Gulgun Aliriza : Spatial Journeys
October 31 – November 25, 2017
Reception Thursday Nov. 2, 5-8pm
with Sufi Music by Amir Vahab Ensemble
Blue Mountain Gallery is pleased to announce “Spatial Journeys”, an exhibition of recent paintings and a selection of works on paper by Gulgun Aliriza. This will be the artist’s second exhibition at the gallery, located at 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY. The artist will be present for an opening reception on Thursday, November 2nd, from 5 – 8 PM.
Gulgun Aliriza’s creative process is inspired by working almost exclusively from direct observation over an extended period of time, which gives her the opportunity to be inventive formally and compositionally. The exhibition reveals the artist’s embrace of natural and man-made objects in her immediate surroundings. The paintings grow, change in time, and become responses to what has been seen and experienced in the process of painting. We enter into the paintings not through an identification of the object, but rather through the sensuous surface and complex relationships of color, form, scale and fluid brushwork that suspend this identification.
In this new body of work, Aliriza has returned on multiple occasions to the same object or still life setting and the paintings reveal a continuing dialogue between artist and object. Aliriza’s unique interactions and experimentations with the individual objects, or small group of objects, generate multiple associations and produce new meanings, almost seeming to serve as “portraits” and “landscapes”. The recent addition of crumpled paper to the still lifes creates a dynamic arrangement of geometric planes which add space, depth, movement and rhythm to the work. The images derived from much smaller objects are transformed and freed from the constraints of scale. They start to refer to larger forms such as mountains, landscapes, and skies where the cumulative effect surpasses the individual elements. The viewer is invited to enter into this world of enchanting mystery through the materiality of paint
GULGUN ALIRIZA is a Cypriot-born American painter who lives and works in New York. She.received her BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase with Summa Cum Laude in 2005 and her MFA from Western Connecticut University in 2007. In summer 2007 she continued her studies with Graham Nickson at the New York Studio School, NYC, and with Susanna Coffey. She is the recipient of several grants and a residency program awards. In 2007, she was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. Aliriza has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout the Northeast. In 2013 her work was featured in “The Power of Place” at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art.
