Anya Kielar: Madam

DOCUMENT is delighted to announce Madam, our upcoming exhibition showcasing new wall sculptures by Brooklyn based artist Anya Kielar. This marks the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, as well as her inaugural presentation in Chicago. The exhibition will open on April 28, 2023 with a reception from 5-8pm and continue through June 17, 2023. 

Kielar melds aspects of sculpture and painting, creating a unified field of symbols and dimensionality that compresses formal distinctions. Each of the four shadowboxes in the exhibition contains a slightly larger-than-life female bust or figure composed of fragments set in a relief sculpture. The figures are wrapped in patterned textiles created using techniques such as stenciling, painting, dyeing, and spraying, allowing the illusory field of colors and marks to move along the skin of the shifting sculpture. This technique creates a surface that is seamless and soft on the eye. 

Kielar's process of wrapping each work's sculptural components in fabric draws inspiration from upholstery and other decorative arts that have traditionally been associated with domesticity. Drawing inspiration from archetypes, such as the Muse or the Amazon, each artwork brings the viewer’s attention to the complex dynamics of strength, beauty, vulnerability, sex, and heroism that have always circulated around female identity. Each section of the subject's physique seemingly levitates within a container that is ensconced in the same fabric, which ultimately engenders an aesthetic of a figure that undulates between abstraction and representation.Through the integration of two-dimensional imagery with three-dimensional forms, Kielar creates surfaces that are both alluring and elusive to the viewer.

Request our preview here.

About Anya Kielar

Anya Kielar (b. 1978, New York, NY) earned a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art, New York and an MFA from Columbia University, New York. Kielar has presented solo exhibitions at venues such as Locust Projects, Miami; Casey Kaplan, New York; and Daniel Reich Gallery, New York. She has also been included in group exhibitions at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College, Collegeville; the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; White Columns, New York; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London, among others. In fall 2021, Kielar created work for the exhibition Miss Dior - 12 Women Artists, which opened at Ba-tsu Gallery, Tokyo, and traveled to Chateau de la Colle Noire, Montrauroux. In fall of 2022, Kielar presented a solo exhibition at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, curated by Gabriel Florenz. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Dikeou Collection, Denver; the Christian Dior Art Collection, Paris; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; the New Century Art Foundation, Singapore; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London. Kielar lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.