Exhibition Dates: March 28 – May 30, 2015
Artist Reception: Saturday, May 2 from 6–8 pm
Gallery Location: 434 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Amer Kobaslija. The exhibition will be on view at Arthur Roger@434, located at 434 Julia Street, from March 28 – May 30, 2015. The gallery will host a reception with the artist in attendance, Saturday, May 2 from 6-8 pm.
Sputnik Sweetheart of New Orleans and the End of the World, 2007.
Oil on panels, 85 x 124 ¼ inches.
This is Amer Kobaslija’s first exhibition with the gallery. Featured are small- to large-scale painted representations of artist studios on Plexiglas and wooden panels. Among them include his own studio, those of friends, as well as those of famous artists Balthus and Jackson Pollock.
The unique perspective featured in the paintings gives the viewer a kind of fly-on-the-ceiling, panoramic viewpoint of these very personal spaces. There are no people present in this body of work (and rarely in the artist’s work in general), however their presence is implied through the documented items in the rooms – studio materials, knapsacks, books, disheveled bedding where a moment’s rest was stolen. In a 2008 New York Times review of Kobaslija’s studio paintings, Roberta Smith observed, “the sharp details attest, as before, to the labor, messiness, loneliness and pleasure of artistic solitude.”
The artist prefers painting on panels because they are “less forgiving – the paint stays on the surface and, as such, it is more immediate.” He likens the objectness of the panels to the rooms he paints, “as if they were the outer shell protecting the precious insides.”
Born in Bosnia in 1975, Amer Kobaslija fled the war-torn country in 1993 for Germany where he attended the Art Academy in Dusseldorf. In 1997, he was offered asylum by the United States and immigrated to Florida where he completed his B.F.A. in Printmaking at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL. Following, he obtained his M.F.A. in Painting at Montclair State University in New Jersey. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami In 2013, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and he is also the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2007) and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2005). His work is in the collection of the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program. His works have been reviewed and printed in publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, ArtNews, Art & Antiques, The Village Voice, New York Time Out, New York Magazine, The New York Sun, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Florida Times Union. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania and splits his time between Gettysburg and New York City.