Victoria Gitman: Taktisch

About

The exhibition is the artist’s first since her recent retrospective at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Eight of Gitman’s astonishingly naturalistic paintings will be on view all created between 2016 and 2017.

The exhibition focuses on Gitman’s recent paintings—meticulously rendered abstractions based on the supple fur surfaces of vintage handbags. Gitman works in oils, hair by hair, creating surfaces that are delicately painted from close, direct observation. Many of the paintings feature abstract patterns evocative of early and mid-twentieth-century stylistic traditions. Evoking modernist compositional techniques, Gitman’s new works are resolutely frontal, their imagery extending edge-to-edge. Each composition is tightly cropped, further intensifying both the haptic quality and the inherent sensuousness of the artist’s chosen subjects.

The title of the exhibition is a neologism introduced by Vienna School art historian Aloïs Riegl to describe a kind of close-up perception or “visual touching.” Taktisch can at once signify “tactile,” “tangible,” “palpable,” or “textural,” as well as “tactical.” It implies an intimate exchange with art objects, an intermingling of the experiences of seeing, feeling, and knowing through sensory perception.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1972, Victoria Gitman immigrated to the United States in 1987. In 1996, she graduated from Florida International University with a BFA in painting. She has had solo-exhibitions at Daniel Weinberg Gallery (2004, 2006, 2009, Los Angeles), David Nolan Gallery (2006, 2011, New York), and Tomio Koyama Gallery (2014, Tokyo). In 2005, the Bass Museum of Art, Miami, mounted On Display, Gitman’s first museum exhibition. Three years later, Looking Closely, a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings, opened at the Las Vegas Art Museum. Finally, in 2015, the Pérez Art Museum Miami presented a survey of the artist's work, titled Victoria Gitman: Desiring Eye. 

Gitman’s work is featured in the collections of many museums, including the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Museum of Modern Art; the Pérez Art Museum Miami; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to represent Victoria Gitman.