Raw Footage
Annie Bielski
Raw Footage
May 18 - July 7, 2024
Opening Saturday, May 18, 5-7pm
We are thrilled to present Annie Bielski: Raw Footage, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Flanking the North gallery are a series of seven paintings that meet the height and arms width of the artist. Commanding the South gallery is Bielski’s largest canvas to date, a 5 x 10 foot horizontal composition. Two additional series of equal-sized small and medium works are installed together by scale. In total, the exhibition is a testament to Bielski’s robust practice and her adept facility of moving through significant size shifts with ease.
Bielski’s bold and exuberant paintings revel in abstraction and flirt with landscape. Her approach is one of staining, drawing, building, and leaving evidence of what came before. Along with scale, the physicality of Bielski’s process is evident in her use of expansive washes of color and swooping mark- making on raw canvas. She responds to her own intuitive gestures and moves through with curiosity, inviting the assertion of one form to interact with the next. As Bielski shapes a composition, she often begins on the floor and then hangs the canvas to face her, turning the stretcher by degrees until she lands at finished. For her, completion is not a conclusion, but rather an offering of openness, a wink at the mutability of it all.
Bielski’s work is evidence of an artist who is always looking, whether at mismatched paint in curious shapes covering graffiti, at trees wrapping around one another near her studio, or at the work of her creative heroes. In Bielski’s paintings, we have a flavor of the active brushstrokes of DeKooning, bent with the playful curves and bright chrome of Murray, saturated with the staining of Frankenthaler, and spun with the assured roving of Charline von Heyl. We also have the creative singularity of an artist who has arrived at the fullness of the medium through performance and poetry. Raw Footage contains everything- all of the colors, details, light, and life exactly as it has been captured by the artist’s sensors.[1]
[1]Google definition of ‘raw footage’ edited and repurposed from film to painting.
ANNIE BIELSKI (b. 1990 in Toledo, OH) received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her MFA from the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Bielski is an artist, performer, and writer. Exhibitions include Agita, Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York, NY); Strong Winds May Exist, SEPTEMBER (Hudson, NY); Loveland, SEPTEMBER (NADA, New York, NY); Bluets, Burning in Water (New York, NY); The Hardest Part is Just Gettin’ Here, Paris London Hong Kong (Chicago, IL); only to find, High Tide (Philadelphia, PA); a rose is a rose is a cave, Motel (Brooklyn, NY); Alongside:: D,A,K,A, Lodos, (Mexico City, Mexico); The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's TBA Festival (Portland, OR); Strutting, Fretting, UB Art Galleries at The University of Buffalo (Buffalo, NY); among others. Bielski has performed at SEPTEMBER, The Museum of Modern Art, Coustof Waxman, Allen & Eldridge, Rachel Uffner Gallery, CANADA, and elsewhere. She was the Artist in Residence at Basilica Back Gallery in 2018, and participated in 1-844-NOT-Z00M ARCHIVES, Vol. 2, at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020. She has collaborated with the University at Buffalo and FORT MAKERS to create limited edition objects and prints, and has released three zines independently. Bielski has collaborated with musician Jenny Hval, performed across the US and Europe, and contributed album art and music video visuals to Hval’s 2022 album, Classic Objects. She has interviewed numerous artists for The Creative Independent, and is a contributor to the monograph Molly Zuckerman-Hartung: Comic Relief as well as How to Fail Successfully, and Stay Inspired: Finding Motivation for Your Creative Work by Brandon Stosuy. Bielski’s work, performances, and writing have been covered by Art News, Hyperallergic, MTV, The New York Times, among others. Bielski has taught at The University of New Mexico and SUNY Buffalo, and currently lives and works in upstate New York.
Raw Footage
May 18 - July 7, 2024
Opening Saturday, May 18, 5-7pm
We are thrilled to present Annie Bielski: Raw Footage, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Flanking the North gallery are a series of seven paintings that meet the height and arms width of the artist. Commanding the South gallery is Bielski’s largest canvas to date, a 5 x 10 foot horizontal composition. Two additional series of equal-sized small and medium works are installed together by scale. In total, the exhibition is a testament to Bielski’s robust practice and her adept facility of moving through significant size shifts with ease.
Bielski’s bold and exuberant paintings revel in abstraction and flirt with landscape. Her approach is one of staining, drawing, building, and leaving evidence of what came before. Along with scale, the physicality of Bielski’s process is evident in her use of expansive washes of color and swooping mark- making on raw canvas. She responds to her own intuitive gestures and moves through with curiosity, inviting the assertion of one form to interact with the next. As Bielski shapes a composition, she often begins on the floor and then hangs the canvas to face her, turning the stretcher by degrees until she lands at finished. For her, completion is not a conclusion, but rather an offering of openness, a wink at the mutability of it all.
Bielski’s work is evidence of an artist who is always looking, whether at mismatched paint in curious shapes covering graffiti, at trees wrapping around one another near her studio, or at the work of her creative heroes. In Bielski’s paintings, we have a flavor of the active brushstrokes of DeKooning, bent with the playful curves and bright chrome of Murray, saturated with the staining of Frankenthaler, and spun with the assured roving of Charline von Heyl. We also have the creative singularity of an artist who has arrived at the fullness of the medium through performance and poetry. Raw Footage contains everything- all of the colors, details, light, and life exactly as it has been captured by the artist’s sensors.[1]
[1]Google definition of ‘raw footage’ edited and repurposed from film to painting.
ANNIE BIELSKI (b. 1990 in Toledo, OH) received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her MFA from the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Bielski is an artist, performer, and writer. Exhibitions include Agita, Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York, NY); Strong Winds May Exist, SEPTEMBER (Hudson, NY); Loveland, SEPTEMBER (NADA, New York, NY); Bluets, Burning in Water (New York, NY); The Hardest Part is Just Gettin’ Here, Paris London Hong Kong (Chicago, IL); only to find, High Tide (Philadelphia, PA); a rose is a rose is a cave, Motel (Brooklyn, NY); Alongside:: D,A,K,A, Lodos, (Mexico City, Mexico); The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's TBA Festival (Portland, OR); Strutting, Fretting, UB Art Galleries at The University of Buffalo (Buffalo, NY); among others. Bielski has performed at SEPTEMBER, The Museum of Modern Art, Coustof Waxman, Allen & Eldridge, Rachel Uffner Gallery, CANADA, and elsewhere. She was the Artist in Residence at Basilica Back Gallery in 2018, and participated in 1-844-NOT-Z00M ARCHIVES, Vol. 2, at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020. She has collaborated with the University at Buffalo and FORT MAKERS to create limited edition objects and prints, and has released three zines independently. Bielski has collaborated with musician Jenny Hval, performed across the US and Europe, and contributed album art and music video visuals to Hval’s 2022 album, Classic Objects. She has interviewed numerous artists for The Creative Independent, and is a contributor to the monograph Molly Zuckerman-Hartung: Comic Relief as well as How to Fail Successfully, and Stay Inspired: Finding Motivation for Your Creative Work by Brandon Stosuy. Bielski’s work, performances, and writing have been covered by Art News, Hyperallergic, MTV, The New York Times, among others. Bielski has taught at The University of New Mexico and SUNY Buffalo, and currently lives and works in upstate New York.
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