Miriam Brumer and Emna Zghal: Works on Paper Paintings

Press Release

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent works on paper by Miriam Brumer and mixed media work by Emna Zghal. Both artists live and work in New York City. A reception for the artists is on Thursday, September 8 between 5-8pm.

Miriam Brumer’s recent work continues to explore strategies that fuse her themes and concerns for elements drawn from the natural world with a rigorous compositional organization. She uses inks, markers and paint on paper and mylar to saturate surfaces with brilliantly-colored abstract forms that allude to organic yet unspecified forms. To the artist, making art is a chance to become involved in a kind of “magic? as every element evolves in a state of restless animation. The lines, shapes and forms define pulsating components in a setting that suggests imminent change, growth and even impending eruption. Space is ambiguous, nothing is explicit and colors and textures are evocative. Says Brumer “My work often appears to be lit from within by some self-generating life force that gives the pieces an illusion of breathing and creating them is a chance for me to participate in a kind of mysterious alchemy whose end results are worlds of my own”.

Miriam Brumer holds an MFA in Painting from Boston University and a BA in Art and English from the University of Miami, Florida. She has been Coordinator of Adult Programs at Queens Museum of Art, New York. Her work is in the collection of The Chase Manhattan Bank, New York Bank for Savings, Bell Labs and numerous private collections.

Emna Zghal’s mixed media works combine woodcut printing with drawing and pastel for a layered effect that lets the carved patterns and natural wood grain show through translucent surfaces. Intimations of swirling clouds, or perhaps mirage-like landscapes are obscured by veils of wispy color that soften their contours and enhance the suggestion of interactive natural phenomena. A prolific artist with a keen interest in language and poetry, she recently started integrating poetry verses by diverse writers such as James Baldwin and the contemporary Arab poet Adonis in her work. The latest artist-book in this series, “War Essay? is included in this exhibition. The book consists of quotes assembled by the artist, of Americans such as James Baldwin, Mother Jones and Susan Sontag speaking about values and aspects of culture that allow war. The last page is by the only non-American of the series, the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, wishing that the murdered poem, bleeding still, would be revealed to you. There is a resonance of personal truth embedded in the work.

Emna Zghal was born in Tunisia, North Africa. She received her BA from L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Tunis and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Tunisia, France, USA, Germany, Japan, Kuwait, India, Libya, Lebanon and Italy. She was part of the 1997 edition of the New Delhi Triennial and 1995 edition of the Kuwait Biennial. Zghal has received fellowship residencies and done projects with the Newark Art Museum, The Lower East Side Print shop, The MacDowell Colony, The Weir Farm Trust, The Vermont Studio Center, Blue Mountain Center and La Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris. Emna Zghal’s portfolio of prints “The Prophet of Black Folk” was recently acquired by The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.