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    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020 Joan Semmel, A Balancing Act, Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, NY (2021)
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020 Joan Semmel, A Balancing Act, Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, NY (2021)
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020 Joan Semmel, A Balancing Act, Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, NY (2021)
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020 Joan Semmel, Installation view, Morán Morán, Mexico City (2022). Photo: White Balance Mx
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020 Joan Semmel, Installation view, Morán Morán, Mexico City (2022). Photo: White Balance Mx
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020 Joan Semmel, Installation view, Morán Morán, Mexico City (2022). Photo: White Balance Mx
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Joan Semmel, Double Breasted, 2020 Joan Semmel, Installation view, Morán Morán, Mexico City (2022). Photo: White Balance Mx

    Joan Semmel

    Double Breasted, 2020
    Oil on canvas
    24 x 30 in (61 x 76.2 cm)
    25 3/4 x 31 3/4 x 2 1/4 in framed (65.4 x 80.6 x 5.7 cm framed)
    JS440

    Further images

    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 1 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 2 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 3 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 4 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 5 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 6 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 7 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 8 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 9 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 10 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 11 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 12 ) Joan Semmel, Side Light, 2020
    Since the 1970s, Joan Semmel has centered her practice around representations of the body from the female perspective, often taking her figure as subject. In her most recent series of...
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    Since the 1970s, Joan Semmel has centered her practice around representations of the body from the female perspective, often taking her figure as subject. In her most recent series of paintings, her body fills the canvas in a manner that echoes the in-camera cropping of the photographs the artist takes as the basis for her compositions. Exemplified in Double Breasted (2020), this compositional strategy forces a collapsing of depth, with torso and legs generating a landscape of lines and curves. Featuring a diversity of paint applications, ranging from the nearly opaque fill of the dark navy background to the looser and more expressionistic strokes of the flesh rendered in bright yellow, orange, and green hues, Double Breasted foregrounds a mastery of brushwork stemming back to her roots in Abstract Expressionism. The brighter foreground, filled with shades of the sunlight that floods the artist's studio, contrasts against the darker tones of the shadowed areas, the effect of which critic Johanna Fateman has described as "passages of smoldering chiaroscuro."

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    Exhibitions

    2022: Joan Semmel, Morán Morán, Mexico City
    2021: A Balancing Act, Alexander Gray Associates, New York

    Literature

    McGovern, Adam. “Felshtomes.” Hilobrow, June 10, 2021.

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