Whitney Bedford: From here to there

The personal and the historical intertwine in Whitney Bedford's first solo show at Starkwhite.

Installed salon style, referencing the academia painting they warp, a cluster of Arcadian landscapes, shipwrecks, icebergs and migrating birds act both as a personal map and as a metaphor for contemporary life in uncertain, chaotic times. Drafted in ink and lost in the overpainting, the images comefrom academia painting, personal photos and image searches. Conceptually the artist says she likes the paint to sink the images. The paintings become their own act, something foreboding or redeeming or cathartic; less about trials and tribulations, they ultimately become their own votives.

Whitney Bedford received her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003. She was the winner of the 2001 UCLA Hammer Museum Drawing Biennale and received a Fulbright Graduate Fellowship from Hoschule der Kuenste, Berlin. Exhibitions include: Houdini: Art and Magic 1919-1949, The Jewish Museum, New York (2010); This is Killing Me at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2009); X - Snow Falls in the Mountains, St Pauls St Gallery, Auckland University of Technology (2007); Step into Liquid, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2006); The Triumph of Painting, part 5 Which Reality? The Saatchi Gallery London (2005);  CUT , Susan Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles (2005), among others. Whitney Bedford has had solo exhibitions at Susan Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles; Cherrydelosreyes Gallery, Los Angeles; D'Amelio Terras Gallery, New York and at Art Concept, Paris.

image: Whitney Bedford, Untitled shipwreck (rocked), 2010, ink and oil on board, 28" x 37"

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