of how infrequently we see the faces represented by numbers and pie charts.

Above all, Granne’s interest is in “observation and what we know is concrete in the world.” As a kind of social documentary painter, the artist appropriates the primary and secondary visual materials of wars both past and present. In works such as “Shattered World,” she utilizes images drawn by the children and relies on the authenticity of their visions and first hand observations of war. The drawings, formed into paper planes, converge upon the earth. Like many of the artist’s pieces, this painterly work is open to various readings and has a depth, both of space and emotion, that goes beyond the surface of the canvas.

Also included in this exhibition are pencil drawings on tracing paper. Here, all that is left of the toy soldiers are their shadows. From a step back, the delicate circle of forms appear much like a snowflake, but there is not doubt that we are viewing the artist’s sympathetic rendering of the “universal soldier’s” unending march.

Regina Granne received her Masters of Fine Arts from Yale University and has been a Professor at Parsons School of Design since 1993. She has also taught at the Milton Avery School of the Fine Arts and Bard College. She is represented by A.I.R. Gallery in New York and Genovese Sullivan Gallery in Boston.

A.I.R. Gallery is located at 511 West 25th Street, NYC. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11am-6pm. For information please contact the director, Kat Griefen.
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