NEW YORK, NY.- Marianne Boesky Gallery announced representation of artist Gina Beavers, whose sculptural paintings explore the digital landscapes of our everyday lives. Several of Beavers’ paintings are included in the gallery’s summer group exhibition, Painting/Sculpture, which examines the continued blurring of boundaries between painting and sculpture and highlights the depth and interest of works that live in the liminal space between. Painting/Sculpture is on view across both the gallery’s Chelsea locations through August 9. A solo presentation of Beavers’ work is being planned for spring 2020. In addition to her presentations at Marianne Boesky Gallery, Beavers’ work is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York. Gina Beavers: The Life I Deserve marks Beavers’ first solo museum show and is on view through September 2, 2019.

“Gina’s works are incredible in their articulation of critical conversations in both contemporary art practice and in our wider society. She has an innate ability to play with and push the limits of our understanding of artistic hierarchies and disciplines, as well as to reflect to us our own cultural ideals—for better or worse. We are excited to have her join the gallery, and to bring wider attention to her dynamic work and vision,” said Marianne Boesky. “We also look forward to collaborating with Foxy Production, who will also continue to work with and support Gina in New York.”

Beavers’ practice is grounded in an exploration of the digital realm, as a window into contemporary culture, and the visual material that shapes our understanding of ourselves and the universe in which we exist. Drawing on images taken from Instagram, YouTube, image databases, and other online sources, she creates thick, tactile paintings that capture, in deeply visceral ways, the curated and often superficial nature of our digital lives. By examining the ubiquity and uniformity of certain types of images—from our selfie culture to our obsession with “food porn”—Beavers also highlights the ongoing flattening of identity and individuality through an unspoken but seemingly mutual agreement on what constitutes beauty, happiness, and a life well lived. In instances, she melds her subjects and objects, as images of food imply or become body parts or items of emotional value are represented as kitschy collectibles. Together, through her varied sources and works, Beavers mirrors our values back to us in unflinching, bold, and sometimes grotesque ways, offering a straightforward presentation that also leaves open the opportunity for personal reflection and critique.

The power of Beavers’ paintings is also intrinsically tied to her process of making. To produce the sculptural effects that have become synonymous with her work, Beavers’ builds up acrylic paint so densely on the canvas that she is able to sculpt it with a knife. This results in faces, lips, nude torsos, foods, and consumer objects that protrude exuberantly from the surface plane, giving her work an intense physical presence that actively engages and compels the viewer. In instances, Beavers also introduces foam into the process, giving certain works additional structure, including those currently presented at Marianne Boesky Gallery. Beavers’ use of bright and contouring colors also adds fullness and weight to the experience of her canvases. Within her process, Beavers’ conceptual and formal interests converge, as she looks to push the possibilities of paint to its sculptural height while also subverting the flatness of the digital image back into three dimensions. Beavers’ ongoing play with notions of reality and physicality provides a dynamic platform through which to consider wider cultural and social dialogues.

Painting/Sculpture, currently on view, features several of Beavers’ paintings exploring stock photography of women’s lips. Initially mimicking the sexuality and suggestiveness of advertisements for make-up, the paintings emerge as wider explorations of representation in art, as the lipstick tubes are replaced with paintbrushes. Of the work Beavers, says, “I am interested in these stock photos, both in the questions they pose about advertising ‘woman painter’ or ‘woman with paintbrush’ and my relationship to them; they serve in a way as an autobiographical portrait.” Here, the format is also important, with each individual painting presented as a side of a large-scale, three-dimensional cube—continuing Beavers experimentation with the limits of painting and sculpture. Beavers continues, “The presentation relates to the way you can collage your photos onto a virtual cube in social media apps, or order actual, physical cubes of photos from your drugstore photo center. In the process the individual pieces become one and sit in the space as a sculpture."

Gina Beavers (b. 1974; Athens, Greece) creates paintings and installations inspired by photos culled from the internet and social media and rendered in high acrylic relief. Her series have included paintings that are based on body painting, social media snapshots of food, make-up tutorials, memes, and bodybuilder selfies. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at galleries including Michael Benevento, Los Angeles; GNYP Gallery, Berlin; Carl Kostyal, London; James Fuentes, New York; Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York; Cheim and Read, New York; and Canada Gallery, New York, among others. In March 2019, MoMA PS1 opened Beavers’ first solo museum exhibition, Gina Beavers: The Life I Deserve, which remains on view through September 2, 2019. Her work has also been included in group presentations at Kentucky Museum of Contemporary Art, Louisville; Nassau County Museum of Art, New York; Flag Art Foundation, New York; William Benton Museum of Art, Connecticut; and Abrons Art Center, New York. Beavers holds a BA in Studio Art and Anthropology from the University of Virginia (1996), an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2000) and an MS in Education from Brooklyn College (2005). She currently lives and works in New Jersey.