Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Jocelyn Hobbie. Since the mid-90s, Hobbie has painted the female figure with a heightened naturalism and an enhanced degree of saturated color that reveals an uneasy relationship to realism and firmly roots these striking paintings in the age of post abstraction.
For this exhibition, Hobbie will exhibit paintings on canvas and paper completed over the last few years. Echoing styles as divergent as the expressive figuration of New Objectivity and the rich, layered patterning of Ukiyo-e, Hobbie hones a formal style in which neoclassical figures with lambent or emotionally obscure expressions are depicted amid boldly graphic clothing and vivid floral settings. Hobbie’s seamless, polished surfaces and dynamic compositions meld her subjects amid pictorial environments brimming with painterly precision. The canvases and works on paper have the elemental and thematic characteristics of portraiture, yet the artificiality of Hobbie’s crystalized women avert emotional specificity in favor of ambiguity. The atmosphere is mystical, sensual, and highly feminine. Hobbie’s female subjects exist proudly with a nonchalance that synthesizes themes of abundance and beauty with an elegiac detachment from contemporary life.
