BLUE MOUNTAIN GALLERY

BLUE MOUNTAIN GALLERY is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of recent work by Gulgun Aliriza. In a series of still-life, landscape and portrait paintings and works on paper, Aliriza often combines elements from each category into a single composition. This will be the artist’s third exhibition at the gallery, located at 547 West 27th Street, New York City.

 

Gulgun Aliriza’s paintings are studies in color, surface and geometry that celebrate the beauty of light and form. Her creative process is primarily inspired by direct observation that she then expresses in painterly terms. She explores abstract divisions of the pictorial space, the value structures, and the formal color relationships. The still life arrangements were set up in her studio where she became fascinated with exploring the relationship of objects to one another and to their surrounding space. Some of her landscape paintings are done outdoors from immediate surroundings, but most are completed looking through her studio window as she captures the abstract elements of changing light and shifting colors.

 

Aliriza’s paintings demonstrate both her respect for the past and her passion for the present. Aliriza’s approach to painting is deeply influenced by the history of painting —from Titian, Poussin, Degas, Piero della Francesca, Morandi, Cezanne, Greek fresco and miniature painters among others. She brings traditional principles of painting into her process with a new perspective.

 

GULGUN ALIRIZA received her BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase with Summa Cum Laude in 2005 where she studied with Robert Berlind, Harriet Shorr, Judith Bernstein and Nancy Davidson and she received her MFA from Western Connecticut University in 2007. She continued her studies with Graham Nickson at the New York Studio School, NYC, and with Susanna Coffey. She is the recipient of several grants and a residency program award. In 2007, she was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. Aliriza has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout the Northeast. In 2013 her work was featured in The Power of Place at the Hudson Valley MOCA. Her two previous solo shows at Blue Mountain Gallery were The Poetics of Excess in 2013 and Spatial Journeys in 2017. Aliriza is a Cypriot-born American painter who lives and works in New York.