Anya Kielar
Anya Kielar creates collages, and works on paper called “sprayograms” that focus on the female form. Reminiscent of Metaphysical art, Kielar’s work draws connections between everyday objects, art, and its maker. Kielar’s multi-dimensional compositions incorporate a specific selection of inanimate objects with lineages to artifacts from ancient civilizations, the culture of fashion, and folk art. Literally created from Kielar’s material possessions–shoes, gloves, clothes, and accessories–female figures from her imagination take shape.
Her works on paper, the sprayograms, are conceptually based in photography. On life-size sheets of paper, Kielar uses monochromatic airbrushed paint to spray over the carefully placed objects. The white paper becomes the positive space of the image. Visually suggestive of photomontage and photographic negatives, the traces leave behind a floating abyss of appendages and skeletons. In Window Sprayogram (2008) fabrics are skin textures, pearl necklaces outline the eyes of Egyptian-like profiles, and lace gloves come alive as hands. Kielar’s three-dimensional collages, scaled to the human body, are large and open shadowboxes that utilize the objects from the sprayograms to physically compose the female characters confined within them. Like severed marionettes, the uncanny women are frozen and on display as the Other. As her counterparts, Kielar’s works question female …
Anya Kielar creates collages, and works on paper called “sprayograms” that focus on the female form. Reminiscent of Metaphysical art, Kielar’s work draws connections between everyday objects, art, and its maker. Kielar’s multi-dimensional compositions incorporate a specific selection of inanimate objects with lineages to artifacts from ancient civilizations, the culture of fashion, and folk art. Literally created from Kielar’s material possessions–shoes, gloves, clothes, and accessories–female figures from her imagination take shape.
Her works on paper, the sprayograms, are conceptually based in photography. On life-size sheets of paper, Kielar uses monochromatic airbrushed paint to spray over the carefully placed objects. The white paper becomes the positive space of the image. Visually suggestive of photomontage and photographic negatives, the traces leave behind a floating abyss of appendages and skeletons. In Window Sprayogram (2008) fabrics are skin textures, pearl necklaces outline the eyes of Egyptian-like profiles, and lace gloves come alive as hands. Kielar’s three-dimensional collages, scaled to the human body, are large and open shadowboxes that utilize the objects from the sprayograms to physically compose the female characters confined within them. Like severed marionettes, the uncanny women are frozen and on display as the Other. As her counterparts, Kielar’s works question female identity and carve an avant-garde niche with their process and aesthetic.
Kielar has had solo exhibitions in New York at Rachel Uffner Gallery, Casey Kaplan, and Daniel Reich Gallery, as well as in Miami at Locust Projects. Her work has been included in group exhibitions in New York at Marianne Boesky, Taxter and Spengemann, and Rivington Arms, among other galleries.
Courtesy of Casey Kaplan
