Overview

Using energetic gestural abstraction, Elise Ansel translates Old Master paintings into a contemporary pictorial language. She mines art historical imagery for colour and form, setting aside the narrative and pictorial elements of these paintings and thus creating room for new interpretations. Her works interrupt linear readings of Old Master paintings, repurposing and highlighting the unexpected. The representational content is transformed into a celebration of colour, gesture and the materiality of paint. In the process of reducing her inspirations to their most fundamental forms she retains their power and energy, replacing imagery with dynamic movement and dramatic colour and light. 

‘Elise has assimilated the originals at an unprecedented level, an almost atomic level, a level in no way attainable without absolute mastery of form and materials, before exploding them onto the canvas as her own' Lara Santor

 

Her work deconstructs authorial agency in order to excavate and liberate meanings buried beneath the surface of the works from which her paintings spring. Old Master paintings were, for the most part, created by men for men. Abstraction allows her to interrupt this one-sided narrative and transform it into a sensually capacious, non-narrative form of visual communication, repurposing the patriarchal language and misogyny that dominates the history of art. Her retelling of these paintings is infused with the joy of interrupting history, replacing the past with raw expression and embracing multiple viewpoints.

Works
Exhibitions
Studio shots
Publications
Video
Elise Ansel in her Maine Studio


Biography

Born in New York City in 1961, Ansel studied at Brown University before gaining her MFA in Visual Art at the Southern Methodist University. Her works have been exhibited in group shows and solo exhibitions across the United States and the UK, and are held in public and private collections worldwide. Her first exhibition with Cadogan, ‘Drawn from History’, was held in 2013.  

 

EDUCATION
1993 MFA Visual Art Southern Methodist University
1984 BA Comparative Literature Brown University

 

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023 

2022 

2021

2020  

   

'Recent Work', Miles McEnery Gallery, New York

'Time and Materials', Auxier Kline, New York

'The Women', Carol Corey Fine Art, New York

'Palimpsest', David Klein Gallery, Detroit, USA

2019   'yes I said Yes', Cadogan Gallery, London
2018   'Time Present', Danese/Corey, New York
2010   List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
1996   Hanes Art Center Glass Gallery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023 

 

 

2023

2022 

 

2019/2015

 

'Together & Apart, A Legacy of Abstraction: new work by Elise Ansel, Caroline del Giudice, Alisa Henriquez, Rosalind Tallmadge', David Klein Gallery, Detroit, Michigan

'She -Wolves', Space Gallery, Portland, Maine

'Multiple Choice', ABNY Gallery, East Hampton, New York

 

'Summer Exhibition', Royal Academy of Arts, London

2019   rePRESENTed PAST, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York
     
2016   LA Art Show with Ellsworth Gallery, Los Angeles, California
    Art New York with Cynthia Corbett Gallery, New York
     
2015   London Art Fair, with the Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London
    Art Miami, with the Cyntha Corbett Gallery, Miami, Florida
   

'Young Masters/ Focus on New Work', Site/109, New York

 

COLLECTIONS
 
 

Museum of Contemporary Art Krków, MOCAK, Kraków, Poland

Eli Lilly Foundation, Indianapolis, Indiana

Art Masters Solutions, London, UK
Cristina and Joe Craft, Chair, Dept. of Internal Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences, Evansville, Indiana
Wilfrid Zogbaum, New York, New York

 

 

 

Bibliography

Bibliography

Alfred Mac Adam, The Brooklyn Rail, January 2019
Stacey Kors, ZEST, Winter 2019
Niall MacMonagle, The Independent, December 2018
Cate McQuaid, Boston Globe, June 2018
Alfred Mac Adam, ARTnews, March 2017
David Dorsey, The Dorsey Post, February 2017
Patrica Ramos, METAL, November 2016
Carl Little, Hyperallergic, April 2016
Kat Herriman, Cultured Magazine, Feb/March 2016
John O’Hern, American Art Collector, April 2016
Daniel Kany, Portland Press Herald, Feb 2016
Jacob Fall and Virginia Rose, The Chart, March 2016
Christina Arza, Steadfast Arte, December 2015
Gabrielle Selz, Hamptons Art Hub, December 2013
Michael Abatemarco, Santa Fe New Mexican, Pasatiempo, August 2013
Deborah Weisgall, maine., January/February 2011
Bill Van Siclen, Providence Journal, January 2011

 

Press