Jo Nigoghossian: In The Project Room: The Eastern European Collection and Doll E. Deville

OPENING MARCH 2, 6-8PM

Broadway is pleased to announce a solo exhibition in our Project Room by Albany-based artist Jo Nigoghossian.  A succinct presentation of four new oil paintings—three of her signature flowers, and one of a burlesque performer—the show nicely distills the artist’s preoccupation with melding traditional technique and subjects with psychologically charged, often morally ambiguous and incongruous details that work to destabilize a viewer.

In one work a bountiful bouquet of roses sits on a table strewn with bullets, conjuring beauty and danger in equal measure. In another, we see a bunch of flowers that has seemingly been thrown to the ground, along with a scattered plastic bag of potatoes, and begin to build a broader narrative of violence just outside the frame. Indeed, Nigoghossian is referencing source images from the invasion of Ukraine and its bloody aftermath, with the scattered shopping of fleeing civilians standing in for their dead bodies. The alternately bruised and smoky backgrounds further evoke this state of crisis and destruction, even while they are providing the setting for her twist on traditional still life compositions.

Completing the group is a full-length portrait of the artist’s friend and dancer Doll E. Deville. The risqué is its own mode of aestheticized pleasure and danger, and the vampy subject is adorned with feather fan as with the floral arrangement hanging nearby. In this way, Nigoghossian allows an overlapping continuity to emerge, and the performer is revealed as archetype—powerful, tempting and fleeting in nature.

This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.