| I first came across Nava Lubelski’s work in 2007, during open studios at CUE Art Foundation while she was a resident artist there. Her delicate and sinuous abstractions beckoned me from across the room. It was only up close that I realized they were not just made of paint, nor were they merely drawn. The intricate networking line-work that is her signature was, in fact, achieved through thread embroidery. This technique proves especially compelling in the service of the themes of her most recent solo show at LMAKprojects. |
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Jill Smith
I first came across Nava Lubelski’s work in 2007, during open studios at CUE Art Foundation while she was a resident artist there. Her delicate and sinuous abstractions beckoned me from across the room. It was only up close that I realized they were not just made of paint, nor were they merely drawn. The intricate networking line-work that is her signature was, in fact, achieved through thread embroidery. This technique proves especially compelling in the service of the themes of her most recent solo show at LMAKprojects. Titled, Recombination, her point of departure for this show, is the structure of recombinant DNA, a concept that forms the perfect metaphor for her ink-stained and splattered surfaces, which are then re-contoured with stitching. This is particularly evident in works like The Obvious Results of Unusual Circumstances (2008), a canvas depicting cell-like orbs and splashes hovering on a ground the color of green medical scrubs (the perfect shade to emphasize a biomedical mood). The contour stitching simultaneously brings to mind tendrils, hairs, and spider webs, which in concert evoke the connotation with a collection of witchlike ingredients intended for some voodoo version of genetic engineering.
Yet, not all the work is so dense. More esoteric and luminous in ambience is Exactly What We Thought Would Happen (2008) a more dispersed composition of delicately floating stains of pale aquamarines, pinks, violets, and yellows This work in particular channels her fellow post-abstract expressionist, Ingrid Calame, who like Lubelski, contends with the splatters and stains of action painting through a graphic, traced, and contoured approach to the splatter. Only Lubelski, like Ghada Amer, uses the fragility of thread to make her graceful marks.
The several sculptural works included in the show – such as the casts of her hands, made in thread and hair – form a nice point of contrast to the two-dimensional works. Overall, Lubelski demonstrates fierceness in handling multi-media, while nonetheless maintaining a pervasive sense of care, intimacy, and precision.ïâ¬Âª
