Exuberant Individuality on Display at Lombard Freid Gallery

In bringing together the works of Huguette Caland, Sarah Dwyer, Rosa Loy, and Dannielle Tegeder—disparate artists linked by their decidedly individual approaches—Lombard Freid Gallery aptly turned to the famously razor-tongued writer, Dorothy Parker, for inspiration. “I shall stay the way I am because I do not give a damn… - Dorothy Parker” serves as both title and anthem of this summer exhibition, featuring a range of paintings by these four artists, who merge abstraction and representation in compositions at once highly personal and universal.

Though Rosa Loy’s casein paint-on-canvas compositions are the most overtly representational, they are also the most hermetic, deriving from her experience growing up in the unique social and political isolation of the former East Germany. She builds mysterious, all-female dream worlds out of references to German fairytales, history, and culture; Freudian eroticism; authoritarianism; and death. Works likeVermittlung (2010) and Welle (2011) are populated by Loy’s seemingly self-contained protagonists, busily engaged in strange tasks within shifting, otherworldly settings. Huguette Caland, too, draws from her own life experiences to shape works ranging from loosely representational to entirely abstract. Compositions like Venice I (1985), Sheep Skin(2007), and Untitled (2011) reflect her varied output, as well as the lightness and joy stemming from a long life lived boldly, adventurously, and, against imposed expectations, independently. Rich and radiant, they embody the playful optimism residing in all of us.

Networks and interconnectedness characterize the works of Sarah Dwyer and Dannielle Tegeder. Dwyer fills such lush compositions as Marmion (2014) with a riotous assortment of colorful, abstract forms hinting at figures and faces drawn from her memories and observations of the world, and appearing to be in a state of flux and formation. In her equally exuberant but much more geometric and linear compositions, Tegeder uses the language of geometric abstraction to explore the network of internal drives and external systems that structure our experiences. Her works, like Secret Midnight Sun Universe Plan with Chemical Silver Suspended Classification of Color and Shape Language (2011-2014), evoke neural and digital synapses alike, as well as architectural renderings, urban grids, and the practice of automatic drawing, rooted in the unconscious—that deep and defining part of the self.