OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

Mixed Messes

new stained and stitched paintings by Nava Lubelski

March 4 - 26, 2005
Reception: Friday, March 4, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

O·H+T gallery is pleased to present Mixed Messes, an exhibition of stained and stitched paintings by Nava Lubelski.

Lubelski's work, which was included in the group exhibition, Twisted, at O·H+T in February of 2004, continues to explore the contradictory activities of spoiling and mending. Splattered and stained with drips and splotches, the fabric of these paintings is sewn into with an obsessive, sometimes maniacal, hand. For Lubelski, these are not abstractions, just stains and spills, the byproducts of accidents that occur in the studio, home, and urban landscape. The combination of fluid shapes with controlled, compulsive needlework plays the shameful problem of the stain against the careful mending of the stitching. "My process of redeeming these stains. . .is about understanding why we dismiss, label, or embrace certain ideas, forms or media."

In a series of small Jewel paintings, Lubelski outlines watery pastel stains with a delicate chain of stitches, while she heavily works more opaque splotches. Many of Lubelski's pieces take on a sense of terrain as she builds up and layers her needlework. In Net she weaves a web of stitches across a hole in the canvas to introduce another spacial element, as well as the shadow on the wall behind the painting.

Nava Lubelski lives and works in Jackson Heights, Queens. She was recently included in the Queens International, 2004 at the Queens Museum of Art, and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. She has held residencies at the Constance Saltontall Foundation for the Arts and the Space Program at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. Lubelski was the film/video art director for the short film Anna in the Sky, directed by Mark Edgington; and the documentary film Capturing the Friedmans, directed by Mark Jarecki. Her book, The Starving Artist's Way, was published by Three Rivers Press in 2004. This is Nava Lubelski's first one-person exhibition at O·H+T gallery.