Colette Calascione | Nancy Hoffman Gallery

Colette Calascione

Colette Calascione's first solo show in New York is presented by Nancy Hoffman Gallery in the Project Space, including works of the past three to four years. The exhibition opens on April 22nd and closes on May 16th, 2006. Each oil painting centers around a figure, seated, standing or reclining, and most often nude. While the paintings stretch to 2x3 feet in scale, they are generally of a more intimate size, from 8x10 inches to 20x20 inches, on wood panels.

Colette Calascione, Self Portrait with Internal Landscape,
2004, oil on wood, 30 x 18 inches

Inspired by books and images of earlier eras, particularly the Victorian era, Calascione invents a world that is her own. Images of women and children in old photographs are transformed in the artist's hands. She never literally copies a photo or its background. When she sees a figure she likes, her vision forms around it. Clothed figures in photographs are sometimes undressed by Calascione in her paintings, and placed in a mise-en-scene she creates. Rarely does the environment surrounding the figure come directly from a book or photo, as a "quote."

Colette Calascione, Illumination,
2004, oil on wood, 30 x 20 inches

Colette Calascione, Leda and the Swan,
2005, oil on wood, 26 x 16 inches

Addressing the issue of gender identity and particularly that of "female identity," Calascione's imagination takes her into flights of fancy and fantasy in her paintings. She paints women in all guises, mostly unclothed, sitting on divans brocaded in satin, standing provocatively, looking at the viewer, reclining on a bed surrounded by the stuff of dream and fantasy, purring cats, fairy tale fish, toy soldiers.

Colette Calascione, Sleeper,
2002, oil on wood, 8 x 10 inches

Colette Calascione, Lost at Sea,
2003, oil on wood, 9 x 12 inches

Her "Self-Portrait with Internal Landscape" reveals the artist in a tiered yellow period dress with a roundel of a landscape brooch at her chest being opened by a man's hand, which enters the painting from the right side, a fragment of a person? To the left is a partial view of a table with vase and roses, above this hangs what appears to be a detail of an old photograph. Only a corner of this photo is revealed to the viewer, with curving legs of a table, and legs of a gentleman garbed in a tailcoat. Could this be a romantic connection? A black eye mask--inviting the viewer to peer into the artist's eyes and keeping the viewer at a distance--conceals the artist's pretty and gamine face.

Colette Calascione, Tickle,
2003, oil on copper, 10 x 8 inches

Colette Calascione, Two-Faced Portrait,
2004, oil on wood, 18 x 24 inches

Painted like old master paintings with a careful drawing, a monochromatic under-painting phase followed by many layers of oil, the artist beguiles us with her images and her imagination.

Colette Calascione, Monkey Love,
2004, oil on wood, 30 x 29 inches

Colette Calascione, Persephone,
2002, oil on wood, 8 x 10 inches

Colette Calascione was born in 1971. She received a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, California. Her work has been shown at St. Mary's College, Moraga, California and the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as in many galleries, most notably in the San Francisco area.