Naomi Nemtzow - “Elsewhere”

Green and Yellow on Gray 2, Mixed media on paper, 11 × 14”, 2022

Exhibition Dates: November 29, 2022 – December 30, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 3, 2022, 3:00-6:00 p.m.
Gallery Talk: In Conversation with Ro Lohin and Rita Baragona - Saturday, December 10, 2022, 3:00 p.m.

Bowery Gallery is pleased to present an exhibit of new work by Naomi Nemtzow. The current exhibit represents a departure from Nemtzow’s previous work, where she was best known for paintings and collages of the urban landscape. Like many other artists, Nemtzow was profoundly affected by the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing quarantine. Separated from the familiar outside world and social connection, Nemtzow turned inward to assemble compositions from imagination.

Here we see suggestions of worlds other than our own, where shapes and lines give way to odd unnamed creatures and structures, connected to each other by an assortment of pathways. A sense of landscape remains, but what place is this?

Nemtzow also ventures beyond the rectangle. The show includes 3-dimensional wall constructions and energetically shaped 2-dimensional pieces, as well as more conventionally formatted works. Throughout, lively arrangements of abstract shapes form the substrate for drawings which connect and elaborate upon those shapes. A sense of celebration and gentle humor pervade much of the work, although at moments one might also catch a whiff of impending catastrophe.

About Nemtzow’s 2012 show, Peter Plagens wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “it takes a real sense of visual poetry to make good (collages). Naomi Nemtzow…makes very good collages….she distills what she’s seen into joyful, straight-edged compositions of brightly painted paper.”