All Inside of Itself, Close

Press Release

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery is pleased to present All Inside of Itself, Close, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Brooklyn based artist Yevgeniya Baras.

For All Inside of Itself, Close, Baras continues to work intuitively in her medium while taking an expansive step forward in both the scale and structure of her paintings. Remaining faithful to the materiality and autobiographical nature of her more intimately sized works, here the artist pushes into larger canvases, incorporating found materials into allegorical, albeit elusive constructions. Embedded with found and collected objects, including wood, tire rubber, human hair, stones, and family bedsheets, Baras’ heavily worked canvases evolve almost archeologically, with an equal consideration for the painted surface and the architecture of materials beneath.

Throughout these poetic abstractions, Baras traces a wide-ranging continuum of experiences, from that of the body, to language, to landscape, and anthropology -- and their attendant symbology. Through the canvases’ rich surfaces, allusions emerge slowly, the many modes of application (embroidery, collage, quilting, wood working) lending a depth to both the physical and semiotic structure of the painting. Only at this point does the imagery arise, pivoting upon each authentic translation and interpretation of the work. Despite the specificity of her personal, pictorial vocabulary, the work’s impact is direct in any context, and rewards a multiplicity of readings.

Yevgeniya Baras received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA in Fine Arts and Psychology as well as an MS in Education from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions, including recent group exhibitions at Gavin Brown Enterprise; Murray Guy; White Columns; and KANSAS, NY, as well as a solo exhibition at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, NY in 2015. In 2014, Baras was awarded a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. The artist recently completed residencies at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, in New York, NY, and the MacDowell Colony Residency in Peterborough, NH. Baras is a cofounder of the artist-run gallery Regina Rex, and lives and works in New York City.