Above and Below
Mimi Oritsky
GALLERY II
Mimi Oritsky, The Wet Above, 2018, Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches.
September 10 — October 10, 2021
Opening Reception: Friday, September 10, 12-6 PM (by appointment)
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to present Above and Below, an exhibition of new paintings by Mimi Oritsky. Comprised of work made since 2018, the show includes a selection of Oritsky’s abstracted landscapes that explore atmosphere, light, color, and perception.
Through painting, Oritsky attempts to capture the fleeting and intangible qualities of light and shadow in the natural landscape. Sketching en plein air, Oritsky translates these momentary atmospheric effects onto a two-dimensional painted surface in the studio, attuned to subtle shifts brought on by the weather or time of day.
Oritsky often works from extreme vantages, having in the past sketched from the flickering bird’s-eye view of a light aircraft or helicopter. With Above and Below she returns to the ground and human scale, though still with an eye toward atmospheric perspective and the blur of motion, manifested here in brushstrokes of dappled sunlight and rippling water.
Oritsky is interested in what she calls airspace—the fruitful expanse between the eye and its object of focus—in which she finds a mercurial world of color and light. Through this expanse she paints, her works made “a surface marked by the rhythm of the moving air.”
Mimi Oritsky received an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Oritsky has received Purchase Awards from the Reading Public Museum and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts/Arcadia University. She was awarded Residence Fellowships from the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Artists for Environment Foundation. Oritsky currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
View the Press Release here.
View Mimi Oritsky’s page here.
Press
Cassie Packard, “Your Concise New York Art Guide for October 2021”, Hyperallergic, 2021.
Photography: Matthew Sherman