Sandra Scolnik

For her second solo exhibition with CRG Gallery, New York artist Sandra Scolnik will exhibit a series of oil paintings from 1998 through the present. Scolnik refers to her paintings as self-portraits into which the architecture of interiors figure heavily; each living room; great hall; child’s bedroom, or 1950’s dressing room is a sealed container for a manifestation of self and accoutrements. She depicts herself as twins, as both genders or of nonspecific gender, as multiple persons, as historic women, in costume, naked, as parents and as children. The paintings are nonlinear narratives in which each of these representations of self is a separate character with its own personality. Each arrangement of characters is intended to present a psychological, physical and emotional story within the confines of private or domestic life, through a self-conscious, non-naturalistic telling. Scolnik chose a small format for her early paintings to enhance the intimacy between viewer and subject(s) and to further the sense of microcosm and claustrophobia dictated by a dominating color and the unified decorative features of the rooms. While the artist relied heavily on photographs from 1950’s and 1960’s decorating magazines to inform the earlier and smaller works, she now strives to paint from imagination. Her work has become larger and much of the imagery informed by the Victorian period. Paintings-within-paintings, often landscapes, become the apertures replacing the obscured windows of the older work and the subjects are now more numerous and varied in form. Sandra Scolnik’s work was recently the subject of a one person exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO.

Sandra Scolnik
Recent Paintings