January 11 – February 10, 2024
By hiding that which the viewer most anticipated seeing, the artist turned the element of nudity in classical paintings against expectations.
Find Me at VillageOneArt presented subtle identities and bold swaths of fabric tumbling, unencumbered, across the surfaces of Coverly’s compositions. Recontextualizing Surrealist imagery and Baroque tones within the subject matter of her work, Coverly took on figuration from a freshly unique perspective in her provocative paintings. The power of Coverly’s images in this solo presentation was found in their decisive fragmentation: exposed arms jut forth toward the foreground of the painting and calves curl around a swirling tumble of human activity. Where Coverly revealed the figures in her paintings, she simultaneously evoked their actions as scintillating or forbidden, calling into question what occurs when we are in heightened emotional states.
The contrast between the decadent volume of cascading fabric and stark naked limbs brought to mind wealth and power and the manner in which these forces are exerted relative to bodies — particularly, women’s bodies. Coverly pursued a frank and elucidating examination of sexuality and its pitfalls in her work: by hiding that which the viewer most anticipated seeing, the artist turned the element of nudity in classical paintings against expectations. In works such as Yours and Mine (featured above), the artist depicted grappling in the manner of any Renaissance depiction of a Greek myth, draping her figures in exorbitant cloths and framing the entire scene in a passionate shade of reddish pink. In the artist’s other works, such as For You, the viewer could identify a figure’s head against a wallpaper-style pattern. Rather than admiring the figure’s features, however, one gazed at folds of red fabric draped tightly around the head of the subject. By adopting a hue of fabric the same color as the wallpaper for her figure, Coverly made thinly veiled references to blending in, or to ideas of gaslighting present in feminist literature such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s infamous feminist tale, The Yellow Wallpaper. Coverly styled her figures as both seductive and off-putting, embracing a carefully honed painting style as a result of her robust artistic studies to frame vulnerability and identity.
Works in the Exhibition
Find Me was on view at VillageOneArt, 150 West 25th Street, Suite 403, New York, from January 11 to February 10, 2024. For inquiries regarding available works by Alayna Coverly, please contact info@villageoneart.com.