New York’s Gagosian Gallery

Gagosian Gallery

Titus Kaphar, a recent Garnette Report Artist Spotlight, has exhibited work and worked extensively with the Gagosian Gallery in New York City. The Gallery is of the most notorious global galleries, with locations across the globe, and representation of icons from Diane Arbus to Kaphar himself. 

Larry Gagosian founded his first gallery in Los Angeles in 1980. Since then, he has gone on to open galleries coast to coast, continent to continent: Hong Kong, New York, and London. What makes the Gallery so unique is its extensive array of contemporary art, and magnificent gallery architecture. 

Gagosian also launched a publication in 1985, making themselves the first gallery to ever do so. The Gagosian Quarterly provides an even more intimate look at the artists who display their work in exhibitions. By visiting their studios and relaying interviews, the magazine is a useful resource and outlet for artists and viewers. 

Ewa Juszkiewicz

Of their most recent exhibitions is In vain her feet in sparkling laces glow, the first solo exhibit at one of Gagosian’s New York City gallery locations, Park and 75. Ewa Juszkiewicz, the visual artist and painter, was born in Gdańsk, Poland. She lives and continues to work in Warsaw today. The exhibition displays her sweeping and hyper realistic oil canvases, depicting women’s bodies in classical European portrait form. Her influences are generally works from the Renaissance period, as well as the 19th century canon of European art. 

Juszkiewicz employs classical techniques to “narrate a history of effacement and erasure that runs throughout the Western canon of female portraiture.” Works currently on 24 hour display, through the front windows of Park and 75, include: Untitled (after Adolf Ulrik Wertmuller) 2020, and Untitled (after Joseph Karl Stieler) 2020 (below and featured).  The visages of what resemble privileged women, mothers and wives are completely effaced. Any subjectivity is untraceable. 

These surreal works push the boundaries of beauty and grotesque. Vibrant in their colors, techniques and message, the masterpieces contribute to modern day work that “deconstruct ideals of feminine beauty and other societal clichés.” Pay Park and 75 a socially distanced visit if you’re on the Upper East Side today.