Alternative Paradise
Eden gets a startling new look in Paradise Refigured, an exhibit of paintings by Phyllis Kriegel and Daewoong Nam.
Phyllis Kriegel’s world, which she depicts in bright colors on small wooden panels, like icons, is the mythic past as it might have been, if the creator had been a feminist with a sense of humor. Playful but psychologically profound, her paintings take figures of legend, endow them with forms reminiscent of Gauguin or Blake, and give their familiar stories some refreshing new twists.
Choices, acrylic on panel, 9¾x9¾, 2006
First Supper, acrylic on panel, 9¼x8, 2006
Daewoong Nam’s recent work, in contrast, is suffused with a romantic melancholy. These larger paintings, in oil on canvas, are suggestive of some distant future where vegetation grows rampant in a somber blue twilight, enveloping familiar objects that survive from our time. Human figures are indistinct or absent in this post-historic jungle; instead, new creatures thrive.
Mandalay, oil on canvas, 40x30, 2006
Untitled, oil on canvas, 24x24, 2006
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