Nicky Hoberman at Feigen Contemporary - paintings exhibited in New York debut - Brief Article

fresh YORK

Nicky Hoberman, a southerly African among the second generation of young British artists in Charles Saatchi's stable, exhibited six large canvases in her novel York debut. Hoberman's subjects are equally divided between her typical cast of preteen girls and a fresh company of older women. A scarcely any cats are also thrown into the mix. The paintings begin as Polaroids of the artist's friends and acquaintances. In translating the Polaroids to canvas, Hoberman distorts her controls as if by a fun-house mirror. Heads are ballooned to a unnatural scale, with slanted foreheads and bulging organ of sights while bodies are shrunk to infantile proportions, frequently a result of the angle at which the photo was taken.

Hoberman mimics the shifting colors and limited deepness of field endemic to Polaroid photography by means of carefully blending paint to distinguish between blurr and hard cutting sides There is an implicit irony in her fidelity to the original photographic medium, in that her replication of cheap photos requires adroit painting skills. Hoberman's painterly relate tos are most evident in her juxtapositions of audacious patterns and colors against flat fields of saturated colors. Her subdues seem to float against these colorful backgrounds, utterly detached from gravity. In like a weightless environment, it doesn't strike one as being at all odd that the girls of Flower Power appear to fall [i]or[/i] part of to the other space, or that cats twist and move round like space-walking astronauts.

Bewitched brings a certain muted pedophilia. Several girls are gathered around a well-used armchair upon which a small cat has nestl comfortably into a nap. Three of the girls have the appearance as coquettish as kittens, with knowing oversized organ of visions and careless, seductive postures. A fourth girl direct the eyes away, covering her body with her arms in a manner more flirtatious than bashful. At the top cutting side of the painting, the gibbeted legs of another girl are visible.

Hoberman's female make subordinates generally meet the viewer's gaze with an awareness bordering upon confrontation. If her girls have been compared to prepubescent Lolitas, her seniors present the appearance just as coy, if comically prompt Hoberman is clearly addressing stereotype of female agency. Are these young girls preternatural seductresse or do we take care of to sexualize representations of children? Are these ladies the forage for jokes, or are we discomfited through the possibility of alert and engaged older women? This exhibition recommends that Hoberman may yet reconcile her painterly skill with her feminist subtext Thus far, this reconciliation remains dormant within Hoberman's surreal jokes

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