Lyles and King is pleased to present Tableaux Rosa, a two-person show featuring paintings by Kate Meissner and Regina Parra. In their own ways, these artists draw from theater and cinema to infuse their paintings with corporeal narratives that suggest female liberation, anxiety, ecstasy or catharsis, feelings heightened by their use of color and form.
Lyles and King is pleased to present Tableaux Rosa, a two-person show featuring paintings by Kate Meissner and Regina Parra. In their own ways, these artists draw from theater and cinema to infuse their paintings with corporeal narratives that suggest female liberation, anxiety, ecstasy or catharsis, feelings heightened by their use of color and form.
In Kate Meissner’s work, the human body becomes character and prop: repeated and abstracted in various tightly rendered scenes. Idealized feminine forms are partially lit, their faces turned away, omitted entirely or obscured in shadow. Amidst curtains or in a dressing room, the figures take pleasure in a performance of remaining unknown to us. Their presence is amplified through vibrant color and dramatic lighting – Meissner accentuates the curve of a hip or a breast in velvety, contrasting hues that render her characters otherworldly. Meissner uses bright reds or violets next to acid greens or electric blues to create an optical tension. Her colors vibrate next to one another as a way to seduce us to keep looking. In Vertigo, Meissner fixes our gaze on the torso of a figure who leans with one leg stretched out in an exaggerated pose. Her legs gape open, emphasized by a weblike, latex suit that acts to camouflage her into a futuristic chamber. Meissner creates a sense of illusion and artificiality, invites us into a vulnerable moment while empowering her subject – a complicated psychology and perhaps driven by the artist’s own desire to destabilize.
—Emily Davidson