Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to open our 2015 exhibition schedule with a solo exhibition featuring six large oil paintings by Andrea Kantrowitz.
Kantrowitz’s new series of paintings is titled Daughters of Leucippus, and is a close and precise observation of the fibers, tissues and corpuscles of torn fruit and vegetables. In the paintings, fruit acts as a surrogate for the human body bringing all its implied seduction, destruction and regeneration. To make this substitution more explicit, the artist has borrowed the title of a Peter Paul Rubens painting, The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus from 1618. The artist closely observed Rubens’ work and describes it as “teeming with anecdote and allegory, as alive to the sense of touch as to the eye, every inch of the Rubens majestic painting seemed to swirl and twist under one’s gaze, as close to living flesh as any artist has every gotten with oil paint and brush”. In Kantrowitz’s series, the translucency of fruit flesh and the papery skin of a garlic bulb are given the same painterly attention as Rubens’ daughters. They are expressive forms captured in motion. In these paintings, the viewer is invited to look beyond a literal description of torn fruit to see what else can be discovered. Kantrowitz’s large oil paintings evidence a passionate embrace of traditional materials and techniques as well as precise and intense observation of the subject.
Andrea Kantrowitz completed her undergraduate education at Harvard University, earned her MFA at the acclaimed Yale University School of Art and recently completed a doctorate at Columbia University. She is a professor at Tyler Schoolof Art, an author, and has led workshops internationally on drawing and cognition.
