We are very pleased to present the second solo show of the artist Chloe Wise at the gallery. For this new series of portraits, Wise continues to paint her close friends, exploring themes of representation, identity and subject-object relationships. A sort of mise en abyme element allows us to trace fragments of her paintings in the backdrops of these works, also hinting at intimate moments within her studio. In doing so, Wise adds an element that supports her particular way of connecting her work to her private life. She thus evokes the porosity of the borders existing between workplace and domesticity, but also approaches the representation of friendship and privacy, and the limitations imposed on this narrative by portraiture. Here, we find the de-facto political aspect of the portraitist’s act, her sharing of her reality as a New York female artist who chooses her subjects – brought together first due to belonging to the same generation and cultural community, and then based on a more intimate bond: their friendship with Chloe Wise and her act of painting.
Chloe Wise, How not to cry over unspilled milk (Ana), 2018
To go further in sharing this intimacy, two young New York art curators, friends of Wise and models for this series, entered into an e-mail conversation about Wise’s work and turned it into a text. Below is an excerpt:
Chloe Wise, I think you should get me a present (Nassim reclining), 2018