MIDNIGHT CANOPY

Midnight Canopy, the first installation by the artist at this scale, comprises a two panel painting whose shape takes cues from the architecture of the gallery. Awad originally conceived of the show as a single painting that would activate the gallery space much as Italian Renaissance altarpieces and frescoes transform their environments by turning the wall into an open portal for an invented visual field. The painting both creates a back wall for the gallery space, a floor to ceiling tapestry of dense figuration that expands the elongated storefront, and also operates as a doorway through which the viewer can penetrate the imagined picture plane.

Awad makes large scale works on canvas that straddle the artificial boundary between figuration and abstraction, following a trajectory in painting from the early twentieth century onward. Her inquiries into abstraction maintain a focus on inventive color and involve an interplay between improvisation and structure that manifests through material decisions. Awad begins the paintings using water-based vinyls, creating an initial composition that embraces accidents specific to the unpredictable nature of the medium. She then returns to the surface with oils, imposing a figurative subject that pulls the painting into a space of intention. Painted space acts as a vessel for the body and as a container for the figures’ myriad gestures.