Zurcher Gallery is thrilled to present a solo exhibition of recent works by Kyle Staver. This is her first one-person exhibit at Zürcher Gallery. Born and raised in Minnesota, Kyle Staver has lived in New York since receiving an MFA in painting from Yale University, College of Art, in 1987.
For her first solo, Zürcher Gallery intentionally will be showing Kyle Staver’s paintings in tandem with their studies made in fired clay. In the paintings and clay reliefs, Staver explores familiar mythological themes such as Psyche and Cupid or Venus and Adonis. Karen Wilkin writes, “She approaches her time-honored, much-explored themes with a refreshing lack of inhibition, an audacity embodied by her increasingly suave handling of paint, and increasingly dramatic light effects.” 1
Kyle Staver places her flat figures within a deep space and uses backlighting to create volume as well as suspended tension and mysterious radiance. In Kyle Staver’s reimagined mythology, the heroes are women. John Yau writes of the importance of this retelling in his essay, A Different History: “By transforming a pagan world into one in which woman can be heroes, she advances the likelihood that we will have to revise everything we know if we are to proceed.” 2
Of Staver’s place within contemporary painting, Karen Wilkin writes: “Seriously painting (or sculpting or etching) large-scale figures enacting scenes from mythology, once regarded as the most ambitious of genres, has been assumed to be dead or moribund since the 19th century. […] Staver, with a light touch, abundant intelligence, good humor, and a marvelous ability to orchestrate both elastic shapes and evocative lighting, seems to have resuscitated the tradition, at least for a while.” 3
Kyle Staver’s work is in conversation with Titian, Rubens, Renoir and Picasso, but her bold and quirky treatment of the figures relates to artists of her generation such as Nicole Eisenman, Angela Dufresne, Judith Linhares, Caroll Dunham or Dana Schutz.
In the June 2018 Brooklyn Rail feature “Artists for Artists, About some shared empathies” curated by Choghakate Kazarian, Kyle Staver contributed a piece about her affinity with Renoir. We can certainly apply to Kyle Staver what she wrote about Renoir’s last paintings, “Renoir’s gift at the end of it all is his ability to paint thoughtlessly, joyfully, and completely free of censor. Rare.”
1, 3 Wilkin, Karen. “Kyle Staver: History Painting in the 21st Century.” The Hopkins Review 11.1 (2016): 100-2. Print.
2 Yau, John. “A Different History.” The Wild Children of William Blake. New York: Autonomedia, 2017. 249-252. Hyperallergic Weekend (September 18, 2016)

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 8th, 5 - 7pm

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