Collette Blanchard Gallery is pleased to present Too Good to be True, which will include an installation, performances, and a selection of archival prints by multimedia artist Rachel Hovnanian. This exhibition will be on view at 26 Clinton Street from May 26 – June 30, 2010.

Hovnanian’s work engages the politics of beauty with minimal forms that expose intricate relationships that humans have to one another and inanimate objects. Her minimalist palette is nearly completely devoid of color; gray shadows reveal the soft dimensionality of her sculpted installations. The seemingly pure, neutral palette used in her work contrasts, and thus emphasizes the disturbing, and complex nature of perceived beauty and its delimiting consequences. To quote the artist, her palette “imparts…the precursor to reflection.” As such, it becomes impossible to avoid the tensions of dependence, decorum and control that pervade her work. In Hovnanian’s print, The Collector, a seated male, his back to the viewer, gazes at the items in his collection-one of which is a poised, life-size female trophy. Objectified to the extreme-literally a female sculpted as object-the figure is dressed as a beauty queen. Her colorless eyes and timid grin face the audience, lacking any particular direction of their own.

Ms. Hovnanian lives and works in New York City and received her education at Parsons School of Design, the National Academy of Design, The Art Students League, and the University of Texas. Her work is exhibited internationally and includes shows at the Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, Jason McCoy Gallery, Meredith Long & Company, David Beitzel Gallery, and Ann Kendall Richards Gallery. Hovnanian’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Europe, and Elle Décor; she was recently interviewed on NPR.

A catalogue will accompany the exhibition.