NICOLE WITTENBERG – THE MALINGERERS
2012-06-11In an age of sound bites sandwiched by social media excess and information overload, Nicole Wittenberg’s paintings are a refreshing antidote. Distilled down to their essentials, Wittenberg’s work – whether her “Skype” portraits, her architectural interiors, or her landscapes, offers up a complicated contemporary universe reduced to a skeletal framework. Its elegant brevity is not dissimilar to symphonic variations on a theme: one frame, presented in a multitude of ways, a sure and pared-down message conveyed as directly and with as much brevity as possible.
Wittenberg’s subject reflects her fascination with, and personal experience of bohemia and high society. In works such as Countess (London on March 19th, 2011) , we are confronted by a decadent mask of aristocracy, gone awry – at once chilling and certainly enigmatic. Her version, as it were, of the classic Bunuel film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie resonates well with viewers familiar with pulped news coverage of Lady Di’s final days; royalty obscured by the paparazzi’s repetitive and blinding flash. Ironic for a figurative painter there is a kind of facelessness here, a distinct remove and distancing from emotion which Wittenberg expertly captures; we cannot read the inner turmoil of her subjects, we can only conjecture.
Opposite – Interior 2 (Rear View), 2010
Exhibition runs through to July 14th, 2012
Freight + Volume
530 W. 24th Street
New York
10011
