DFN Gallery is pleased to present Oil & Water, featuring seven amazing new paintings by Alyssa Monks. Once again, Monks depicts the human figure made “abstract” as of result of immersion in water or when pressed up against glass and other surfaces. In these most recent paintings, however, the figures are viewed close-up, with only their faces showing as they practically burst through the picture plane. It is left to the viewer to determine whether these figures are in agony or ecstasy – either near-death experiences or near-birth.

Eric Fischl, who has been following Ms. Monks’s work for some time, writes in his introduction to the catalog accompanying this exhibition:

Alyssa Monks paints drips, bubbles, and vapor so precisely that you are drawn to her surfaces to see how she has mastered this evanescent illusion. I think there is a combination of awe and suspicion mixed into your curiosity because on some level you would like to see her fail at this legerdemain. But she doesn’t. Harder scrutiny only gives you greater pleasure. There is no weakness. There is no dismissing her paintings.

Alyssa Monks’s paintings have been exhibited internationally and can be found in many private collections. Monks is currently featured in the exhibition Intimacy! Bathing In Art at the Kunstmuseum, Ahlen, Germany. Last year, Monks was one of ten young artists included in Reconfiguring The Body In American Art 1820-2009 at the National Academy of Art in New York and will be featured in a two-artist show this summer at the Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, New Jersey, along with fellow DFN Gallery artist Tom Birkner. This is Alyssa Monks’s fourth solo show at DFN Gallery.

Alyssa Monks, Oil & Water, a catalog of recent paintings with introductions by Eric Fischl and Marshall N. Price, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Academy of Art, is available through DFN Gallery.