Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to present IVE SEEN THAT FACE BEFORE, an exhibition of new paintings by New York-based artist Joanne Greenbaum. On view from March 24 – April 29, 2023, this marks the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue featuring an interview with artist Amy Sillman.
In IVE SEEN THAT FACE BEFORE, Joanne Greenbaum presents a series of large-scale paintings on canvas. Greenbaum’s colorful abstractions brim with energy: curvilinear patterns intertwine with sharp, repeated marks and large swaths of pigment, guiding the eye across their intricate surfaces. Each painting presents a fight between structure and dislocation, as though architectural blueprints had been blended and psychedelically re-configured.
For this exhibition, Greenbaum’s guiding principle was the tension between failure and recuperation. Greenbaum explains: “These latest paintings are all about flirting with failure. Creating chaos and then seeing if I can get out of the situation. Mucking it up and then trying to clean it up. Complicating things and then resting with the complications, not forcing the resolution. Sitting with a bad painting and seeing how it frustrates me, then acting. How long can I go with a bad painting in the studio? Sometimes I make it worse. Then it becomes a good painting.” Intrinsic to this process is a sense of freedom and experimentation, rather than constraint. Greenbaum does not shy away from dislocating compositional motifs or jarring color combinations, using all means necessary to construct her vibrant paintings.
Joanne Greenbaum (b. New York, NY; lives and works in New York) earned a BA from Bard College. Greenbaum is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including The Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant; Artist in Residence at The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grant. Greenbaum has exhibited internationally including at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Kusthalle Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf, DE; and MoMA PS1, New York, NY; among many others. She has also been the subject of two major retrospectives of her work, one presented at the Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, Switzerland, and at the Museum Abteiberg in Monchengladbach, Germany; and the other at The Tufts University Art Galleries at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA, and the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA. Her work is included in the collections of the Brandeis Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA; CCA Andratx, Majorca, ES; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Haus Konstruktiv Museum, Zurich, CH; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and the Ross Art Collection at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.