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10/03/07
“Project Series 34: Iva Gueorguieva” Opens at the Pomona College Museum of Art |
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“Project Series 34: Iva Gueorguieva,” an exhibition of two
large-scale abstract paintings and accompanying drawings,
will be on view from Oct. 27 through Dec. 16, 2007, at the
Pomona College Museum of Art. An opening reception will be
held at the Museum on Saturday, October 27th from 5-7 p.m.
Iva Gueorguieva will present a public lecture about her work
on Monday, November 5th, at 3 p.m.
Iva Gueorguieva’s Olympia and The Dead Matador
(both 2007) bristle with energy and seethe with color,
movement, line, and imagery. Shedding the post-modern cool
of the past, both paintings teem with emotion and
drama—anxiety, exuberance, tension, and turbulence fill the
canvases. Olympia and The Dead Matador—created specifically
for the exhibition at the Pomona College Museum of
Art—represent the fullest expression of her painting to
date.
For Gueorguieva, painting consists of emotive and sensuous
experiences framed in a conceptual and philosophical
structure. For almost ten years she has painted strikingly
beautiful abstract canvases with a foreboding undercurrent
of agitation and drama. Grounded in a firm grasp of modern
art history, philosophy, and contemporary painting, her
interests center around the absurd, the grotesque,
caricature, and the universal conditions of humanity:
beauty, sex, violence, death.
For Gueorguieva, painting is a profoundly personal
experience. She is also deeply invested in the history and
practice of painting. Like Romantic artists of the late
18th- and early 19th-centuries, Gueorguieva responds to the
sublime and the gothic. And like her Romantic predecessors,
her work takes an expressionistic and dramatic form,
reflecting her emotional and psychological state of mind.
Gueorguieva finds herself drawn to artists who successfully
linked concepts of the absurd and uncanny with virtuosic
painterly technique: Honore Daumier, George Grosz, Otto Dix,
James Ensor, and Francisco Goya are all sources of
inspiration with their powerful artistic expressions of raw
emotion. She also admires their ability to create
aesthetically powerful images that highlight contradiction,
satire, and horror.
Another core influence is the 19th-century painter Edouard
Manet, who is often credited as one of the first artists to
shift modern art towards a representation of the reality of
the everyday world. Gueorguieva studied Manet in depth in
graduate school, and came to feel an affinity in the way he
handled paint, how he dealt with color, and his choices of
subject matter. Gueorguieva titled her Olympia of 2007 after
Manet’s iconic Olympia of 1863 to honor his attack on
19th-century bourgeoisie mores and sensibilities. Like the
confident courtesan boldly confronting proper society in
Manet’s painting, the forthright, unapologetic imagery in
Gueorguieva’s painting represents an attack on the
complacency of the 21st century. And while Manet’s The
Dead Toreador (1864) is bloodless and immobile,
Gueorguieva’s Dead Matador is brightly colored,
tempestuous, and physical. Both of Gueorguieva’s powerful
images confront us directly, while simultaneously engaging
the history of art and the traumas of contemporary life.
“Project Series 34: Iva Gueorguieva” is the 34th exhibition
in the Project Series. Organized by Museum Curator Rebecca
McGrew, the Project Series presents Southern California
artists in focused exhibitions. The purpose of the series is
to bring to Pomona College art that is experimental and that
introduces new forms, techniques, or concepts. During each
exhibition, participating artists spend time on campus
working with faculty and students in relevant disciplines.
The Project Series is supported in part by the Pasadena Art
Alliance and Pomona College Museum of Art Advisory Committee
member Sarah Miller Meigs.
The Pomona College Museum of Art is located at 330 N.
College Avenue, Claremont. The Museum is open to the public
free of charge Tuesday through Friday, from noon to 5 p.m.,
and Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. For more
information, call (909) 621-8283 or visit the museum’s
website at www.pomona.edu/museum.
The Pomona College Museum of Art collects, preserves,
exhibits, and interprets works of art. The Museum houses a
substantial permanent collection as well as serving as a
gallery for the display of temporary exhibitions. Important
holdings include the Kress Collection of 15th- and
16th-century Italian panel paintings; more than 5,000
examples of Pre-Columbian to 20th-century American Indian
art and artifacts, including basketry, ceramics, and
beadwork; and a large collection of American and European
prints, drawings, and photographs, including works by
Francisco de Goya, José Clemente Orozco, and Rico Lebrun. |
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