Thordis Adalsteinsdottir

A Cheerful Reminder of Our Lives and Loves: New Paintings

April 27 - May 27, 2006

Beating Yourself Up, 2005, acrylic and oil on wood panel, 36 x 36 in (91.5 x 91.5 cm)

War for Love or Love of War, 2006, acrylic and oil on canvas,  48 x 48 in (122 x 122 cm)

A Man steps Out of the Water and Out of the Picture, Woman Stretches at the Brake of Day and Fantasizes about Harlotry, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2006, 60 x 72 in (152.5 x 183 cm)

A Picnic with Daphne and Levitating Fetus, acrylic on board,  2006, 36 x 36 in (91.5 x 91.5 cm)

Polar Bear or a Window with a View to the Sky, 2006, acrylic and oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in (152.5 x 183 cm)

Preparation for a Hare Stew, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 43 x 62 in (109.5 x 157.5 cm)

Past Merges with Oresent and I Can't Tell The Difference, 2006, acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in (122 x 122 cm)

Without Me in the Middle, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in (122 x 122 cm)

Man Drink Dog, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 39 x 25 in (99.05 x 63.5 cm)

Woman and two Snow Globes, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 39 x 27 in (99.05 x 68.5 cm)

Another Ballet Boy, A little Bit Older, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 43 x 27 in (109.5 x 68.5 cm)

Enter Two Birds, from Right, Descending with Remarkable Speed and Urgency, 2006, site specific installation, acryclic on wall, dimensions variable

Woman and Two Glasses of Wine, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 43 x 27 in (109.5 x 68.5 cm)

Stux Gallery is proud to present a solo show of paintings by Thordis Adalsteinsdottir. This will be the third solo show at Stux Gallery by this Icelandic-born, New York based artist, whose idiosyncratic figurative paintings inhabit a peculiar zone somewhere between realist figuration, cartoons, anime and pure fantasy.The artist’s subjects, both human and animal, are often represented as unsettling distortions of their natural forms.

Thordis Adalsteinsdottir creates her paintings in response to how conflicts, sometimes political, affect her personal state of being. Strong fields of color abut a sometimes heavily patterned, borderline decorative style of painting to represent hair, textiles, skin, and other organic pieces that are manifest in the works. The paintings create a charged negative space against large fields of color and pattern while conveying a wide range of emotional states of being, from painful loneliness and introspection to whimsy, eroticism and even bliss. Figures with elegantly elongated limbs and torsos embrace and conjure seemingly wild beasts that are, in reality, merely designer accessories such as the pug and the miniature pig.

Continuing the artist's in-depth exploration into the temporal and sometimes tumultuous world of deeply internalized abstracted figuration, these new works further a personal and ongoing dialogue concerning the fusion of aesthetics and psychological tension. On view are skillfully executed paintings that convey a troubled psyche. Evocative large and small-scale paintings explore the boundary between animal id and rational ego, the juxtaposition of which renders a strained equilibrium of abstraction and representation. The viewer is, indeed, afforded a rare voyeuristic view of turbulent inner landscapes.