FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Opening reception: Friday, March 3, 6-8 pm

Friedrich Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of work by Nicola Tyson. The opening reception is 6 pm to 8 pm on Friday, March 3. The exhibition continues through April 15.

Nicola Tyson is a graduate of St. Martins School of Art in London, England. Her works were first exhibited in New York at Trial Balloon, an alternative space which she founded and operated from her studio loft. This two year project closed early last year. This exhibition, her first with Friedrich Petzel Gallery, will consist of new paintings and drawings.

Tyson explores the possibilities of figurative painting with conflicted yet controlled female forms. The bodies she creates are both desirable and monstrous and seem to have the capacity to disassemble themselves at any given time. Certain parts look as if they were morphed into one another describing seamless twists and manipulations, as in Figure and Ploughed Field, 1994. The figures are often faceless, demanding an extreme subjectivity. Other paintings like the diptych Two Figures, Six Heads, 1995 suggest multiple viewpoints. In Suspended Figure, 1994, Tyson returns to a pointed gaze. With it's provocatively hooded head, the androgynous subject looks squarely out at the viewer.

Tyson places her figures against an ambiguous ground, 'environments' where they register the frame and allow it to engender their very substance. An intense but subtle use of color gives the work a surprising blunt, matter of fact edge.

For further information, please contact the gallery at info@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.