FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Through July 9, 2005

Opening Reception:
Friday, June 3, 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

BRIAN NOVATNY

June 3 - July 9, 2005

Marcia Wood Gallery is delighted to introduce to Atlanta the quirky, compelling figurative paintings and drawings of Brian Novatny. This will be Novatny’s first solo exhibition with Marcia Wood Gallery.

Brian Novatny brings a potpourri of art-historical references (from the Renaissance to Russian folk art, European Modernism, Picasso, miniature painting and kitsch) to bear upon colorful, intimate works that are disconcerting and oddly charming. A sense of disturbance taints the otherwise ordinary mood of domestic scenes populated with arrestingly familiar, yet alienated, people, who are awkwardly placed in coolly minimalist environments. Novatny beautifully employs a sophisticated technique of light-touch and seeming tentativeness to what are ultimately perfectly composed and engaging pictures. The vulnerable quality of the artist’s mark echoes the confused, preoccupied, or uncertain sense of the figures. In the same way that the people are disconnected from one another in their environs, they are frequently similarly disjointed themselves, as their bodies and heads may be alternately painted and drawn in contrast to one another, or the scale of two people in the same space disproportionate.

Novatny states, “The basic premise of my work deals with the play and manipulation of characters and objects which could have arrived from a seemingly placid and mundane backdrop, such as a suburban environment. This kind of an environment exists without any precedent history and describes a narrative of living purely day to day. I want to cause disturbances in this mundane narrative through the revealing of private, awkward, and compromising moments. These images are fragments of a larger possible story assembled in a circular, non-linear fashion. They are placed sporadically around the painting sometimes overlapping one another in order to disrupt the ‘story line’ even further.”

Yet, amid all this uncertainty, Novatny’s broken stories manage to engage and delight. Critic Ivy Schroeder, writing in the St. Louis Riverfront Times in 2000, notes that “Novatny …[has] a genuine fondness for these unassuming subjects, and it lends [his] works a level of warmth and interest that would be lacking in the hands of lesser artists.”

Novatny received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Columbus College of Art and Design and his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University School of Art (1990), where he was awarded the Richard Welling Prize for excellence in drawing. In 1999, Novatny received the Basil H. Alkazzi Award in Painting. Novatny has exhibited across the U.S. in museums and art centers including the Mississippi Museum of Art (Jacksonville, MS), the Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, OH), the Layton Gallery of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (Milwaukee, WS), and the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle, WA). He has had solo exhibitions in New York City, New Orleans, Philiadelphia, Seattle, St Louis and Santa Monica. In Germany, Novatny has exhibited at Kunstverein Speyer- Kulturhof Flachgasse, Speyer, and is represented by galleries in Berlin and Frankfurt. His work has been broadly reviewed including reviews in Art in America and Art & Antiques.