The Edward Thorp Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibit of recent works by Judith Simonian. The artist will be showing both large and small-scale acrylic paintings in what will be her second one-person show with the gallery.

Simonian’s intuitive working method combines gestural paint handling, masking, and collage, resulting in indeterminate panoramas that fully envelop the viewer. These mercurial compositions incorporate images selected from a variety of sources, including sketches made from direct observation, the artist’s own travel photos, and found material such as vacation brochures and magazines.

“It’s a gathering of colorful scraps of trash that look like they want to be a painting,” states Simonian. These pieces help create “spatial contradictions that tear from one context into another in an exciting and irrational way. It’s a useful strategy for keeping the image in a precarious state of near collapse.”

Through these rich and vibrant surfaces, physical objects and locations are incessantly interrupted or even decimated by the introduction of light and color. Her work removes the distinctions between the internal and external realms, real and imagined spaces, and creates a radiant but fractured world.

In “Fleshy Pink Room,” one of her new large works, a fluid paint application creating an atmospheric interior of high key color is contrasted with a geometric field of hard-edged abstraction in the foreground, alluding to a large reflection or landscape element. This pictorial rupture takes the viewer into unsettling and alienating territory. Brimming with vigor, Simonian’s works present us with a multifaceted interplay between perceived space, residual memory, and technical prowess.