Over the Hills and Far Away 


   
acrylic on canvas
30 x 60 inches


A Diffident Love Story 1998



acrylic on paper
10 x 20 inches










Over the Hills and Far Away
14 January - 13 February 1998






Sandra Gering Gallery is pleased to present Over the Hills and Far Away, new work by Claudia Hart from 14 January through 13 February 1999.  The exhibition included works on canvas and one wall painting.

Hart's canvases present characters culled from the world of children's literature.  These characters, most of them famously evil or at least provocatively ominous and threatening, are recombined to create open-ended narratives that recall early French Symbolism, at the same time evoking the synthetic sensibility of American Pop Art.  Hart's naratives seem disarmingly simple and playful, but a second look reveals stories that are both ruthless and savagely funny.  Work in the same spirit is A Child's Machiavelli: A Primer on Power, written and illustrated by Hart, published by Penguin Books in September 1998.


The paintings are complimented by a wall painting and video similar in nature and style, first presented the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in 1997.  The wall painting, The Artist's Mouth, combines a leering, Cheshire-cat rendition of Hart's smiling mouth with text from Alice in Wonderland ("eat me").  In the video, Facedancing, the artist paints herself with the same brilliant palette as in her two-dimensional work, and grimaces to the beat of Babywork, her own vocalization done in collaboration with Assassin, a French hip-hop group.


This is Hart's first exhibition in New York since her recent return from Germany and France where she lived for eight years and exhibited widely.  Work related to this series of paintings was most recently shown at The Geneva Center of Contemporary Art, and the John Hansard Gallery, Southhampton, England.  




For further information contact Marianna Baer at 212 226 8195.  Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am - 6pm.