NIGHTLIGHT

Natalia Zourabova

June 5 - July 19

Opening Reception: June 5 from 6 to 8 pm

Artist Talk: June 26 from 6 to 8 pm

KALINER is pleased to present Natalia Zourabova’s inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery - Nightlight. The exhibition presents large scale paintings from her recent series that expands the artist’s novel approach to color palette and form.
The exhibition is on view June 5th through July 19th.

COMING FULL CIRCLE

by Nicola Trezzi

In this new body of work, Natalia Zourabova has come full circle. Echoing works she presented before joining the New Barbizon project, yet informed by her participation in the painters’ group and their connection to painting from life, this new series is the boldest the artist has created to date. Zourabova’s creative strategy involved making numerous sketches from life, building a visual bank of scenes that interested her – not for their social or political importance, as was the case in the New Barbizon group – but for their value as compositions of color and form.

After building the visual bank, the artist worked from imagination – an imagination shaped by the act of drawing. Through a process of visual merging, she combined elements from different scenes to create images that only exist in her mind, as seen in the Red Room piece.

Although Red Room makes a direct reference to Matisse’s 1911 masterpiece The Red Room, it is the least Matissean work – marked instead by a graphic flatness. However, the entire series reads as a homage to Matisse and his signature indoor spaces treated as ideal subjects for painting. This is best visible in works such as In the Kitchen, Evening Meal – where Matisse’s Harmony in Red meets Natalia Goncharova’s three-quarter figures – as well as in A Cup, Still Life, Eliane, and most notably in Nightlight (which lends its title to the exhibition) and Nightlight 2.

These two latter paintings are an ode to Matisse, yet they offer something unique: the sky and the light possess a metaphysical and mysterious quality; they are far from the joyful purity of color and form that defines the work of the French master.
Here Zourabova sets aside everything – her familiar subjects, her fellow painters– to be alone with herself without compromise or a desire to please and simplify. In these two paintings – and likewise in Women and On the Beach – the artist is not afraid to abandon the lessons she has learned to create something aggressive, uncompromised, unrefined and raw.

For those who have been following Zourabova for some time, this new body of work marks the beginning of a new era. While the world around her – and around us – is collapsing, the studio space – not Matisse’s red studio but Zourabova’s own – becomes a realm for experimenting with what no other language can express.

Special thank you to Nicola Trezzi

Born in Magenta (Italy) in 1982, Nicola Trezzi is a director of Central of Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, and has been head of the MFA program at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem since 2014. Prior to that he was US editor of Flash Art International and curator at the Prague Biennale Foundation.

In parallel to these positions, he co-curated exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill. He was also among the initiators of Lucie Fontaine artist-run-space in Milan through which he co-organized projects at Iaspis in Stockholm, Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, Galerie Perrotin in Paris, and Kayu in Bali.

A prolific writer, Trezzi contributed articles to exhibition catalogues published by Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, Newport Street Gallery in London, Kunsthaus Graz and to magazines such as Monopol, Artnet News and Artpress