Anna Betbeze: Wormholes

Wormholes, Anna Betbeze's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, explores scale, color and material in four new works that engage the gallery's architectural features. Oscillating between icon and stain, the pieces simultaneously depict real and phenomenological space.

Betbeze uses huge wool slabs as the ground to accumulate a saturation of fluid color. She burns, bleaches, stains, cuts, etches, and machine washes the wool to go beyond its material limits, creating vibrating color expanses. She further transforms the wool by displaying the less desirable, matte under side, elevating the psychedelic tapestry to an epic scale.

Through physicality and the elimination of a traditional canvas, Betbeze explores the act of painting in an expanded field. Wormholes includes her largest works to date, eclipsing the human figure and acting as active architectural membranes. Having no centered subject, the pieces address peripheral vision, tactility and optical blur, borrowing ideas of soft focus from a Baroque sensibility.

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Anna Betbeze was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1980 and grew up in Columbus, Georgia. She received her BFA from the University of Georgia in 2003 and her MFA from Yale University in 2006, where she currently teaches painting. She lives and works in New York City. 

Betbeze has held solo exhibitions at Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY; and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA. Past group exhibitions include the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, NY; Brand New Gallery, Milan, IT; Modern Collections, London, UK; Tonya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, NY; Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY; Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY; The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space, New York, NY; and PPOW Gallery, New York, NY.