This exhibition pays special focus on the evolution of Keltie Ferris's body prints from singular black and white impressions to multiple and increasingly colorful serial progressions. Also featured are paintings from a cross-section of Ferris's career including the debut of her largest painting to date. Ferris is best known for visceral and elegant abstract paintings built up in layers of spray gun washes, rubbed-out pastels, and palette knife zips. For the last three years, body prints have become a significant extension of her layered approach to image-making. Different in emotional tenor than the paintings, the prints provide Ferris with an understanding of her paintings at their most elemental. To make the prints she layers pigment onto paper that retains the oiled imprint of her clothed or unclothed body. From air, to pigment, to trace, the prints require a physicality that literally embeds the artist 'in' the work as its indisputable maker. As she works back and forth between the body prints and the paintings, Ferris is expanding her pursuit of a fully engaged gestural presence without the conventions of the hand.
Funding provided by UAlbany’s Office of the President and Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, the UAlbany Diversity Transformation Fund administered through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation.
Image credit:
Keltie Ferris
A+R+G+O, 2015 (detail)
Acrylic and oil on canvas
96 x 130 inches
Courtesy the Artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
