Ellen Berkenblit

Anton Kern Gallery is pleased to announce a special presentation of new works by Ellen Berkenblit, featuring 10 gouaches with colorful Kozo paper collage elements, and a large-scale oil painting. 

Berkenblit recently began integrating pieces of Kozo paper into her gouache compositions. The behavior of this paper - made from the fiber of mulberry trees and full of texture - opened up exciting ways to layer color and surface. By cutting out shapes, or ripping it into strips to retain a feathered edge, she could both manipulate the material with precision and also work with uncontrollable surprise and chance. In these latest works, color and material become confluent, as if the artist paints with paper. A large-scale oil painting on linen “Apricot McCoo” accompanies the group, together showcasing the artist’s masterful handling of color, her confident line, and deep understanding of the alchemical interactions between paint and surface.

Ellen Berkenblit (born 1958 in Paterson, NJ) is an American painter who lives and works in New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 1980. Her work is included in the public collections of the Aspen Art Museum, CO; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Cincinnati Art Museum, OH; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; the Minnesota Museum of American Art, St Paul, MN; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. 

Flugelhorns, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Germany, which is currently on view at Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin, was named one of Art Basel’s Editors’ Picks for Summer 2024. Additional recent solo exhibitions include: In Motion, Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, NM (2023); Other Shapes at Night, Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA; and Umberville, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, IL (both 2022). In 2022, Berkenblit was awarded the Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award in Art, which recognizes outstanding achievement in the visual arts (presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York). In 2019, Berkenblit was commissioned to create a site specific mural Leopard’s Lane for the MCA Chicago’s Atrium Project. In 2018, The Drawing Center commissioned the artist to create her first experimental film Lines Roar, which is currently on view at The Mill, Westport, NY.