art of the week #1

Gosha Ostretsov, Coolville
Claire Oliver Gallery
May 21 - June 27, 2009

Since I'm no longer in New York and can't visit galleries whenever my heart desires, I've decided to do a weekly post on one gallery show that I find interesting, relevant to me, et cetera. Maybe in the near future I'll get really ambitious and include galleries outside of New York City, but for now I'll stick to what I "know."

I'll try to do current shows, but for my first weekly post I'm going to feature Gosha Ostretsov's show Coolville at Claire Oliver.

I had never heard of Ostretsov's work, but after looking through upcoming and current shows on artforum.com, clicking on a bunch of galleries, finding things that caught my eye, "On the Roof" really hit the right chord with me. It's acrylic on canvas measuring 158 x 63 inches. I looked at a few other pieces by Ostretsov and his work varies a lot which I like. He seems to do lot of installation pieces and I have found my own work gravitating towards installation.

Of course I LOVE the fact that "On the Roof" shows a superwoman-like female and the colors used only bring her power, her presence, whatever you want to call it to life. I also think it's interesting how dead the woman's eyes look - almost as if the world (or artist?) expects women to be so totally perfect visually, so in control. But on a lighter note, this is just very visually fun and dynamic so the fact that there seems to be darker things at work in the painting only makes it that much better.

Gosha Ostretsov was born in Mosow in 1967. He graduated from the School of Theatre Design at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1984 and began to work as an artist, showing his work at numerous exhibitions. In 1988 he moved to Paris, where he lived and worked for ten years, including a three-year period as artist and designer at Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. Gosha now lives and works in Moscow (http://triumph-gallery.com/artists/ostretsov).