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until 07.11. |#2865ARTatBerlin | Galerie Dittmar presents an exhibition by the artist Nicole Phungrasamee Fein starting September 10, 2020.
Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, born in 1974 in Evanston, Illinois and raised in Santa Barbara, California, lives and works in San Francisco. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Tufts University, Medford, and Mills College, Oakland. Beginning in 2002, Wynn Kramarsky acquired works by the artist for his prominent collection of drawings. Fein’s works were introduced to Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, that same year. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York, Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.
Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, Iron oxide, 25,4 x 25,4 auf 38,1 x 38,1 cm, 2020
The starting point for the works is the line; one line runs into another forming the field. This is the underlying principle and also the basis for further, more extensive exploration. In the watercolours from around 2010, horizontal and transversing stripes of various widths define the image. The areas in between are kept in finely nuanced light or dark tones, suggesting depth through layering or materiality.
The subsequent watercolour drawings show an evolution of Fein’s work with the line. Washes are rendered with a broad brush stroke, touching and overlapping in a continual, unending sequence. The middle is darkened through the accumulation of numerous layers while the image lightens increasingly towards the edges. The initial diffuse spatial depth takes on an atmospheric quality, which in the end dissolves in pure light. Vague natural perceptions emerge. “Their cumulative effect is like waking to the faintest light before dawn.” (Jeff Kelley)
Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, Watercolor on paper, 15,2 x 15,2 auf 30,5 x 30,5 cm, 2014
The earlier works lead to the ‘water drawings’ in which the colour’s substance, the pigment, is iron oxide. These works, which are less subject to the extreme discipline of previous ones, balance the relationship between control and chance. The mineral solution is released onto the sheet until a fluctuating, denser or more open web forms. When the sheet is set up at an angle, this method produces vertical runs and trickles. The high water content in this technical process is readily apparent in the artistic result.
“Fein’s whole oeuvre turns out to be action painting with a difference – the integration of different categories of action. And that’s highly appropriate, because it enacts at the level of the oeuvre the contrast which individual works typically contain: tiny details versus the whole field’s impression; darkness versus light; geometric versus organic shapes; chance versus control – investing all in the precision of the gesture, or contrarily withholding that very gesture by creating circumstances for natural patterns to draw themselves.” (Paul Carey-Kent)
Soft opening: Thursday, September 10, 2020, from 2 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Thursday, September 10 to Saturday, November 07, 2020
To the Gallery
Exhibition Nicole Phungrasamee Fein – Galerie Dittmar | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
