MIRIAM WOSK

Billy Shire Fine Arts is proud to present new work by Miriam Wosk "Paradise and Wildlife", featuring large-scale, mixed-media paintings, installations, collages, a hand-jeweled tapestry by Magnolia Editions and a 3-D Lenticular print.

The exhibition will be on display from October 11th through November 8th, 2008. The Gallery is open Tuesday - Saturday 12:00pm - 6:00pm. The opening reception will take place on October 11th, 2008 7:00 - 10:00pm.

This will be Miriam Wosk's second exhibit at Billy Shire Fine Arts. Wosk is known for her elaborate, large-scale paintings and collages of flora and fauna. In this exhibit Wosk again explores the relationship of humans and animals to nature...a world both animate and dream-like, combining reconfigured diagrams of anatomical bodies (mammal, insect, reptile, etc.) with lush jungles of pattern and color. The fecund bounty, derived largely from irregularly torn and cut-up vintage wallpaper and antique natural history charts, further embellished with jewels, glitter, organic materials (including bones, starfish and plant life), foils, paints and assorted mixed media - are sensual antidotes to mortality that also recall the 17th century tradition of Vanitas still life.

Wosk's works dazzle the viewer with the extravagance of their labor for just this effect; their excess alluding to the futility of earthly pursuits, while also reminding us of just how precious life is. Elegiac and celebratory at the same time, they reveal the artist's desire to, as she puts it, "explore the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the human experience, life's beauty and its shadow."

Billy Shire Fine Arts will also have her book Sequins and Skeletons, The Art Of Miriam Wosk available for purchase.

For more information contact gallery director, Annie Adjchavanich, 323-297-0600 or e-mail anniea@billyshirefinearts.com.

EDUCATION
University of British Columbia, Canada
Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
New School of Social Research, New York
School of Visual Arts, New York