Isabelle Fein in Blouin Artinfo

Jack Hanley Gallery is hosting an exhibition “on the phone” by artist Isabelle Fein at the gallery’s New York venue.

The exhibition presents new works by Berlin based artist Isabelle Fein (born 1973 in Wiesbaden, Germany), marking her debut solo with the gallery. Known for works across multiple media that blur the thresholds between painting and drawing, Isabelle Fein is formally trained in film and drawing from the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, Germany and the Städelschule Frankfurt am Main, and has been featured in solo shows at Galerie Parisa Kind, Frankfurt and Fort Gansevoort Gallery, New York. She has also participated in exhibitions at Center Berlin, Acud Project Space and Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, DE. “on the phone” features the artist’s new figurative works on board, canvas and paper as well as painted ceramic plates and sculptures. Depicting simple observations from her everyday life and surroundings, like a bird sitting on a wire, or a snail crossing the sidewalk, or a woman holding on to an umbrella in the rain, or a stranger reading the newspaper on the tram- Fein’s paintings create sceneries in which inner and outer life coexist. Her non-traditional compositions in these paintings reject any hierarchical order or chronology and inhere a sense of ease and freedom, which is also visible in her use of materials and technique. What connects Fein’s multi-disciplinary visual vocabulary is the joy to experiment that is visible similarly in her painterly brushstrokes of oil on board, fine contoured lines on ceramic plates or soft layers of india ink on canvas, which is also paired with a tranquility and meditativeness found in her figure’s characters. In small scale ceramic sculptures these characters seem to have escaped the borders of the two-dimensional and expand Fein’s enigmatic realities.