Natalie Charkow Hollander, After Poussin
Charkow Hollander looks at the art of the past as inspiration for the art of the present. Here she interprets Nicolas Poussin’s Parnassus, a 17th-century painting that shows an assemblage of allegorical figures who take inspiration from the muse of the arts—the font of all creativity—represented as a reclining female nude. Like Poussin’s painting, Charkow Hollander’s carved and cast sculptures are structured around the flow of the water that emanates from the nude. A variety of shapes and surface textures approximate the painting’s stage-like space in the shallow three dimensions of relief, offering contemporary figurative narratives on a grand theme.