KELLIE O’BOSKY
New Paintings
December 18, 1999 through January 29, 2000
Jessica Fredericks Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by KELLIE O’BOSKY. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition in New York. The artist’s work was recently included in Salome: Images of Women in Contemporary Art at the Castle Gallery of New Rochelle.
Kellie O’Bosky’s earlier self portraits, all entitled “Me”, were intended to serve as psychological polaroid’s, reflections and visual records of various stages in her life. In these paintings, the artist was working from photos created in private photobooths, assuming the role of creator, subject and viewer --thus the paintings became vehicles for fantasy and self examination. In this series the artist focused on the adolescent desire to adopt media images of beauty and fame and the anxiety caused by their elusiveness. These paintings were painted with quick, thick brushstrokes and a raw energy that underscored this anxiety.
Although still entitled “Me”, the snap-shot quality of O’Bosky’s earlier paintings has given way to a more complex, darker dreamscape. She is no longer the central focus here, and sometimes only exists as a back, a pair of legs, or an arm holding a handbag. The frontal self examination is replaced with a fantasy world as she has traded in her flat photobooth backdrops in favor of complex piled-up compositions. Now her images spring from a more psychological pool and the relationship between fashion and the human psyche allows us entry into a world where desire serves to form identity.
Jessica Fredericks Gallery is located at 504 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information and/or photographs please contact the gallery by telephone at (212) 633-6555 or fax at (212) 367-9502.