I am fascinated with disassembling our assumptions about the world, our bodies, the spaces we inhabit, and the stories we tell ourselves. When scrutinized, our knowledge falls apart, and we are left with a naked mash of experiences, surfaces, sensations, and narratives. It is both scary and liberating, as new meanings and undercurrents emerge, and new, simpler relationships materialize. My sculptural paintings and drawings exist in that space of trying to re-understand. Elements in the work encroach on and obscure other elements, creating an ambiguity which allows the images to escape the confines of certainty and language, and exist more namelessly, in a state of multiplicity.
Painting has a mystical quality of feeling discontinuous with our own space, while sculpture seems to exist right here, sharing our own floor and air. When these “mystical” and “real” spaces mingle, objects flicker between worlds. I feel the need to pull from all these spaces, intertwining illusion, flatness, sculpture, overlapping, and bas-relief elements, to inspect how our unstable fantasy of knowledge interacts with the hard physicality of the world.
Currently, I am most interested in tackling my experiences of new motherhood, and questioning how my perceptions change with this new identity.
Bio
Anya Kotler was born in Ukraine, grew up in Moldova and Israel and studied painting at the New York Academy of Art. She has shown in solo and group shows in the US and China, and teaches courses around the US and in Ireland. Most recently her work was included in exhibitions at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art (CT), Pen and Brush Gallery (NYC), Silvermine Gallery (CT), and a solo exhibition at Rosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University (NY). Her work was featured/reviewed in New American Paintings, ArtMaze Magazine, New Haven Independent, and Friend of the Artist. Anya is a recipient of the NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and twice the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. She lives with her husband, daughter and two cats, and builds sculptural paintings and drawings at her studio in Hoboken, NJ.