Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to open the 2018 exhibition season with a solo show featuring new oil paintings by Brooklyn artist Josette Urso.
Teetering between the urban and natural, Josette Urso makes paintings
working directly and urgently in response to her immediate environment. Her approach involves moment-to-moment extrapolation governed by intuitive leaps of scale, color and wayward geometry. The play of visual coincidence creates pleasures, just as it keys us into the generative power of chaos. In all her work, Urso’s visual contrasts and cross-fertilizations unfold and are cumulative, non-linear, free flowing and interpretive. Space becomes an ambiguous and malleable substance; its manipulation and acrobatic mark-making become a kind of gymnasium of expertly-placed color and shape.
“For me, painting parallels the act of seeing and is the most direct link to private time with the physical world. Despite the urgency of my process, as I work, time still slows down. My work becomes a record of this exploration and a reflection of my inherent energy and reason for living.” - Josette Urso, 2017
The artist is the recipient of grants from The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Basil H. Alkazzi Award, USA and the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation and has been honored with residencies at Yaddo, Ucross Foundation, and The Millay Colony for the Arts in the United States, as well as residencies in Spain, France, Germany, Ireland, Cambodia and Taiwan. Urso’s artwork has been acquired by numerous museums and private collections worldwide including The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, Stadtmuseum, Schwandorf, Germany and Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, OH, to name a few. Urso lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
