SOHO20 Chelsea is pleased to announce Vibrant Pastures, an exhibition of Martha Nilsson Edelheit’s most recent series of paintings.

Edelheit’s paintings depict life size sheep that directly engage the viewer’s gaze. The sheep, particular individuals, are surrounded by and enmeshed in a grid. The painting’s surface, made from chicken wire covered in Paper Mache, forms a hexagonal mosaic: a random pattern of intense color evoking imaginary landscapes.

The sheep’s solid images are further replicated in wire, ink, acrylic drawings, and in shadows cast from the wire constructions of their shapes. The dialogue between wire line, ink line, cast shadow and solid form is intense, poetic, and sometimes political. Works like: And the Lion Lies Down with the Lamb, and Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, were painted after President Bush was elected. The pieces further allude to Hicks’ Peaceable Kingdom, a pictorial dream of reconciled differences peacefully inhabiting the same space, and Henri Rousseau’s ferocious, Jungle Dreams.

Martha Nilsson Edelheit lives and works in a rural environment outside of Stockholm, Sweden. This is her fourth solo exhibition at SOHO20 Chelsea, where she continues to work with the theme that has absorbed her since 1994: the sheep that graze outside her studio.

SOHO20 Chelsea is now one of the oldest organizations in the U.S. created to address the under-representation of work by women in museums and galleries.

For more information or visuals contact Gallery Director, Alessandra Duarte at SOHO20 Chelsea by email: soho20@verizon.net by phone 212.367.8994 or visit www.soho20gallery.com.