#schneidermuseum

Cornucopia, 2016, Ink on Tyvek. 108" x 225"

Delicate, intricate line work weaves over velvety black surfaces that tower over the viewer. Her work, while aesthetically magnificent, is also deeply personal, where her bicultural history and intellectual rigor collide. The Colombian born artist was raised by her mother, who was a cultural anthropologist. She had the opportunity to grow up and see every side of her native country, from the wealthiest to the poorest regions. This class stratification informs her work, along with her close ties to US culture and education.

When Friedemann-Sánchez moved from Bogotá to Los Angeles to continue studying fine art, she became immediately inspired by the pervading 80s feminist movement and sought to incorporate these ideas into her work, intertwining ideas around patriarchal colonialism with groundbreaking feminist thought.

Mestiza, 2016. India Ink on Tyvek, Indigenous Mask and Spanish Comb 45" x 67.5"

Every choice Friedemann makes carries cultural and historical weight that elevates these pieces from aesthetically pleasing to politically challenging. The flowers she works with are symbolically resonant: Floral arrangements were commonly painted by Spanish colonists, and they continue to influence Colombia’s economy through its ties to the floral industry. The artist is an inherent storyteller, and she’s currently working on a mixed media visual novel. She’s never been known to box herself in to one medium, rather, she explores complex ideas through ink, paint, crochet, sculpture, and found object.

India Gentil-from the Casta Paintings, 2017. Tyvek mopa mopa, readymade 80" x 40"

Read Nancy’s bio from her website below:

In her work Nancy Friedemann deliberately manages an economy of materials. Her large scale drawings alude to Minimalism and the Pattern and Decoration Movement but explicitly explore the experience of identity, memory and gender. Nancy Friedemann has a masters degree from New York University; a BFA from Otis Art Institute and undergraduate studies from La Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. Friedemann has been awarded a Smithsonian Artist Fellowship; a Pufffin Foundation grant; a Pollock Krasner grant; a National Association of Latino Arts and Culture grant . She has also been nominated to the Rema Hort Mann and to the Anonymous was a Woman Foundation. She has been a resident at Art OMI, New York; Fountainhead, Miami; Tamarind Institute, New Mexico; Yaddo, New York; Gasworks, Triangle Arts Trust, London; Bemis Center for Contemporary arts, Nebraska; Bronx Museum for the Arts, New York and Taller Arte Dos Gráfico, Bogotá. Her work is representative of contemporary feminist expressions and was selected for the Feminist Art Base at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Friedemann is also a member of the Artist Pension Trust, Mexico City since 2009.

Karla Wozniak, Woven Peaks, 60 x 60 inches, oil on canvas, 2016

Karla Wozniak brings an intense physicality to a recognizable subject that’s drawn in artists since the beginning of time: the landscape. Using textured layers of saturated mark making, Wozniak brings an explosive representation of hill sides from an almost domestic point of view, depicting imagery such as windows and vases that bridge the gap between human confinement and the reverberating colors of the outdoors.

She’s been compared to the likes of Charles Burchfield, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Arthur Dove, who all bridge the gap between abstraction and representation in the traditional landscape. Her exploratory imagination and intuitive mark making create a space that takes  “visual information from landscape as a jumping-off point; the paintings are personal and almost hallucinatory reinventions,” Karla says about her work in New American Paintings.

Karla Wozniak, Open Window 6, oil on canvas, 30 x 35 inches, 2018

Karla’s work is highly cognizant of the geography within the spaces she occupies. Her time in Knoxville, Tennessee influenced her perception of her oft explored subject, as well as the period in which she spent more time in the home looking outward at the land.

It’s impossible to ignore Karla’s paintings. They demand attention, and once the viewer is drawn in, it’s difficult to look away. One emerges from these paintings with a new perception of light, color, and the spaces we occupy and how we choose to depict them. 

Wozniak’s work will be shown in the Entry Gallery of our summer exhibitions. For more information, visit sma.sou.edu. 

Karla Wozniak, Open Window 5, oil on canvas, 35 x 35 inches, 2018

Karla Wozniak’s distinctions include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship (2011); participation in the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace program (2011); participation in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program (2009-10); and MacDowell Colony Fellowships (2007, 2005). Her work has been featured in a number of publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, Village Voice, and the Huffington Post, among others. Her work is included in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Knoxville Museum of Art permanent collections. Her recent solo exhibitions include The Valley Electric, Gregory Lind Gallery, and Magic Mountain, Colburn Gallery, University of Vermont, Burlington. Recent group exhibitions include Currents, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; Six, Regina Rex, New York, NY; and Fortune Teller Chatter, Bard College at Simon's Rock, Great Barrington, MA.  Karla Wozniak is a native of Berkeley, California.

Shot for Caminos Magazine - outtake.

Maria #4

Transcending Myths exhibit