Nina Bovasso
Nina Bovasso
Workspace Program Resident 2003
Nina Bovasso’s high-chroma acrylic work is one of immense accumulation, repetition and patchwork. Floral landscapes, geometric construction, cartoonish-rendering and even the occasional architectural build-up are familiar themes. The result is an over-lapping assemblage of near-shape objects that is cheerfully inviting. Her drawings float delicately above the surface, creating approachable abstraction that entices the viewer in a way that few semi-abstract works can. Nina’s use of hand-made translucent abaca paper helps establish a cause and effect relationship between her line work and surface. The natural texture of abaca with all its imperfections also yields a playful cockling effect that echo esher mark making like rippling water or gusts of wind.
Bovasso's work often depicts intricate structures achieved with a conglomeration of tiny shapes, symbols, flowers, and dots. Its bright colors pop against neutral grounds. Bovasso is one of the few Workspace Artists who has had an affiliation with Dieu Donné before her residency. She has worked for many years on the Mill's handmade papers, often using high-shrinkage linen or abaca as a substrate, applying her painted image, the moisture of which creates a buckling in the paper. The result is a true interaction between the paper and applied medium.
Bovasso renders intense and euphoric explosions of color and form. Employing a strategy of layering and accumulating the most basic marks—a dot, a line, color, shape and surface texture, Bovasso creates works where design and pattern seem to run amok. Her work achieves harmony through “everything happening at once.” The compulsive doodle is elevated to heroic proportions.
In working with Artistic Director Paul Wong during her 7 day residency, the artist was able to create her imagery in the hand papermaking process. Working freely and intuitively, usually with brightly pigmented linen pulps in squeeze bottles, the artist created pulp paintings, usually without a base sheet. By bypassing the base sheet, Bovasso created images with actual holes for negative space. For instance, a pulp painting that consists of many adjoining colored rings becomes a lattice-like structure.
During her residency, the artist also produced a series of Pressed Paper Platinum Records. For these, a black cotton base sheet was couched. Then a brightly colored, round sheet the size of a music album was couched on top. The dual-colored sheet was pressed in the hydraulic press against an actual vinyl record on either the back or front, leaving the paper either impressed or depressed by the texture of the record.
In the Studio
About the Artist
Nina Bovasso (b. 1965, New York City, NY) received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and MFA from Bard College on an Elaine DeKooning Memorial Fellowship. She has received numerous grants and residencies, including a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Drawing, a The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Studio Program grant and a John Simon Guggenheim Grant in 2001.
Her work is represented in the collections of MOMA, Collectie KKPY Netherlands, The New Museum of Contemporary Art NY,The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Norton Family Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Berkley Art Museum and Foundation Ricard Paris, France among others. She has shown extensively in the US and internationally, most recently at the M&E Gallery (Musuem Editions) NY NY, ADA Gallery, Richmond VA, Bravin Lee Programs, NY NY, Galeria Casado Santapau, Madrid Spain, Galerie Diana Stigler, Amsterdam NL, Galerie Schemla, Dusseldorf, among others. (Source: Schema Projects)
For more information, please visit their website: http://www.ninabovasso.com/
Related Writings & Works
Dieu Donné, PULP, Issue 49, Spring 2006.