Andrea Mary Marshall's "Gia Condo", opens this Thursday at Allegra LaViola Gallery

Andrea Mary Marshall Gia Condo Andrea Mary Marshall, Self Portrait as Gia Condo, 2012, Oil on Poplar Panel, 30" x 21" January 17 – February 16, 2013 Opening: Thursday, January 17, 6-8PM Allegra LaViola Gallery is pleased to present Gia Condo, an exhibition of painting, photography, video and performance by Andrea Mary Marshall. The show opens this Thursday, January 17th, and will include a performance on the opening night, as well as additional performances through the duration of the exhibit.   In her second solo show, Andrea Mary Marshall approaches the enigma of the Mona Lisa through a series of self-portraits rendered in diverse media. The Mona Lisa is the world’s most recognizable and replicated painting. Gia Condo explores the identity of this fascinating “subject of all subjects” by paying homage to artists previously inspired by da Vinci’s iconic image. Marshall draws inspiration from Dali, Duchamp and Warhol’s renderings as well as the myriad theories surrounding the identity of the sitter. Out of the competing ideas, the character of Gia Condo emerges, portrayed by Marshall herself. Marshall transforms the subject into the painter and allows the muse to become the master. In her thirteen Mona Lisa paintings, Marshall duplicates the material and size of da Vinci’s original, while altering the composition significantly. Additionally, there are six photographic portraits, a short film and film stills. As she takes us through several stages of Gia Condo’s transformations, the darker, masculine energy of the notorious woman is released. Marshall does not shy away from the power of drag as a transformative tool, and in doing so addresses the masculine side of femininity. While her previous series of work, Toxic Women, portrayed women as victims, Gia Condo celebrates a dynamic confidence and self-acceptance. The artists Marshall references in Gia Condo are male, with one notable exception. At the film’s finale, Gia Condo departs from her lineage of male painters and assumes the role of a Guerrilla Girl. It is at this moment that Marshall liberates Gia Condo from the frame of the painting, film and photographs and launches her into the world of flesh and blood. For the duration of the exhibition, Marshall will perform as Gia Condo, initiating with the opening on January 17th. Using the Gallery’s lower level as a studio, Gia will recreate da Vinci’s well known masterpieces in her own style. Visitors to the gallery are invited to watch as Gia Condo steps out of the canvas and takes up her own brush. What she will create remains entirely her own choice. Andrea Mary Marshall received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and has exhibited at Grey Area, New York, NY; Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, NY; Volume Gallery, New York, New York and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York, NY.  Her work has been reviewed in Scene Magazine, Smug Magazine, Artlog, Opening Ceremony, Hi-Fructose, PaperMag and StyleLikeU.  She lives and works in New York City. This is her second solo exhibition with Allegra LaViola Gallery. About Allegra LaViola Gallery The Gallery’s focus is both established and emerging artists, with an emphasis on painting, installation and performance related work. Allegra LaViola Gallery is interested in promoting the fullness of the artist’s vision, and has been host to a variety of conceptual projects and installations, including performance series and one-night events.   Allegra LaViola Gallery | 179 East Broadway | New York, NY 10002 T 917.463.3901 E gallery@allegralaviola.com www.allegralaviola.com

Allegra LaViola Gallery - Die Like You Really Mean It

Allegra LaViola Gallery

Erik Benson, Paul Brainard, Pia Dehne, Hiroyuki Hamada, Elizabeth Huey, Erika Keck,
Emily Noelle Lambert, Frank Lentini, Eddie Martinez, Brian Montuori, Bryan Osburn, Kanishka Raja, Erika Ranee, Tom Sanford, Christopher Saunders, Kristen Schiele, Ryan Schneider, Oliver Warden, Frank Webster, Eric White and Doug Young

October 26 – December 3, 2011
Opening Reception: October 26, 6-9PM

Allegra LaViola Gallery is pleased to present Die Like You Really Mean It, a group exhibition on view from October 26 – December 3. The exhibition is curated by artists Paul Brainard and Frank Webster and features new paintings and sculpture by over twenty artists living in the New York metro area.

The curators have assembled an energetic and dynamic show, where each work registers as a highly charged expression of the individual artist. Brainard and Webster have maintained a special interest in choosing works that register not as intentionally ironic but rather as sincerely and at times viscerally rendered. This exhibition celebrates painting as a healthy, living, and variegated mode of art making in New York.

The works included in this exhibition are often resistant to purely formalist and conceptual concerns, engaging themes that extend beyond the material media of painting. Figurative and scenic elements may invite narrative readings while color is used forcefully, liberally, or selectively. The expressive qualities of color among the works range widely from Oliver Warden’s transformative explosions of color, to Hiroyuki Hamada’s restrained, bi-chromatic capsule-like wall reliefs. Also of concern among the works is the relationship between the human being and its environment, exemplified by Erik Benson and Kristen Schiele’s depictions of inhabited indoor and outdoor settings, Pia Dehne’s complex compositions in which figure and ground are enmeshed through lyrical patterns of line and geometry, and Kanishka Raja’s use of pattern to unite various specific locations depicted in the same visual space.

Atypically, this show exalts in its contrasts. The works of Chris Saunders and Brian Montuori could best sum this up. Saunder’s paintings are slick and calm on the surface but belie an unsettling and subversive content, while Montuori’s vision is a veritable disgorgement of expressionist storm and bluster. Each artist pushes the medium with equal passion, but in radically different directions, with starkly different results. This passion however is one thing all of the artists in Die Like You Really Mean It share in common.

—Paul Brainard, Kristen Lorello and Frank Webster


Allegra LaViola Gallery | 179 East Broadway | New York, NY 10002
T917.463.3901E gallery@allegralaviola.com
www.allegralaviola.com