“A spiritual panacea for a slick, superficial digital age.” -Howard Hurst, Hyperallergic

“Incontrovertible proof that an exhibition needn’t be big to have a lasting impact. Don’t miss this one.” – Doug McClemont, Saatchi Online Magazine

“The three women rock insouciant shapes using monochromatic color, humble materials, and simple drawing techniques.” – Sharon Butler, Two Coats of Paint

The ArtBridge Drawing Room is very pleased to present MsBehavior, a three-women exhibition featuring the paintings and drawings of Amy Feldman, Polly Shindler and Amanda Valdez. Be it on canvas or scratch paper, sturdy, near-primal shapes assert their right to take up space and interact, while the handling of materials, unsteady edges and uncertain compositions activate the work with energy, humor and disheveled charm.

Even as they further articulate their shapes in paint, gesso and fabric, the finished works retain the rough immediacy of their preliminary sketches. For Feldman, moments of material misconduct shake up established compositional codes, while Shindler’s scratch marks aim to evoke a primitive age of symbol and ritual. Valdez also leaves room for her materials to act out, situating the resulting mess in the context of human experience, “culturally, the ideal of perfection carries a high value and currency,” she says “the experience I have is of being imperfect—continuously imperfect even in the process of making.”

AMY FELDMAN is an abstract painter, exhibiting work nationally and internationally. Her works undermine the logic of geometric stability, as soft-uneven lines create forms that question solidity. Feldman’s approach to painting is both blunt and indulgent. She creates paintings that are awkward, yet poised, soliciting purity and imperfection. Her rigorous exploration of figure/ground relationships coupled with her nonchalant application of paint, often dovetail to suggest the root of her work; a subtle mixture of formalism and humor. Amy Feldman received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA from Rutgers University. She has been a Visiting Artist at Virginia Commonwealth University, Lehman College, and Wave Hill, and received a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant. She also was awarded fellowships from VCUArts, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Amy Feldman recently received a fellowship from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation and is preparing for a solo exhibition at Blackston Gallery, New York and a solo exhibition at AnnaElleGallery, Stockholm, Sweden.

POLLY SHINDLER was born in New Haven, CT in 1977. She received her BA in History from the University of Massachusetts in 2001 and recently received her MFA in Painting at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Polly was recently named one of “30 Artists to Watch in 2012” by NY Arts Magazine. Recent shows include SCOPE art fair, Chromophilia at Brooklyn Artists Gym and Paper/Work at Rogue Space Gallery. She resides in Brooklyn and has a studio in Bushwick.

AMANDA VALDEZ is a Brooklyn based artist, born in Seattle, Washington. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City and BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, additionally she studied at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Amanda has been the recipient of a Yaddo Artist-in-Residency, MacDowell Colony Artist-in-Residency, the 2011 College Art Association MFA Professional-Development Fellowship, and is a contributing arts editor at Dossier Journal and Bomb Magazine. Recent shows include Faraway Neighbor at Flux Factory, Queens, Don’t Fence Me In…Or Out at Lesley Heller Workspace, New York City, and Xanadu: A Stately Pleasure Dome at Soil Gallery, Seattle.