78th Street Studios' Lesko Gallery Shows Work by Australia-Based Artist Aubrey Rhodes

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Fri 11/21 @ 5-9PM The Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery in 78th Street Studios is known for its roster of artists from across the country as well local artist. For its next show, it reached WAY across the world and found painter/collagist Aubrey Rhodes in Melbourne, Australia, where the California native has lived for the past 16 years, It's her second time show at Lesko-her first solo show there was exactly ten years ago. This show, called The Birds, she says, "explores the collision between nature and modern life-between instinct and awareness, beauty and distortion. Through hybrid female figures layered with collage and symbolic imagery, the work reflects on identity, culture, and perception in a rapidly shifting world." The show emerged from a giant painting she was working on that was initially filled with figures of women that began blending with images of birds and animals. "Originally, I'd planned to have this massive canvas in my studio to scribble on when I got frustrated with other paintings," she says in her artist statement. "But oddly, this thing started emerging. The largest woman on the right came first. The other women came along, one by one, adding to the silent conversation, deepening it. When the canvas was covered by the women's portraits, I still felt something was missing, an element I wanted to express but didn't know how to articulate or even quite what it was I searching for. There was a noisiness to this painting - laughing, screaming, talking, mouths open - I wanted to bring that forward, the rawness of it, and also express an even more basic animalistic nature that runs through us all. It was then that I knew I needed an animal element in the painting. The play on the word ‘birds' came first, a slang term for a woman. But I also liked the noise I sensed in the chaos of flapping wings flying in random directions-creatures that could work in harmony, fly in unison, but also destroy their own." You can get a first look at Rhodes' work during Third Friday November 21. It will be on view through February 14, 2026. aubreyrhodes Share on Facebook Tweet this pintereset Share on Google+ email Post categories: Events ----WRITERS---- Visual Arts Preview Free Anastasia Pantsios RSS college