NinaJohnson

Atlanta Contemporary, Gallery 2

Anna Betbeze: Venus

August 26, 2017 – December 17, 2017

Betbeze’s most significant body of work to date utilizes shag carpets as an uncanny support  for her paintings. Architecturally scaled, the works are made by saturating the carpets in colorful acid dyes and burning them with fire. At the brink of being destroyed, she carefully stitches them together. The modulation of fur, the saturation of color, the blemishes and holes, conjure our most visceral senses. 

Venus will include a collection of new works on carpet, alongside drawings, small sculptures, and iridescent “suits” which expand on her previous oeuvre.

Anna Betbeze (b. 1980, Mobile, AL) has had solo exhibitions at Nina Johnson, Markus Lüttgen, Luxembourg & Dayan, Kate Werble and Francois Ghebaly. Her work has been shown at institutions such as MOMA PS1, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and various other galleries and institutions around the world. Her works are in the permanent collections of The Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and the High Museum in Atlanta. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Modern Painters, New York Magazine, Frieze d/e, The Los Angeles Times, Kaleidoscope and Monopol. She is a recent recipient of the Rome Prize and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She holds an MFA from Yale and currently lives and works in New York City. Betbeze was raised in Columbus, Georgia, and is based out of Brooklyn, New York. She attended the University of Georgia, where she earned a BFA before receiving an MFA from Yale in 2006.