New York Academy Show 2021
We are finally able to resume our, usually, annual tradition: Gallery Poulsen’s New York Academy Show, where we exhibit a carefully selected and concentrated group of graduates from the well renowned New York Academy of Art (NYAA). With this exhibition, we’re introducing three young, sharp and promising talents who with their respective artistic expressions convey the human and American tradition in the year 2021 alongside the newest tendencies from New York’s vivid art scene.
In collaboration with NYAA, we have invited Anne Herrero, Austin Harvey and Jed Webster Smith whose different, personal, intimate and socially critical visual portrayals of reality unfold and play off each other in our gallery space on Staldgade.
The sincerity of the exhibition is especially clear in the works of Anne Herrero, which tell a story about autonomy, mental illness, superstition and mankind’s relationship to the environment we live in. Through a complex development of the portrayed characters that often find themselves in extraordinary situations, recently escaped from a sanitorium, lost in the mountains, etc., Herrero succeeds in embedding her paintings and drawings with sincere compassion that adds an appealing depth. A big part of Herrero’s paintings in this year’s New York Academy Show is driven by a Metallica concert she saw on an unseasonably cold and rainy summer day in Berlin. The shows visceral elements in combination with the music resulted in a raw, dramatic and moving experience. Herrero’s paintings in the exhibition act as an homage to the concert experience and explore the dynamic between the perceptual intensity of the show and the comforting familiarity of the music.
The often-distorted myths and stories of the Wild West are applied in Jed Webster Smith’s paintings to challenge, comment on and convey his own perspective on the tendencies and conflicts that are unfolding in the US today. The inherent social criticism lay as a subtle layer underneath the figurative expression of the paintings, which forces the viewer to recognize the myth that is being presented before the critique exposes itself. Jed Webster Smith grew up in rural Colorado surrounded by the American Western myth and its rugged characters. Because of this the Western genre offer, for Webster Smith, a recognizable image that is unavoidably connected to the American perception of identity which he is using in his artistic comments on currents events.
The exhibition’s portrait paintings by Austin Harvey contain an immense sincerity and sentimentality that reveals the portrayed individual’s inner essence from Harvey’s personal perspective. This permeating personality also means that the persons in the paintings develop and grow in front of our eyes. Exploring the relationship between gender performativity and queer experience is a reoccurring focus in Harvey’s paintings. This is also the case with the portraits in this exhibition. The portrayed individuals participate in a dialog about recognition and shared experience about the perception of identity, which creates an interaction between the painting and the viewer where both parties leave themselves open to understanding and to be understood.
Featuring:
Anne Herrero (US), Austin Harvey (US) & Jed Webster Smith (US)
The exhibition includes both paintings and drawings on canvas, linen and panel.
Contact the gallery at [email protected] or phone + 45 33 33 93 96 for further information
New York Academy Show 2021
18.09.2021 - 16.10.2021
Vernissage Saturday September 18th 12 – 4 PM
Installation photos
