For Marfa Invitational 2023, Nino Mier Gallery is thrilled to present new paintings and drawings by Los Angeles-based Cindy Phenix. The compositions in this new suite feature her typical revelries and monstrosities, now channeled through a thematic exploration of water. Archetypes culled from ancient mythology such as sirens and water Gods inhabit flat, kaleidoscopic surfaces. Other figures, undefined by gender, appear throughout Phenix’s compositions. Appearing to piece themselves together from aggregated painterly gestures, these hybrids become figures of power and disorder, excess and abjection.
The works play with the metaphor of the “Theatrum Mundi,” which posits the world as a theater in which we act out dramas orchestrated by God. Phenix shirks the more deterministic connotation of the phrase, instead embracing its artifice and spectacle, its concern with archetypes and roles, and its emphasis on the act of looking.
Cindy Phenix (b. 1989, Montreal, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, US) completed her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal in 2016 and her MFA at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL in 2020. Her work has been included in solo exhibitions at Victoria Miro Gallery, UK; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles and Brussels; Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal; and Maison de la culture de Longueuil, Longueil. Group exhibitions include 6018 North, Chicago; Centre Clark, Montreal; and Centre Wellington, Montreal, among others. Phenix’s works are included in the collections of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Quebec, BLG, and Hyrdo-Québec.