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Another Kingdom

February 23, 2006- April 1, 2006

Elizabeth Olbert

Caren Golden Fine Art

539 W 23rd St

Elizabeth Olbert’s latest exhibition, Another Kingdom, consists of oil paintings and drawings depicting a world that is simultaneously strange and familiar. The circular paintings, though representing purely invented beings, recall historical portraits, particularly those of the Dutch Baroque period, both in their emotional directness and in their sureness of execution. The large drawings seamlessly integrate antique map forms, modern topographical system and the floridly elegant ornamentation of the 18th Century. They allow us to navigate a distant world, oddly like and unlike our own.

The artist now lives in the mountains of western Maine, the countryside she has loved since early childhood. In this place Olbert weaves together the many themes that have informed her work for almost twenty years: the inherent strangeness of the artistic histories that surround us, the barely-concealed vastness of the natural world that culture seeks to describe and tame, and, most of all, of the essential animalistic nature of our neighbors, and even ourselves. Like writers from Washington Irving to Stephen King, Olbert feels in the remote north of New England the uncanny power of the beautiful, seemingly alien universe existing beneath the veneer of what we call "civilization.”

Elizabeth Olbert’s paintings and drawings have been presented in numerous prestigious cultural institutions including The DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, The Contemporary Art Forum in Santa Barbara, The Art Museum of Florida International University, The University of Rhodes Island Fine Arts Center, MOCA Denver, The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Instituto Cultural Cabanas and Museo de las Artes, Guadalajara, Mexico and Santiago de Compostelo, Spain, The Weatherspoon Art Gallery and The Borusan Foundation in Istanbul,Turkey. In her extensive press coverage, Olbert’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Time Out New York, Art in America, World Art, and New Art Examiner. Discussed as one of the new, post-feminist Surrealists by Peter Plagens in Newsweek, Olbert was cited for the “shock value, ...intelligence and abundance of talent” in her work. Another Kingdom is Olbert’s fifth solo exhibition with Caren Golden Fine Art.

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Location   Gallery Caren Golden Fine Art Address 539 W 23rd St New York (Chelsea) NY, 10011 United States Phone 212-727-8304 Fax 212-727-8360 Hours Tue-Sat 11-6

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