Hannah van Bart

Hannah van Bart... The Trap (2006, Acrylic on linen, 65 x 57 1/8 inches). From Works by Hannah van Bart at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, NY. "...Van Bart's paintings and drawings depicting solitary figures set against isolated backdrops broach a different form of portraiture. The cropped heads, floating mouths, oversized hands and part animal/part human hybrids of van Bart's canvases exude an inner existence of those illustrated. The artist works from memory rather than from photographs, attempting to create and structure figures that she can walk away from, leaving them to survive on their own. Though these beings achieve their independence, they remain in a state of decay, anxiety, isolation and hope.
This new body of work marks a step away from the mechanical prototype-inspired figures of van Bart's earlier paintings and drawings, though the artist continues to pursue male, female and animal forms with her distinctive outlines and matte palettes. Focused in large part on her catalogue of imagined faces and bodies, many of van Bart's seated portraits feel like idiosyncratic headshots."