NEW YORK, NY.- Nancy Margolis Gallery announces the exhibition, SUMMER 2017, on view through July 29, 2017 introducing two artists, Drea Cofield, and Ping Zheng who are exhibiting their small works on paper; Cofield, watercolors, and Zheng, oil stick paintings.
Drea Cofield is exhibiting a series of watercolor paintings that are appropriations selected from old master etchings. The etchings, satiric commentaries on society of a certain period, range from allegory, pictorial metaphors, to pure fantasy. Taking themes from the etchings the artist illuminates figures acting out scenes of vice, war, hypocrisy, violence, and love. It is an interaction of the human narrative, the inherent frailties that drives the world regardless of the century. These thoughts are paradoxically timely, drawing parallels to the aberrant behavior found currently in American politics.
The artist delineated the subjects with soft form and color, imbuing the paintings with a fragile sensibility. We see unfold acts of violence, a thrusting weapon, a rough encounter, others show tenderness and warmth, effectively making the stories in these small watercolors feel real.
Drea Cofield works and lives in Brooklyn. In 2013, she received her M.F.A from Yale University School of Art (New Haven, CT), and in 2008, her B.A from DePauw University (Geencastle, IN). Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Ideal Glass Gallery (New York, NY) and Durden & Ray (Los Angeles, CA), and group shows at Able Baker Contemporary Gallery (Portland, ME), Stella Elkins Gallery (Philadelphia, PA) and Coustof Waxman Gallery (New York, NY). She did mural commissions for ICFF exhibition in New York and Olde Mecklenbery Brewery. In 2016, She curated “Bomb Pop-Up! Show: A Three-day Three-Story Art & Music Show” in Brookyln, NY. In 2015, She was awarded Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and Gloucester Painting Prize. Recently, she has been featured in Brooklyn Rail and Precog Magazine. The upcoming two-person exhibition, SUMMER 2017 will be her first group exhibition at Nancy Margolis Gallery.
Ping Zheng, born in China, grew up in a traditional Chinese family where being female was synonymous with inferior status. This left her with a low opinion of herself as a woman and a human being. Ping and family lived in many geographic regions with beautiful contrasting landscapes. The outdoors became a solitary playground where she could be herself, fire up her imagination without fear of bringing on the disparagement she faced at home. Today nature is woven into her art and life, remaining central to both.
New worlds opened for Ping when attending western colleges in London, and the United States. Exposed to new ideas of personal freedom, and gender equality she began to absorb these ideas and transfer them to her practice.
The paintings in this exhibition draw on her personal history, past memory, metaphors for all that energized her from within. Transferring powerful feelings into shapes, intense color, remembered landscapes, makes these small paintings strong eloquent soliloquies. Ping’s art is about herself, it is an assertion of the present, a rejection of the past, and a straddling of a line between abstraction and figuration.
Ping Zheng (B. 1989, China) works and lives in Brooklyn. In 2014, She received her B.F.A from University College of London (London, UK), and in 2016, her M.F.A in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI). She was awarded the 1st place in painting at Western Colorado Contemporary Center. In 2016, she did residencies at Vermont Studio Centre (VT), The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences (GA) and Arthub Artist Residency Program (AZ). She participated in a number of group exhibitions, including “RISD 2016 MFA Painting” at Nancy Margolis Gallery (New York, NY), “The Arternative Facts Exhibition" at The Road Gallery (New York, NY), and "Half Master" at Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). The upcoming two-person exhibition, SUMMER 2017 will be her second group exhibition at Nancy Margolis Gallery. She has been featured in Artvoices Magazine, SinoVision English Channel, BBC UK China News and London Evening Standard.
