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

    Joan Semmel

    Holding, 2020
    Oil on canvas
    30 x 24 x 1 1/2 in (76.2 x 61 x 3.8 cm)
    31 3/4 x 25 3/4 x 2 1/4 in framed (80.6 x 65.4 x 5.7 cm framed)
    JS437

    Further images

    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 1 ) Joan Semmel, Holding, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 2 ) Joan Semmel, Holding, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 3 ) Joan Semmel, Holding, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 4 ) Joan Semmel, Holding, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 5 ) Joan Semmel, Holding, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 6 ) Joan Semmel, Holding, 2020
    In Holding (2020), Joan Semmel employs her own body as subject in a meditation on flesh, using a range of tones to convey the body’s lines and curves in varying...
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    In Holding (2020), Joan Semmel employs her own body as subject in a meditation on flesh, using a range of tones to convey the body’s lines and curves in varying light and shadow. The handling of paint foregrounds gestural brushwork stemming back to her roots in Abstract Expressionism. Crossed arms and legs generate a landscape of horizontal lengths against the vertical plane of the torso, while the cropping of the figure echoes Semmel’s technique of employing photography to determine her intimate compositions. Semmel has summarized her intentions thus, “The issues of the body from desire to aging, as well as those of identity and cultural imprinting, have been at the core of my concerns. The carnal nature of paint has seemed to me a perfect metaphor, the specifics of image, a necessary elaboration.”

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    Exhibitions

    2022: Joan Semmel, Morán Morán, Mexico City
    2021: A Balancing Act, Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown, NY
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