A Female Perspective

Ángeles Agrela, Lynn Drexler, Helen Frankenthaler, Loie Hollowell, Yayoi Kusama, Ayako Rokkaku

David Benrimon Fine Art is pleased to present, A Female Perspective. The show presents a selection of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by a diverse group of women artists who are not defined by their gender but by their unique voices and perspectives. The exhibition includes artists ranging from well established figures such as Helen Frankenthaler and Yayoi Kusama, to rising talents Loie Hollowell and Ángeles Agrela. Many of the women in the show are contemporary artists who have gained inspiration from their female predecessors. The exhibition celebrates the persistence of women in a field that is still heavily dominated by men. A Female Perspective explores the connection between these women and the artistic movements that they have contributed to.

“I don’t resent being a female painter. I don’t exploit it. I paint.”

—Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)

Helen Frankenthaler and Lynn Drexler (1928-1999), while born in the same year, experienced vastly different artistic careers. Frankenthaler is widely known as one of the great American abstract artists and has been celebrated worldwide for decades. She was exhibited in major international shows as early as 1959, and has since had numerous solo museum exhibitions. Drexler, while also involved in the New York art scene early in her career, retreated to Maine for the remainder of her life and has only recently been rediscovered. At the same time that these AbEx painters were gaining recognition, Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), who was also working in New York, was pushing the boundaries even further by intertwining abstract expressionism and figuration, alongside avant garde performance art.

Working nearly half a century later, artists such as Agrela (b. 1966), Figgis (b. 1972), Hollowell (b. 1983) and Weyant (b. 1995) are expanding on their exploration of femininity and the female form. Loie Hollowell creates a seamless physicality with her use of 3D-esque geometric shapes that reference the human body. Themes such as sexuality, pregnancy, and birth are extensively investigated through a color-saturated, abstract lens, as Hollowell exposes the artistic embodiment of the female experience. Angeles Agrela uses the historically representative symbols of hair and femininity to create bold photorealistic portraits of women. Her bright, vivid works question how a woman's identity is seen in the contemporary world, and what characteristics they embody. Conversely, Genieve Figgis distorts her ghoulish subjects’ faces in a swirl of acrylic paint to communicate the macabre of otherwise glorified scenes of leisure and luxury.

Curated by Calder McNeil