The exhibition of the new work of Karine Laval, entitled Mise en abyme revisits the subject for which she has become best known, the swimming pool. Although continuing to employ a highly saturated palette with tightly composed imagery, this new series marks a departure from her previous work in both tone and depth. Here, Laval takes us through levels of dream-like reflections, painterly layers that oscillate between abstraction and representation. These large-scale tableaux serve not as mere illustrations of the physical experience of the water or the leisure it usually represents, but rather use form, color and texture to depict a world on the edge of the real and surreal.
“I see the pool more as a metaphor, a mirror whose surface reflects the surrounding world but is also a gate into another – dreamlike – world, a sort of mise en abyme.” says Laval. Consequently, the distorted bodies and landscapes begin to echo physical dissolutions and shifting states of mind as the water blurs the threshold between the mundane and the sublime.
This is Laval’s third solo exhibition at Bonni Benrubi Gallery. Her work has been featured in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, The Sunday Telegraph, Le Figaro Magazine, The New Yorker and many others. Laval’s photographs have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe.
Until March 19
Bonni Benrubi
41 East 57th Street 13th Floor,
New York, NY 10022
