Roman Fine Art is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition from New York-based artist, Reisha Perlmutter. Titled Immerse, the show will include over 15 new paintings from her water series, exploring the body, its relationship to water and the science of color. The exhibit will be open July 28 through August 27, 2017 with a reception for the artist Saturday, July 29, 2-5 pm. Light refreshments will be served.
For just over a year, Perlmutter has been working on a series of oil paintings depicting women in water, in many of these she is also the subject. She aims to place emphasis on the biological connection between body and water, while finding correlations between her painting philosophy and understanding of color. Color and light move across the skin through the water, in energetic brushwork, blurring the edges between the figure and its surrounding environment. Through this connection, we sense that the body and the water are one.
Perlmutter’s imagery allows the viewer to relive and experience this universal and very humanizing connection to water, where one becomes hyper-aware of the body, where it begins and ends, how it moves in nature. Her weightless figures seem to be at complete ease and calm, the dappled light melting into the larger image, inviting our senses to participate in the painting.
Perlmutter draws parallels between the physical relationship with nature and Albers color theory, where color exists purely in its relationship to its surroundings. She explains this relationship as almost linear, “the flesh ends and the water begins, the flesh feels and looks like flesh because of the water,” just as one color will project that which it is relative to. She also aims to depict bodies that are not overly posed or sexualized. Her work often evokes comparisons to photorealism, however the artist associates photography as data and documentation, which is not part of her objective in practice.
Emphasis is directed away from individualized anatomy, and onto the body as a whole. The artist finds poetry within the recurring shapes, naturally occurring throughout individual bodies. Capturing natural patterns, she considers DNA, physiology and biology; and particularly in relationship to women and their bodies. Her recent work aims to empower women to appreciate their differences, find a comfortability with their sizes, shapes, and colors.
About the Artist:
Born in Naples, Fl in 1990, Perlmutter is an especially talented young painter. She shows a faculty with the medium that belies her age. She has studied painting at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (BFA) and The New York Academy of Art, New York, NY (MFA).
She has attended residencies in Montecastello di Vibio, Italy, Studio Escalier in Paris, and Argenton Chateau in France. Perlmutter has paintings in numerous private collections in Europe and the US. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in Munich, Miami, Naples, New York and East Hampton. In 2016, she was included in Water Bodies, an exhibition at The Southampton Arts Center curated by Eric Fischl and David Kratz. She has also exhibited in Sotheby’s annual Take Home a Nude benefit, Scope New York and the New York Academy of Art. Perlmutter’s work has appeared in numerous print and online publications including W Magazine, Wide Walls, Hamptons Art Hub, Town & Country and Artnet.