Victoria Gitman
Biography
Untitled, 2024
Victoria Gitman’s paintings—small, seductive oil compositions on board—intertwine the experiences of vision and touch. Depicting vintage fur purses, dazzling sequined garments, and intricately beaded textiles, Gitman’s paintings are rendered with painstaking precision yet retain a distinctive warmth, softness and luminosity. Gitman works directly from handbags and other materials sourced from flea markets, vintage stores, and secondhand shops online. By seeking out subjects with geometric patterning and patchwork designs, she creates images in which the formal representations verge on the abstract. Despite their illusionism, the works equally evoke the high abstraction of twentieth century painters like Kazimir Malevich, Ellsworth Kelly, Clyfford Still, and Bridget Riley, flipping the relationships between abstraction, objecthood, surface, and scale that drove art historical discourses around pure abstraction, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Op.
At the same time, Gitman’s exploration of tactile desire brings to the fore the traditional gendering of the pictorial experience itself. These works exploit the seductive implications of the surface, highlighting the circuits of desire that the painting-viewer relationship entails. Given the paintings’ charged seductiveness, the works draw a close-up, intimate gaze, narrowing the distance between the viewer and the picture plane. For Gitman, this condensed space and slowed viewing becomes an integral experience of her work.
Victoria Gitman was born in 1972 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her works are held in the public collections of numerous museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the Detroit Institute of Arts; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others. In 2015 she was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Pérez Art Museum, curated by Réne Morales. Other recent solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Garth Greenan, New York; Tomio Koyama, Tokyo; Las Vegas Art Museum; Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles; and Bass Museum of Art, Miami. She lives and works near Miami in Hallandale Beach, Florida.
At the same time, Gitman’s exploration of tactile desire brings to the fore the traditional gendering of the pictorial experience itself. These works exploit the seductive implications of the surface, highlighting the circuits of desire that the painting-viewer relationship entails. Given the paintings’ charged seductiveness, the works draw a close-up, intimate gaze, narrowing the distance between the viewer and the picture plane. For Gitman, this condensed space and slowed viewing becomes an integral experience of her work.
Victoria Gitman was born in 1972 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her works are held in the public collections of numerous museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; the Detroit Institute of Arts; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others. In 2015 she was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Pérez Art Museum, curated by Réne Morales. Other recent solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Garth Greenan, New York; Tomio Koyama, Tokyo; Las Vegas Art Museum; Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles; and Bass Museum of Art, Miami. She lives and works near Miami in Hallandale Beach, Florida.
Works
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Untitled, 2024 -
Untitled, 2022
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Untitled, 2022
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Untitled, 2021
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Untitled, 2021
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Untitled, 2019
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Untitled, 2018
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Untitled, 2017
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Untitled, 2017
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Untitled, 2016
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Untitled, 2014
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Untitled, 2013
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On Display, 2011
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On Display, 2010
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A Beauty, 2008
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A Beauty, 2007
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On Display, 2005
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On Display, 2004
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A Beauty, 2004
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On Display, 2001
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On Display, 2001
Installation Views
Installation view, Victoria Gitman, Everything is Surface: Twenty Years of Painting, 2022
François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, USA
Exhibitions
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Victoria Gitman
Everything is Surface April 2 - May 7, 2022 2245 E Washington Blvd., Los AngelesFrançois Ghebaly is proud to announce Victoria Gitman, Everything is Surface: Twenty Years of Painting , opening in Los Angeles on April 2 and remaining on view through May 7,...Read more -
Victoria Gitman
Five Paintings February 15 - March 29, 2020 2245 E Washington Blvd., Los AngelesFrançois Ghebaly is proud to present a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Miami-based painter Victoria Gitman. The exhibition opens with a public reception on Saturday, February 15, 2020 from...Read more -
The New Verisimilitude
Group Exhibition July 15 - August 20, 2011 2600 S La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles'Art is the lie that tells the truth' - Pablo Picasso M+B and François Ghebaly are pleased to announce The New Verisimilitude, a two-part group exhibition across both gallery spaces,...Read more
Press
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Artillery 2022 Top Ten
Ezrha Jean Black, Artillery, January 4, 2023 -
Review: Victoria Gitman at François Ghebaly Downtown
Suzanne Hudson, Artforum, July 1, 2022 -
A Purse with a Fine-Tooth Comb: Victoria Gitman at François Ghebaly
Annabel Osberg, Art in America, May 4, 2022 -
Painter Victoria Gitman’s Meticulously Depicted Handbags Lure Viewers in With Seductive Surfaces, and Then Turn a Cold Shoulder
Pac Pobric, Artnet, April 21, 2022 -
Pick of the Week: Victoria Gitman
Lauren Guilford, Artillery, April 6, 2022 -
Distinct Pleasures: Victoria Gitman Interviewed
Paul Maziar, BOMB Magazine, August 4, 2021 -
At El Museo del Barrio Triennial, Five Latinx Painters to Watch
Beatriz Colón, Cultured Magazine, June 17, 2021 -
Small Wonders: Victoria Gitman’s Meticulous Eye for Detail
Pac Pobric, The Village Voice, February 1, 2018 -
Exhibition Reviews: The New Verisimilitude
Jonathan Griffin, ArtReview, July 15, 2011
News
Inquiry