Alumna Patricia Treib in Solo Exhibit in London, 'Limbs'

Alumna Patricia Treib ’06 currently has a solo show at the Kate MacGarry gallery in London. The show, titled Limbs, had its reception on Nov. 7, and will run until Dec. 14, 2019.

Limbs is a solo show of Treib’s paintings. The paintings featured were mostly painted over the course of a day. Bright and saturated, these works are animated by the visibility of the painter’s brush strokes.

Treib’s work has been the fodder for much academic discussion in modern art. Joanna Fiduccia, an art historian and critic, wrote  “Three Items,” an essay from the forthcoming monograph, Patricia Treib, to be released in 2020. Fiduccia lives in New Haven where she is Assistant Professor of Modern European and American Art at Yale University.

In an excerpt from “Three Items” published on the gallery’s website, Fiduccia said, “Patricia Treib works at an immersive scale, one that feels closer to the size of a bed than a door.” The effect of Treib’s particular style of painting—using wide hake brushes—is almost visceral. “Instead of manipulating these figures or transporting yourself into their ambiance, you are enjoined to follow the movements that produced them — a hand that puckered or smoothed the shape, just as a body might sculpt a bedsheet.”

The New York Times has called other works by Treib as festive and sophisticated, saying, “Patricia Treib’s festive abstract paintings combine pictorial sophistication with an unexpectedly gratifying irresolution, almost an unease. Ms. Treib’s colors swing between saturated and pale, avoiding straightforward primaries. [...] Yet Ms. Treib’s efforts are also invigoratingly of the moment. They look as if they could only have been made today.”

Treib received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Columbia University. Born 1979 in Saginaw, Michigan, she currently lives and works in New York.