Anna Conway

Anna Conway (born 1973) is an American visual artist based in New York City and known for enigmatic oil paintings that depict uneasy, absurdist moments descending on isolated, ordinary individuals.[1][2][3][4] She combines a style identified as precise and methodical with detailed observation,[5] "an air of surrealist suspension,"[2] and a narrative sense that critics characterize as elusive, metaphysical and "imbued with cinematic suggestion."[6] Conway has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at MoMA PS1, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, University Art Museum at Albany, Fralin Museum of Art, and Collezione Maramotti (Italy), among other venues.[7][8][9][10] She has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014),[11][12] two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards (2011, 2005),[13] and the American Academy of Arts and Letters William L. Metcalf Award (2008).[8][14]

Anna Conway
Born1973
Durango, Colorado, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationColumbia University, Cooper Union
Known forPainting
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, American Academy of Arts and Letters
WebsiteAnna Conway

Early life and career
Anna Conway, Haniwa, oil on linen, 36" x 48", 2017.

Conway was born in Durango, Colorado in 1973 and grew up in Foxborough, Massachusetts.[3] She studied art in New York City, earning a BFA from Cooper Union (1997) and an MFA from Columbia University (2002).[14] After graduating, she rented a studio in Brooklyn and gained early recognition for shows in New York at Artemis Greenberg Van Doren and Guild and Greyshkul in 2004, and at MoMA PS1 and Phillips de Pury & Company in 2005.[15][16][17][18] In subsequent years, she has had solo exhibitions at Fergus McCaffrey, American Contemporary and Guild & Greyshkul (all New York City) and Collezione Maramotti.[19][20][21][22] In addition to her painting practice, Conway has taught at Cooper Union, Columbia University, Parsons School of Design, and Brooklyn College.[23][24] She lives and works in New York City.[25]

Work and reception

Conway's art has been featured in Artforum,[26] Art in America,[3] Flash Art,[6] Frieze,[7] The New York Times,[27] Hyperallergic,[1] and New American Paintings,[28] among many publications.[29][30] In a 2007 review, The New Yorker compared her work to the "fantastic, alienating styles of Magritte, Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall, with strange tableaux suggesting both religious miracles translated into the everyday and "the apocalypse rendered in miniature," rather than cinemaplex, scale.[4] These paintings often present workaday men reduced to tiny figures in quietly mysterious, absurd scenes suggesting futility, inscrutable inner states and back stories, and a sense of suburban normalcy gone wrong.[3][31][32][26]

Critics such as Hyperallergic's Seph Rodney suggest that Conway's work in the later 2010s carries a more pervasive, foreboding quiet, reflecting both a dystopian fear and desire for the scarcity of humanity, concerns about sustainability and social inequality, and the heightened tension of a more ominous, paranoid era.[1][19][2] Artforum critic Kate Sutton writes that Conway's "pristine execution echoes the would-be flawlessness of her settings," which she subtly intrudes upon with seemingly accidental figures and evocations of the past suggesting loss amid sleek, contemporary modernism (e.g., Haniwa, 2017).[1][19] Rachel Churner describes these paintings as the visual equivalents of spy novels "marked by the abundance and clarity of their details" and the thrill of deciphering what is significant and what is merely mundane.[2]

References
  1. Rodney, Seph. "Grim Vistas of Present and Future Dystopias," Hyperallergic, December, 2017. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  2. Churner, Rachel. "Anna Conway," Artforum, February 2018. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  3. Boucher, Brian. "Anna Conway at Guild and Greyshkul," Art in America, September 2007.
  4. The New Yorker. "Art in Review", April 2, 2007. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  5. Domus. "Anna Conway, Purpose," Domus, March 2016. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  6. Paderni, Marinella. "Anna Conway," Flash Art, April 2016.
  7. Eleey, Peter. "Greater New York," Frieze, May 2005, p. 114. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  8. Artforum. "American Academy of Arts and Letters Announces 2008 Art Awards," Artforum, March 19, 2008. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
  9. Dunbar, Elizabeth et al (ed). Phantasmania, Kansas City, MO: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007.
  10. Fiore, Fiorella. "Slow and Silent, Anna Conway," Il Giornale Dell'Arte, March 2016, p. 35.
  11. Artforum. "2014 Guggenheim Fellows Announced," Artforum, April 10, 2014. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
  12. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. "Anna Conway," Fellows. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  13. Pollock-Krasner Foundation. "Anna Conway," Artists. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  14. Art Review. "100 Future Greats 2005," December/January 2006.
  15. Ribas, Joao. "She’s Come Undone," Time Out New York, July 1, 2004.
  16. Comita, Jenny. "Higher Learning," W, March 2005.
  17. Harper's Bazaar (Japan)."10 Artists: PS1," July 2005. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  18. Beaux Arts. "P.S. 1 Review," July 2005.
  19. Sutton, Kate. "Critics Pick: Anna Conway," Artforum, December 2017. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  20. The New Yorker. "Anna Conway," April 22, 2013. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  21. Carriero, Marcello. "Anna Conway, Contradictions Concealed in the Detail," Arte E Critica, March 2016.
  22. Sacchi, Annachiara. "The Worlds of Anna Conway: Portrait of Time," La Lettura, March 2016.
  23. Cooper Union. The School of Art Annual Report (2013-2014), 2014. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  24. Hoffman, Claire. "Arts Students at Columbia Paint a Bleak Money Picture," The New York Times, May 24, 2004. Sect. B, p. 3. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  25. Baldwin, Rosecrans. "Anna Conway, Somebody Call Someone," The Morning News, April 24, 2013.
  26. Fry, Naomi. "Anna Conway," Artforum, March, 2007. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  27. Smith, Roberta. "A Gallery Goes Out in a Burst of Energy," The New York Times, February 6, 2009. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  28. Zevitas, Steven (ed). "Anna Conway," New American Paintings, Issue #74, 2008 Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  29. Goodrich, John. "Art in Brief," The New York Sun, July 5, 2007.
  30. Zevitas, Steven. "Ten Must See Painting Shows," Huffington Post, July 2012. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  31. Heartney, Eleanor. "Return to the Real?" Art in America, 2006, p. 85–9.
  32. Ho, Christopher. "In View: Greater New York 2005," Modern Painters, May 2005.
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