Nicola Tyson

Heads

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

NICOLA TYSON
"Heads"
January 23 – February 22, 2003
Opening reception: Friday, January 23, 6-8 pm

Friedrich Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works on paper by Nicola Tyson.
This exhibition will be Tyson's fifth solo show
at the gallery.

In this exhibition, Tyson employs for the first time the technique of monoprint. Working fast and decisively the images are first painted in acrylic onto glass and then transferred by the artist to sized paper by the application of pressure. Taking Goya, Gainsborough and the commercial photographic 'headshot' as reference points, Tyson delivers a gallery of improbable Portrait Heads, as she titles them, which candidly engage with the gaze of the viewer across extraordinary acerbic color combinations, and demonstrate a stunning fluidity and unparalleled immediacy. In tandem with these Tyson expands on her investigations of self in a series of Self-portraits, where psychological examination is pushed to pictorial absurdity.

In addition to the heads, and using the same monoprint technique, Tyson revisits the motif of the Bouquet, in small scale abstracted images of plant-like forms, grouped into triptychs, in a mournful purple and a hopeful brilliant orange.

Nicola Tyson lives and works in New York. Her work has been exhibited internationally and she has been the subject of a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zurich. Her work is included in the collections of the Tate Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York, SF MOMA, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Heads opens on Thursday, January 23, with a reception on Friday, January 24 from 6-8pm, and will be on view through February 22. For further information, please contact 212.680.9467 or info@petzel.com.