KIM FOSTER GALLERY
529 West 20th New York 10011  212.229.0044 www.kimfostergallery.com

SARAH LEAHY
At Once

May 1 - May 31, 2014

(Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 6 pm)


Reception: Thursday, May 1st, 6 - 8 p
m


to view e-catalogue click here

Train Tracks, 2012. Ink an plexiglass, 41 x 66 inches.
In this new exhibition, Leahy arranges a series of paintings that read as one installation moving around the gallery space. Figurative image fragments juxtapose and combine in sequences, creating a presence both surprising and familiar. Images echo and amplify, repeating in different ways, layering perceptually, evoking themes and possible contingencies. The painting process and surface evidence a huge compression of time and attention, as gradually the image develops, coming into focus. The viewer experiences a similar unfolding. Careful ordering of the people, spaces and manmade structures, suggest a sense of self and quiet, resonant moment.

"Leahy's moody paintings are made through a labor-intensive process involving ink washes painted on clear plexiglass sheets and sanded with fine grade sandpaper. Slowly burnishing and refining the surface, and building up a dense but translucent image, Leahy creates an image of a space that seems charged and strangely alive-dark and luminous."
  - Mary Birmingham, Curator, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.

"Why Sarah Leahy's work? It is startling, memorable. The self-imposed constraints of her technique (successive additions and subtractions of ink on plexiglass) induce a rich querying of that surface. Within the contrast of black and white it is as if within this sparseness each aspect of visual ordering is intensified, and in this no-color situation it is to be noticed that suddenly and strangely, subliminal color is released that lingers hauntingly."
  - Pat Adams, catalogue excerpt "Women Choose Women Again."
 
 
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