DFN Projects

16 East 79 Street, Garden Level, New York, NY

Opening reception: Wednesday, October 9  from 5-7 PM

Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 11AM-4PM (or by appointment)

(New York, NY – Upper East Side) – Garvey|Simon is pleased to present Kristy Gordon: Map of the Universe opening October 9, 2024, at DFN Projects, 16 East 79 Street, New York, NY. The exhibition includes a selection of Gordon’s recent Surrealist figurative paintings: celebrations of women and other marginalized groups explored through the lens of mysticism and spirituality. Gordon weaves together fantasy, art historical references, and incisive commentary to create complex narratives and diaphanous, otherworldly scenes. There will be an opening reception on Wednesday, October 9 from 5:00-7:00 PM at 16 East 79 Street, New York, NY 10075. The artist will be present. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM, or by appointment at other times.

Rife with allusions and visual callbacks, Gordon’s paintings use art historical references to usurp the power dynamic typically implicit in traditional painting. Her compositions nod to an array of iconic Judeo-Christian religious structures and motifs, including the ascension, altarpieces, and the garden of Eden. In each of these instances, Gordon decentralizes not just Christianity, but patriarchal and anthropocentric structures, as well. A traditional male deity is exchanged for a feminine figure with an all-seeing eye for a face; Adam and Eve are transformed into contemporary adolescents clad in undergarments; creatures from marginalia break into the pictorial plane and cavort amongst the other figures. By shifting the identity of each of these scene’s central figures (typically a white man) Gordon endows her subverters with a previously unattainable power. The natural world, particularly, is made dominant in her work. Furthermore, they are also exalted by the compositional structure of the painting, literally lifted into positions of eminence.

Though sometimes borrowed from Renaissance and medieval masterworks, Gordon’s complex compositions support an array of intersecting narrative arcs and temporalities. Her meticulously layered scenes are punctuated by pockets of self-contained stories, each one crystalline in its sense of chronology. These miniature tales are at once instantaneous and unresolved, ambiguous and clearly linear. A mushroom cloud cohabitates happily with a rearing, Napoleonic horse, and skeletons trapeze against the backdrop of ancient ruins. The relationships between her characters crosscut from background to foreground, forging unity across her pictorial plane. This spatial, narrative, and temporal fluidity not only serve to increase the surreal quality of Gordon’s work, but also suggest an ease of motility and communication between realities. Despite the conflict that often appears in her paintings, Gordon presents a version of utopia, wherein disparate beings and ideas can coexist.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kristy Gordon is a Canadian-born artist living in New York City.  Her paintings have been described as “contradictory and enigmatic scenes (that) unravel centuries of power relations and imagine a new future.” Gordon received a BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2011 and an MFA from The New York Academy of Art in 2013. She is an adjunct professor at the New York Academy of Art. Her work has been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and China at venues including the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, Spain; the National Academy Museum, NYC; and Flowers Gallery, NYC. As a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, her paintings have won numerous awards and honors. She has received residencies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China; Shanghai University in China; OCAD University Florence, Italy; and has apprenticed with Odd Nerdrum in Norway and France. Gordon’s work and art writing have been featured in publications, including The Artist’s Magazine, International Artist, and Fine Art Connoisseur. Her paintings hang in more than 600 collections worldwide including the Government of Ontario Art Collection, The Clearing House (New York City) and Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History.

High resolution images are available upon request. Please contact Liz Garvey at liz@garveysimon.com or 917-796-2146 for more information.