SOHO20 Gallery Chelsea

Julia Berkman

Blip.

January 31 – February 25, 2012

Opening Reception:

Thursday February 2nd, 6-8pm

SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition, Blip featuring recent work by abstract painter, Julia Berkman. Berkman’s work can be seen as a playful exploration in color, form and texture. Her paintings often consist of only a few simple, yet bold colors, which contain awkward shapes, lines and markings. In Ladder, small light-colored rectangles ascend out of view amid a delicious melon-pink background. Another piece, Ribbon consists of a “dirty white” surface lined horizontally with multi-colored wavering stripes. Both paintings demonstrate Berkman’s great sensitivity to the materials and color. The rich texture and layered colors in the pieces strike out on their own, but the work can also be seen as a nod to abstract expressionists such as Phillip Guston, Barnett Newman and Agnes Martin. Based on geometric abstraction, Berkman’s painting uses a grid-like structure from which other forms derive. However, her work veers away from strict geometry and suggests the pliable nature of the grid. As seen in the monochromatic works, such as Breath to Breath, the grid emerges as a playful and energetic presence. Berkman’s work offers the viewer intimate meditations on painting’s basic elements. Julia Berkman is an abstract painter who was born in Boston, Massachusetts (b. 1976). Berkman received a Bachelor of Arts in 1999 at Swarthmore College. In 2007 she received her Masters of Fine Arts from Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts. Her work was featured in the 2011 Northeast Edition of New American Paintings (ed. 92). She lives and works in the Boston area and is represented by Soho20 Gallery, as well as by the Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club in Miami, Florida.

For more information please contact the gallery at info@soho20gallery.com or

212.367.8994