In The Raw: The Female Gaze on The Nude
A Group Show of 20 Female Artists
Curated by Indira Cesarine and Coco Dolle
The Untitled Space Gallery
45 Lispenard St. Unit 1W NY 10013
Opening Reception:
May 3rd 6-9pm
Request Invite: events@untitled-space.com
Exhibit on View: May 4-21
Special Extended Dates: May 26 – June 4th
Daily hours: 10am – 6pm
(Gallery Closed May 12, May 24, 25, Memorial Day)
This May The Untitled Space is presenting “In The Raw: The Female Gaze on the Nude,” an exhibit of 20 female artists and their intimate vision on the female nude. Curated by Indira Cesarine and Coco Dolle, the exhibit will be on view from May 4-21, and includes works of photography, painting, sculpture, mixed media and video. Throughout history the nude has been the muse of countless artists, yet for the most part, until recently, that perspective has been predominately male. The past several decades have ushered in a new era of powerful female visual storytellers, who focus on their own personal experiences as women, and embrace a vision of the nude that is brave and honest. Each artist brings her own voice to the forefront, whether channeled through an autobiographical point of view, whimsical, raw or erotic lens, it remains fearlessly uncensored.
Exhibiting artists include: Amanda Charchian, Aneta Bartos, Annika Connor, Coco Dolle, Elisa Garcia de la Huerta, Ellen Jong, Indira Cesarine, Jennifer Caviola, Katya Zvereva, Kelsey Bennett, Leah Schrager, Logan White, Loretta Mae Hirsch, Lynn Bianchi, Maria Kreyn, Marianna Rothen, Marie Tomanova, Meredith Ostrom, Sophia Wallace and Victoria de Lesseps.
“In The Raw: The Female Gaze on the Nude” creates a cultural discourse of women on women, a female intervention, so to speak, on patriarchal culture. The “male gaze” which we have grown up with via art, television, media, and advertising is so ingrained in our system that most are unaware it exists. The sexual politics of “the gaze” throughout history have positioned women as an “object of desire” framed by masculine scopophilia. “In The Raw: The Female Gaze on the Nude” aims to explore a perspective less chartered, that of a woman’s eye on another, be it beautiful or shocking, gross or glorious. Of the exhibition, curator Indira Cesarine, states:
“This exhibit presents the work of 20 very different female artists, each with their own visual aesthetic. It is extremely powerful to see a collection of multi-generational work by women on the subject of The Female Gaze. The nudes in the exhibit touch on what many would consider taboo subjects of female rites of passage, sexuality, fear and fantasy. One might ask – are nudes of women by women really any different than those by men? When viewing the work of these artists it is clear that not only do women have a very different voice and treatment of the nude, but also are breaking boundaries with work that often reveals details only a women can understand intimately. The exhibit embraces an intimacy between women, between artist and subject that is fearless and empowering.”
“In The Raw: The Female Gaze on the Nude” reveals and celebrates honest moments while genuine and objective frames of reference expose works that are at once empowered and sensitive. The stories these women tell share rites of passage, passion and sisterhood. It is no secret that the female nude has been admired and addressed throughout history by male artists, yet rarely have we seen it celebrated by so many female artists, who challenge the status quo with a liberating and authentic beauty.
Read below to learn more about the artists of “In The Raw: The Female Gaze on the Nude.”
AMANDA CHARCHIAN
Amanda was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She earned a BFA from Otis College. Her analog aesthetic blurs boundaries and creates a multimedia experience that blends appreciation for the beauty of nature. Her fine art photography and sculptures have been on exhibit around the world. Charchian’s photographic work has been featured in publications such as Vogue, Huffington Post, i-D, Interview, Garage and Purple Magazine. In 2014, Charchian exhibited “Pheromone Hotbox” at Stephen Kasher Gallery in New York, which has culminated in Charchian’s first monograph by the same name. “Pheromone Hotbox” was published in March 2016, and brings together her works between 2012 and 2015. Simultaneously dreamy and erotically charged, Charchian’s work captures the intensity and intimacy of the interaction between photographer and model.
ANETA BARTOS
Aneta Bartos was born in Poland and moved to New York City where she attended The School of Visual Arts. Most recently her work was shown at the ADAA fair at the Park Avenue Armory with Henry Street Settlement curated by Carmen Zita. In 2015, her work was exhibited at Photo London 2015 with Kasher Potamkin Gallery. Earlier that year she participated in a show, Pheromone Hotbox at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York as well as In Your Dreams, curated by Marina T Schindler as a part of Spring/Break Art Show Fair 2015. In early 2013 she exhibited her project titled Boys in a solo show curated by Jon Feinstein at the Carlton Arms Hotel, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Contemporary Practice at The New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester; Women at Suzie Gallery, Tel Aviv; Gilded Forest at Kasher Potamkin Gallery, New York; 31 Women in Art Photography, curated by Natalia Sacasa and Jon Feinstein at Hasted Kraeutler, New York. In 2012, Aneta was commissioned by Neville Wakefield to create an installation for the grand opening of ACME restaurant in New York. In 2010, her collaboration 4Sale was shown in New York, Moscow and Poznan, Poland.
Aneta’s work has been reviewed and featured in New York Magazine, Time Magazine, Interview Magazine, Libération, Photograph, T Magazine, Time Out New York, Vice, Elephant, Osmos, Secret Behavior, Purple, Artinfo, Hyperallergic, Modern Painters Daily, The Huffington Post and Artforum.com among others.
ANNIKA CONNOR
Swedish-American artist, Annika Connor, is a Contemporary Romantic painter. Her work depicts a sense of haunted mystery and a fascination with beauty. In 2002, Connor received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied painting and philosophy. Since then, Connor has worked professionally as a painter in New York, London, and Stockholm while participating in numerous national and international exhibitions. She was cited as one of the “5 Rising Art Stars” by the Huffington Post. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, where she maintains an active studio. Recent exhibits of Annika Connor’s work at The Untitled Space include “Flora/Fauna”, a solo show of works by the artist revolving around nature, as well as participation in our group shows “Human/Nature” and “The ‘F’ Word: Feminism in Art”.
COCO DOLLE
Coco Dolle is an artist, curator and performer based in New York. She is the director of Milk and Night, an intergenerational platform producing event, performances and symposiums on feminism. Her curatorial vision focuses on bridging interdisciplinary works and has been exhibited at Select Fair (2014) and Gallery Sensei (2014-2015). Ms. Dolle has gained a reputation working with numerous established artists in the feminist community such as the Guerrilla Girls, Betty Tompkins, Narcissister, Nancy Azara, Kembra Pfahler, India Salvor Menuez and Bianca Casady.
Dolle’s artistic practice explores the perception of the feminine and the female archetypes in the canons of collective memory including pop culture and ancient myth. Her work as an interdisciplinary artist crosses over from painting to photography, digital media and performance art. Her work has been exhibited, screened and performed internationally including at the Berkeley Museum (CA), Brooklyn Academy of Music (NYC), Yukiko Kawase Galerie (Paris, France), Manchester Art Gallery (UK), Armory Show (NYC), Mary Ryan Gallery (NYC), The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), Fountain Fair (Miami, FL), Select Fair (Miami, FL), Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (NYC) and Deitch Projects (NYC). She has been featured in ArtForum, The NY Times and Purple Magazine amongst other publications. She is a grant recipient of Arts Council England (2016) and the Art Student’s League of New York (1999). Her works are included in numerous private and corporate collections. Ms.Dolle was born in Avignon, France. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
ELISA GARCIA DE LA HUERTA
Elisa Garcia de la Huerta was born 1983 in Santiago, Chile and is an interdisciplinary artist and holistic Ayurveda practitioner. She received her BFA at Universidad Finis Terrae, Chile in 2006 and her MFA at the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2011. Elisa has shown her photography and multimedia textile video installations of performance at the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum, Whitney Museum, Momenta Art, C24 Gallery and Soho20 Gallery in New York. She has also exhibited internationally in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo Historico Militar, Galeria Artespacio in Santiago, Chile as well as Select Art Fair for Miami Basel and Busan, Korea. Her work has been featured in numerous magazines such as Dazed and Confused, Huffington Post, Slutist, ART 21 Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Wild Magazine, NY Observer and Paper Magazine, among others. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she develops her art practice independently and is a co-leader of Go! Push Pops, a queer, transnational feminist performance art collective.
ELLEN JONG
Ellen Jong’s practice is rooted in conceptual interventions and autobiographical themes. Her mixed media works are shaped by questions about self-awareness and relationships in a world of dualities, desire, spirituality, survival and love. Using photography, text, sculptures, tools, and objects of the vernacular, she has developed a syntax that is driven by personal narrative. Jong’s early work focused largely on street reportage and portraiture and is the influence for her more recent mixed media work that touches on themes of social human behavior and the human condition. Jong is perhaps known best for her first major series, the infamous “Pees on Earth” photographs (1997-2005), featuring the artist urinating in a variety of public settings in the “pursuit of owning territory, body, rebellious antics, and the un-ownable.” Jong is also the author of her self-published second monograph, Getting To Know My Husband’s Cock (2010), which was additionally exhibited in a solo show at Allegra LaViola gallery in 2012. Jong lives and works in NYC and Upstate NY.
INDIRA CESARINE
Indira Cesarine is a multimedia artist who works with photography, video, painting, printmaking and sculpture. Her work has been featured internationally at many art galleries, museums and festivals, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Images Gallery, French Embassy Cultural Center, Art Basel Miami, Cannes Film Festival and the International Festival Photo Mode to name a few. In 2014, her public art sculpture, “The Egg of Light” was exhibited at Rockefeller Center.
Touted as a “child prodigy,” Cesarine’s first solo exhibition was at the age of sixteen at the Paul Mellon Arts Center. She began her studies in art from the age of six years old, and by the age of eleven was creating large scale works of oil on canvas. She continued her studies in painting and photography at Choate Rosemary Hall, Parson’s School of Design and The International Center of Photography. She graduated with a BA from Columbia University in Art History, French and Women’s Studies. While completing her degree, she worked as a photographer for top modeling agencies including Elite, Ford and Wilhelmina Models. Upon graduation she continued her photography career in London where she was awarded commissions by British Vogue, GQ and many other international titles while still in her early twenties. As a photographer, she focused on creating empowering images of women that encapsulated strength, sensitivity and intelligence. Over the past twenty years, her work has been published in hundreds of international magazines. Her work as a director has included music videos, documentary shorts, fashion and video art films.
In 2009, she launched the globally distributed publication “The Untitled Magazine” of which she is currently editor-in-chief. Her work as a curator includes exhibits “The ‘F’ Word: Feminism in Art” a group show of 20 female artists, “Human/Nature” a group show revolving around environmental themes and “Allegories of The Held”, a solo show of works by artist Jennifer Caviola aka Cake, as well as “The Voyeur” exhibit at Art Basel Miami sponsored by The American Friends of The Louvre. She continues to explore her creative vision as an artist vis-a-vis traditional and new mediums, and finds strength in examining new ideas in contemporary culture. Cesarine lives and works in Tribeca, New York.
JENNIFER CAVIOLA
Artist Jennifer Caviola aka CAKE over the past ten years has made a name for herself as one of the most prominent female street artists. Aside from being widely exhibited in galleries, she has had installations in NYC, Berlin, Chicago, Miami, Iran, and many more around the US. Her recognizable style, which features figurative portraits of women, has been widely documented and has gained her praise from art critics and fans alike. She has become known for her acrylics on paper which are either wheatpasted or painted directly on walls around the city, as well as her acrylics on wood which are beautifully haunting and feminine. Her work expresses her support of women through a voice of solidarity. A graduate of Pratt Institute (BFA in Painting) and Parsons School of Design (MFA), Cake’s works have been exhibited at numerous galleries and exhibitions, including a solo show at The Untitled Space in July 2015, “Allegories Of The Held,” as well as public works such as The Gateway Project’s Mural in Newark Penn Station “Cast the Burden and the Light Will Impress”.
KATYA ZVEREVA
Artist Katya Zvereva focuses her work on imagery charged with the erotic. Her practice includes painting, drawing and woodcut printmaking. She was born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg, Russia) in 1990 and received her Master’s Degree in Architecture from The Moscow State Academic Institute named after V.I. Surikov in Russia. She is currently working towards an MFA degree at New York Academy of Art and lives and works in New York City.
KELSEY BENNETT
Referred to by Vanity Fair as a “photographer specializing in the surreal,” Kelsey Bennett is noted for a style that depicts a “super-real life.” At the age of twelve, Bennett was taught by her grandmother to develop photos in the darkroom. Now 28 years old, Bennett has studied photography at Parsons School of Design, Savannah College of Art and Design (abroad in France), and earned a business degree from Berklee College of Music. Kelsey has shot for FLATT Magazine, BULLETT, and backstage at fashion week for designers Prabal Gurung and Alexander Wang. Kelsey has assisted photographers Annie Leibovitz, Danielle Levitt, and Lele Saveri. In 2010, Bennett had her first solo exhibition “Hypnogogia” with The Christopher Henry Gallery. Since then, she has had a solo show with Gawker Artists titled, “On The Lam”. Her work has also been featured at The Lu Magnus Gallery, Scope Art Fair Miami, and Fountain Art Fair in New York. Over the past year, Kelsey has been working with her grandfather, singer Tony Bennett, on his Duets II album. For this project, she traveled the world photographing legends such as Amy Winehouse, Willie Nelson, and Lady Gaga. The photos were shown at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York. Bennett is also the art director for the New York based band, Skaters, with whom she directed her first music video, and was recognized by BULLETT magazine as “…an exciting young visual artist.” Kelsey recently co-curated an exhibit at the National Arts Club including over 30 artists. She shoots polaroids regularly for Interview Magazine and she is currently working as the art curator on the new Todd Solondz movie. In celebration of the historic supreme court ruling legalizing same sex marriage Kelsey has created a pride T-shirt in collaboration with art and object store, Object-ify 139.
LEAH SCHRAGER
Leah Schrager is an artist who works between the web and NYC. She graduated in 2015 with an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons, The New School. In her work she photographs, appears in, augments and markets her own image. She is interested in the line, movement and biography of the female body. In 2010 she founded a new form of therapy as Sarah White, The Naked Therapist. She also co-curated the female-positive “BodyAnxiety.com” exhibition which was featured in the April 2015 issue of Art Forum. Her current project Ona, an artist and musician, evolved out of the question of celebrity as art practice. Her first EP, “Sex Rock,” was released in late February along with a retrospective of her work at Superchief Gallery in Soho, New York.
LOGAN WHITE
Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007, US-based photographer Logan White has been featured in Interview Magazine, Vice and NYLON. Inspired by the Japanese photographer, Nobuyoshi Araki, her photography often depicts mysterious imagery with a romantic or feminine edge. She played upon this notion in her recent involvement with the all-girl zine/photo project, teenVAG. Aside from her published works, White has exhibited internationally at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, London, Dublin, Rome, and Australia among others. She was recently featured at Spring / Break Art Show in 2016.
LORETTA MAE HIRSCH
Loretta Mae Hirsch studied at the Glasgow School of Art, received her BFA at Savannah College of Art & Design, and obtained her MFA at the New York Academy of Art. Known for her figurative paintings and drawings, Loretta has developed a personal mythology reclaiming the female body. Creatively, she uses both traditional materials and non-traditional materials, like sequins and glitter, in her work. Notable exhibitions include Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation at Mana Contemporary Art Center, Hionas Gallery, Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Flowers Gallery and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Loretta currently lives and works in New York, NY.
LYNN BIANCHI
Lynn Bianchi is a New York City-based, fine art photographer and multimedia artist. She has shown work in over thirty solo exhibitions and in museums worldwide, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan; the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; Musée Ken Damy, Brescia, Italy; 21c Museum, Louisville, Kentucky and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada. Her photographic art has been featured in over forty publications, including The Huffington Post and the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture in the U.S., Vogue Italia, Zoom in Italy, Phot’Art International in France, and GEO in Germany. Bianchi’s work resides in numerous private collections across the globe as well as in museum collections including The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas; the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Biblioteque Nationale de France, Paris. She recently exhibited in New York City at the Armory Show at Salomon Arts Gallery, in a two-person show at One Art Space, and in a two-person exhibition at Shchukin Gallery.
Lynn Bianchi’s work is suspended between Henri Cartier-Bresson’s idea that to photograph is “to hold one’s breath with all faculties converged in an effort to capture fleeting reality, and the belief that flowing processes that transcend reality cannot be entirely captured by static images.” Through her multimedia approach, she captures the natural world illustrating our motivations and emotions, looking for the precise moment when mastering a static or moving image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy. The perpetual movements of an ocean, or the endless variations of a skyscape, reflect in Bianchi’s work our shifting internal gestures and motions – in a constant movement from still to moving images where the eternal is reconciled with the quotidian.
MARIA KREYN
Maria Kreyn is a Russian figurative artist, painter, wanderer, adventurer, and thinker. She has exhibited internationally, has been published in a variety of magazines and books, and her work can be found in collections throughout the United States and Europe. Most recently, her paintings have been featured as a focal point and narrative vehicle in the ABC tv drama, The Catch.
Maria’s work delves into the inner-most workings of the human condition—it’s passion and isolation. The images gesture at qualities that are eternal, aiming to momentarily pause, what Sontag calls, ‘that relentless melt of time.’ Maria’s paintings create an illusion of real life without looking photographic. They blend old master techniques into contemporary life and offer the viewer an experience of a deep, contemplative space. Maria currently lives in New York City and has her studio in Brooklyn, New York.
MARIANNA ROTHEN
Marianna Rothen was born in 1982 in Canada and currently lives in New York City. After becoming a model at age 15, Marianna spent several years traveling, working and documenting her experience through photographs. Rothen now focuses her photography on female characters within the scope of a nostalgic dystopia. Combined with decrepit interiors, wilderness, and seductive subjects, Rothen’s photographs emanate overtones of mystery and dissatisfaction that become part of a larger narrative.
Rothen uses natural or available light and mixes traditional photographic processes with digital media. Since 2007 her work has been exhibited internationally in New York, Paris, Sydney, Cologne and Istanbul. In 2012, Rothenʼs work was featured in The Last Seduction, a two-person show that appeared at the Hendershot Gallery in New York. During the same year, the artist also had a solo exhibition at Gallery Kaune, Posnik, Spohr in Cologne, Germany titled, Gentle Creatures. In 2014, she released her first book, Snow and Rose & other tales. In 2015, Rothen was part of Pheromone Hotbox, an exhibition showcasing the work of 5 women photographers at Steven Kasher Gallery. Marianna Rothen is currently completing a series of short films, “Fever To Her Plague”.
MARIE TOMANOVA
Marie Tomanova‘s work consists of photographs where she explores issues of gender, identity and sexuality. In combining performance and self-exposure, she creates pictures that challenge the acceptance or rejection of societal norms and expectations in terms of gender identity and sexual orientation. Marie was born in 1984 in former Czechoslovakia. She received her BA at Masaryk University Brno in 2007 and her MFA from Faculty of Fine Arts at University of Technology, Czech Republic in 2010. She has exhibited widely across the USA in galleries such as, A.I.R. Gallery (NY), PPAC, Philadelphia (PA), Black Box Gallery, Portland (OR), Rush Street Gallery, Washington (DC), Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana (CA) and On The Ground Floor, Los Angeles (CA). Her work was published in various magazines across the globe, including, The Observer, Art 21 Magazine, Washington Post, VICE, Bullet Magazine, Bedford+Bowery, Nakid Magazine, Alt Citizen, FOTO (Czech), DRECK (England), SWINE Daily (Slovakia), Off The Rails Magazine (England), Nene Magazine (Germany), Grunge’n’Art (Germany), Sons & Daughters (England), Posh (Mexico), Violette Collective (Spain), among other publications. Marie currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
MEDEDITH OSTROM
Meredith Joy Ostrom is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch school of the Arts where she got her BFA degree with a double major in Fine Arts and Drama. Meredith’s works are related to the dialogue of the tension between the female physical form and the idea of color which represents emotional and intellectual movement. Many of her paintings focus on her own female physical form impressed onto vividly painted canvas. Notable exhibits include her first solo exhibition, “Notable Soul” in March 2009 at Phillips de Pury in London, with proceeds donated to the Youth for Youth international children’s charity. In 2008, her work was exhibited at the Stanton Barrett Gallery in New York. In April 2009, she demonstrated her body painting to an audience of over 500 people at Sketch in London’s Mayfair. She is also known for her role as Andy Warhol’s muse, Nico, in the film “Factory Girl”.
SOPHIA WALLACE
Sophia Wallace is an American conceptual artist and photographer. Wallace incorporates the use of images, video and mixed media in her work in an effort to explore alterity, which is the study of otherness focuses on dismantling the concept of sameness. She examines how the visual has an impact on gender and sexuality with what she calls the “racialized body.” She also explores the relinquishment of gender norms and stereotypes in her work. The Brooklyn-based artist began making waves after spearheading her now widely-acknowledged, highly controversial “Cliteracy” movement – a revolution unto itself, in which she seeks to educate the public through installation art referencing the fantastically-neglected female sexual anatomy. Wallace holds a BA from Smith College and an MA in Photography from NYU and the International Center of Photography. In 2012, she was a Van Lier Fellow. In 2014, she was a speaker at TEDx Salford. She was recently featured in The Untitled Space exhibit, “The ‘F’ Word: Feminism in Art”.
VICTORIA DE LESSEPS
Born 1994, Victoria de Lesseps is a young artist living and working in New York. Currently studying for her BFA at the Pratt Institute, Vicky is exploring notions of the self in the digital media. Her practice is strongly influenced by the mediums of photography and printing. Her work has recently been exhibited at international venues such as Select Fair (FL), Gallery Sensei (NYC), and has been featured in Flavor Pill.
