The Hole is proud to present a two-person exhibition by LA-based artist Anja Salonen and Belgrade-based artist Maja Djordjevic entitled “Body Building.” In the show both artists depict the female body with a fresh perspective, loading it up with conflict or tension and building it up with paint.

In the images above we can see the different approaches of the artists. Salonen paints more traditional female nudes but builds them askance; telling the truth but “tell(ing) it slant” as in Dickinson’s poems. The figures are often surrealistically arranged in Salonen’s works, a dream-like tableau surrounded by plants, patterns, pools. There is nothing idealized about them, though the pastel palette might create a false sense of calm: her paintings seethe with tension and drama, using the female figure to embody her examinations of intimacy and detachment, building up and breaking down.

In Maja Djordjevic’s work, the female figures are much more rudimentary, barely a collection of early computer game pixels; a nude form with a little scratch of vagina and dotted on boobs, howling mouths. Like Pettibon’s VAVOOM children these figures seem to be connected to something primal, and loud. Djordjevic paints these rectilinear shapes by hand, sketched out in an early kind of MacPaint program, where squares of color are so large as to prevent too much detail. The anonymous women that populate her paintings are used as symbols of feminine power, pleasure and pain; and while being tiny and barely marked out as a girl, they explode with vitality and even positivity.

For more information on the exhibition email raymond@theholenyc.com.