Monya Rowe Gallery is very pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Josephine Halvorson.

In Clockwise From Window, Halvorson presents us with a suite of intimate paintings, depicting everyday and often overlooked objects, such as a wooden shelf, the remains of a project, or a gravestone. Each painting evokes a memory, time, or place, and invites the viewer – like the artist – to have a direct relationship with the object itself. While these curious objects depicted demand introspection, the luscious, confident brushstrokes are a reminder of the physicality of the object itself.

Painting on-site and in a single session, Halvorson’s practice is a conversation with an object in its own environment. Drawn to the physicality of the form, rather than its’ metaphysical holdings, Halvorson uses paint to attune our own perception. Her keen eye for nuances in the familiar allows for unexpected insights: we’ve all seen a panel door or a cast shadow, but it is through Halvorson’s acute observation that something new can be revealed.

While the objects depicted are not selected to fulfill a theme or create a particular story, they lend themselves to a visual narrative, and a linguistic expression as well. The sequence of the works in the gallery, identified by the titles, is arranged in a mnemonic “poem-list” for the viewer to hold and take away: yet another transformation of our own perception.

Drawing inspiration from the still lifes of William Nicholson (1872 – 1949), and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699 – 1779), Halvorson’s paintings of objects, even moments, that linger at the edge, at the periphery, of ones daily life, metaphorically remind us to look at the glass itself, rather than looking through the glass. In Wire Clippings (2009), discarded metal scraps lay unsystematically upon a concrete slab. The wires, arbitrary and useless, are disorienting at first glance, but then we realize just how familiar the unrecognizable is.

Josephine Halvorson received a MFA from Columbia University, a BFA from The Cooper Union, both in New York City, and has undergone studies at Yale University School of Art Norfolk Program in Connecticut. In 2003, Halvorson was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Vienna, Austria, and in 2007 received a yearlong residency to the Fondation des Etats-Unis in Paris, France. Her work has recently been exhibited at Sikkema Jenkins & Co, Taxter & Spengemann, Deitch Projects and Monya Rowe Gallery. Earlier this year her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at VoltaNY in New York presented by Monya Rowe Gallery. Halvorson lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.