YEVGENIYA BARAS | JULIA KUNIN
Wild Chambers
September 1 - October 15, 2022

Press:
The New York Times
What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries Right Now, by Roberta Smith

Mother is pleased to present Wild Chambers, a two-person exhibition featuring paintings by Yevgeniya Baras and ceramics by Julia Kunin. This is the first time that Baras and Kunin have exhibited together. Wild Chambers runs from September 1 through October 15, 2022. Mother | Manhattan is located at 368 Broadway Suite 415.

Baras and Kunin work in different mediums—the former in painting, the latter in sculpture. Accentuating process, as well as a visceral, corporeal link to physicality and historicism, the work of each artist transcends its prescribed medium. Teetering between symbolism and abstraction, Baras and Kunin draw from both styles —masterfully transforming modernism into contemporary feminist work. Chambered, multifaceted, and dense, the works command exploration for artist and viewer alike. The show’s title Wild Chambers is referential of Paul Celan’s poem Line the Wordcaves.

The materials on Baras’s canvases are applied densely, layering paint with wood and yarn atop linen and burlap. Her work transcends the concept of ‘painting’: it enters a realm of haptic tangibility, and becomes, all at once, sculptural reliefs, geographic memories, and coded odes to matriarchal space. The lines and naturalistic tones of Untitled (YB005) (2019-21) evoke the vast expanse of long-forgotten places—perhaps revisited from above as if out of the body—while remaining detailed enough for the discernment of subtleties. The works extend beyond the bounds of their settings both literally and figuratively, serving as maps for modes of investigation.

Kunin’s iridescent ceramics merge architecture with the body, evoking the surreal in the service of expressing the coded language of queer desire. The shimmering ceramics contradict themselves, maintaining an aspect of the grotesque in the midst of their otherworldly shine. Kunin’s work transforms notions of the femme fatale into a genderfluid affirmation, thereby using—though simultaneously challenging—tropes from the art nouveau era. In Psychedelic Body (2016), Kunin combines historical luster glazes—stacking sculptural reliefs of symbols—with hand-built linearity.

In Wild Chambers, Baras and Kunin contextualize one another. Each artist creates deeply, inherently physical work: felt in the body, understood in the mind, and equally expressed through both, be it in a violent clash or a burgeoning symbiosis.

Line the Wordcaves
By Paul Celan
Translated by Pierre Joris

Line the wordcaves
with panther skins,

widen them, hide-to and hide-fro,
sense-hither and sense-thither,

give them courtyards, chambers, drop doors
and wildnesses, parietal,

and listen for their second
and each time second and second
tone.


Yevgeniya Baras is an artist working in New York. She has exhibited her work at galleries including White Columns, (New York, NY), Nicelle Beauchene (New York, NY), Reyes Finn Gallery (Detroit, MI), Gavin Brown Enterprise (New York, NY), Inman Gallery, (Houston, TX), Sperone Westwater Gallery (New York, NY), and Thomas Erben Gallery, (New York, NY) as well as internationally. She is represented by the Landing Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) and Sargent’s Daughters (New York, NY). In 2022-23 Yevgeniya will open her solo show in New York at Sargent’s Daughters, and have her third solo show at the Landing in LA. Yevgeniya was named Senior Fulbright Scholar for 2022-23. She was a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2021, the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, the Pollock-Krasner grant and the Chinati Foundation Residency in 2018, and the Yaddo Residency in 2017. She received the Artadia Prize and was selected for the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program and the MacDowell Colony residency in 2015. In 2014 she was named a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Prize. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, LA Times, ArtForum, and Art in America. Yevgeniya co-founded and co-curated Regina Rex Gallery on the Lower East Side of New York (2010-2018). She has curated and co-curated over twenty exhibitions at Regina Rex and other galleries in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Yevgeniya holds a BA in Psychology and Fine Arts and an MA in Education from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA), and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL). Yevgeniya teaches at Rhode Island School of Design.

Julia Kunin is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her work explores themes including queerness, the body, and the natural world. She earned a B.A. from Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA) and an M.F.A. from The Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). Recent solo exhibitions include Mechanical Ballet at Kate Werble Gallery (New York, NY) in 2021 and Rainbow Dream Machine at McClain Gallery (Houston, TX) in 2020-21. Recent group exhibitions include Cosmic Geometries, curated by Hilma’s Ghost, at EFA Gallery (New York, NY) in 2022, Fur Cup at Underdonk (Brooklyn, NY) in 2019, Raw Design at the Museum of Craft and Design (San Francisco, CA) in 2018, and Said by Her at Lesley Heller Gallery (New York, NY) in 2018. Kunin was a Fulbright Scholar to Hungary in 2013. In 2010 She received a Trust for Mutual Understanding Grant to Hungary. In 2008 she received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and a residency at Art Omi. In 2007 she received the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Artist Residency. Fellowships include those at The MacDowell Colony, The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, CEC Artslink grant to The Republic of Georgia, an Artist Residency in Wiesbaden, Germany, Yaddo, The Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, The Core Program in Houston, TX, and Skowhegan. Julia Kunin currently has a series of ceramic lamps at Ralph Pucci International (New York, NY). In 2022 she contributed artist interviews to Two Coats of Paint. She is also a member of the board of FIRE, The LGBTQ Fire Island artist residency. Her work was recently acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA.