The Painting Center is pleased to present New Paintings and Works on Paper by Emily Berger in the Project Room. In these works Berger explores the horizontal elements of the grid often dispensing almost entirely with the vertical. Using a limited palette of both subdued and heightened earth tones she paints, scrapes, wipes, covers and uncovers lines and bands in various states of solidity and transparency. Rhythmic intervals of color and light evoke a sensation of movement across, up and down and in and out of a shallow space. Here the graphic looping line in some of her recent work seems to have been flattened and compressed leaving somewhat rounded edges and hints of organic form, around and through which further depth is suggested. Her slightly off-kilter compositions and unstable line increase the feeling of tension and contained movement in these evocative works.

Emily Berger lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited internationally and in the United States in many galleries, colleges, universities and museums including the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, Colombia and the National Academy Museum, New York City, which awarded her the John Hultberg Memorial Prize for Painting in 2008. Most recently her work was included in It’s All Good! at the Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn and in the Splendor of Dynamic Structure at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University as well as at American Abstract Artist exhibits in Otranto, Italy and in Berlin. Her work can also be seen in the American Abstract Artists 75th Anniversary Show opening this month at the OK Harris Gallery in New York City. Berger attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was a resident at the Millay Colony among others. She is a graduate of Brown University and holds a MFA from Columbia University.