NEW YORK, NY.- Jack Geary Contemporary announced the opening of his inaugural exhibition, Ayse Wilson: Recent Works. Featuring Wilson’s recent paintings and works on paper, the exhibition focuses on childhood experiences, nostalgia and the uneasy transition to adulthood. The show is on view February 8 - 24 at Site/109, a pop-up space for exhibitions, located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

“In her recent work, Ayse Wilson mines the threshold between infancy and adolescence, innocence and experience,” writes Peter Benson Miller, an independent curator.

Inspired by her imagination and found photographs, Wilson paints images of children, in isolation as well as in groups, all set against monochromatic backgrounds. Examining themes of fantasy and innocence, the figures are generalized and take on an illustrative quality that recalls cartoons and Japanese anime.

Her atmospheric compositions convey a sense of tense nostalgia. At a time when children seem to be growing up too quickly, Wilson’s work explores the contrasts and commonalities of childhood and adulthood. It is a reminder that the vulnerability and innocence present during one’s youth remain important parts in formulating one’s identity. One can’t help asking, “Do we really have to grow up?”

Ayse Wilson: Recent Works is open from February 8 – 24 at Site/109 (109 Norfolk Street, between Rivington and Delancey, New York City).

Ayse Wilson is a Turkish-American artist who lives and works in New York City. She is represented by the PG Art Gallery in Istanbul and Jack Geary Contemporary in New York. She studied classical painting in Florence, Italy and received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2004. Shortly following, she worked for several years as a painting assistant to Jeff Koons, assisting with large-scale, photo-realistic paintings. Her work has been exhibited internationally, in both Turkey and New York.