INSTALLATION & CURATION FOR SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW 2024
Passageways
a solo exhibition by Aleksandra Dougal
Presented by All Street Gallery
Curated by Eden Chinn
SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Booth #20
September 4 - 9, 2024
Featured works
NEW YORK, NY – All Street Gallery and Aleksandra Dougal make their art fair debut at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, located on the 10th floor of 75 Varick Street, running from September 4 - September 9. Exploring the theme, INT./EXT. (interior/exterior), SPRING/BREAK examines landscapes, streetscapes, and anatomy as more than what meets the eye, prioritizing one’s subjective experience over the stark objectivity of observation. Within the context of INT./EXT., All Street presents the exhibition Passageways, a solo installation of works by Aleksandra Dougal curated by Eden Chinn. Passageways considers the permeable boundaries between inside/outside, mundane/nostalgic, and memory/imagination. In her life-sized paintings of landscapes, thresholds, and passageways, Dougal deconstructs the specificities of the people and places familiar to her. Through this ambiguation, a sense of distance, proximity, past, and presence are simultaneously evoked, existing in a space between representation and abstraction.
Dougal’s landscapes, quaint city scenes, and thresholds of domestic environments portray quotidian environments that hold personal significance yet simultaneously could represent many different places. Although places and subjects familiar to Dougal most frequently appear in her paintings, she deconstructs the specificities that are best understood by those within their context. Through her use of light, movement, and monumental scale, Dougal invites the viewer to enter the worlds within her paintings, and to step into a space that is simultaneously familiar yet obscured. This sense of distance experienced by the viewer arises, in part, from Dougal’s process. For the creation of each piece, Dougal uses photographs captured months before the inception of each painting as source material. By using a combination of direct observation and memory for their creation, the paintings are suffused with a sense of separation, proximity, past, and presence. To the artist, the tension between the ephemerality and constancy of transitions –– within the landscapes, thresholds, and passageways depicted in her paintings –– are subtle references to her acceptance of the passage of time.
In her depiction of and allusion to interior spaces in her paintings, Dougal’s practice operates as an exercise in realizing her inner life and personal attachments without identifiable traits. By keeping the figures in these scenes obscured, the viewer must imagine the identities of the groups of people walking down neighborhood streets, the women opening a cabin door, the people who might inhabit the portrayed homes, and the figures’ relationships to each other. Due to this distance from representation, the viewer must take an active, participatory role in navigating the memories, emotions, and characters they imaginatively insert into each image. The paintings not only depict literal passageways as transitional spaces, but also more figurative passageways, from event to memory, objectivity to subjectivity, and personalization to depersonalization.
The exterior, natural worlds – shown as forest scenes, greenery surrounding a quiet neighborhood, striking patterns of light and shadow – are depicted in more vivid detail, drawing the solidity of place into focus as a container for personal experience. This sense of physical groundedness contrasts with other elements that are just out of representational reach: the ephemerality of figures in motion, qualities of light that can only be experienced at certain times of day, and other allusions to fleeting perspectives, demonstrated through gestural linework and brushstrokes. The large scale depictions of these environments necessitate the artist’s invention of certain visual elements within each scene, creating a sense of fluidity surrounding the imaginary and the real. Each painting is created to be intentionally life-sized, and in many ways hold many paintings within one canvas. To take in the whole scene, the viewer must stand far back, but delicate details are to be discovered once arriving at a nose-deep perspective. In this sense, physical movement and passage from one perspective to another is a necessary process of oscillation to appreciate the scene as a whole, and the details it contains.
Passageways fondly considers the permeable boundaries between interior and exterior spaces, how sentimental attachment may alter memory beyond the possibility of objectivity, and how the loss of visual and emotional clarity is an inevitability of the passage of time, even when it comes to the most formative relationships and places. The exhibition creates a space for contemplation and a deeper understanding of how we transition according to our proximity to significant places, people, and moments in our lives.
About Aleksandra Dougal:
Aleksandra Dougal is a visual artist based between New England and New York City, working primarily with painting, photography, and book arts. Her process relies on paying close attention to visual fascinations within her daily surroundings, and documenting them to realize their patterns and concepts. She seeks to investigate what occupies the space between positionality and neutrality.
Website: aleksandradougal.com
Instagram: @ali_dougal
About All Street Gallery:
Founded in 2018, All Street presents works by emerging and underrepresented artists whose works demonstrate social engagement and community empowerment. First established as an artist collective and grassroots protest organization by born and raised New Yorkers, All Street NYC is a space that is both created by and for artists. Having deep roots in New York City, the gallery and collective share a background in public art and activations as a means of creative protest and resistance. Such socially engaged work has carried into their gallery space as they opened their doors on 77 East Third Street, and as they now open their second location at 119 Hester Street.
Email: gallery@allstnyc.com
Phone: +1(646) 335 - 3717
Website: allstnyc.com
Instagram: @all.st.nyc
Aleksandra Dougal
Women Walking Through the Door, 2023-2024
Oil, charcoal, and chalk on canvas
96 x 72 inches