Nicole Phungrasamee Fein: Vantage

Nicole Phungrasamee Fein presents new watercolors on paper, including a new circular Tondi series, in her fourth solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery.

The San Francisco-based artist has become known for creating beguiling works of deceptively minimal simplicity, using a basic technique of brushing lines of lightly pigmented watercolor in free-hand strokes across heavyweight paper. Extreme concentration is required to achieve the ethereal quality of these works – a result of hundreds of precisely timed and executed layers. The rigorous, almost punishing, process produces a contradictory effect of transcendent serenity and astonishing beauty.

In addition to works in her traditional square format, Fein presents a new discovery that applies her technique to a circular composition. In the Tondi series straight lines are drawn from one edge of the circle to the other, each line shifting slightly until a complete circle is formed. As the series progresses, the focal point shifts upward or downward, until it finally disappears outside of the circle’s edge.

Elliott Zooey Martin, in an Artforum Critic’s Pick from October 2012, captures the essence of Fein’s work:

While the prescriptive nature of Fein’s mark-making system may seem rationalized or detached, the drawings are acutely alive. Never precisely square, the fields contract and expand as if they are breathing… These works may be subdued and serene, but they are never beaten down. It is this tension – between the predetermined rigor of Fein’s system and the sheer beauty of the outcome – that makes these pieces so fascinating.

Nicole Phungrasamee Fein was born in Evanston, Illinois and received her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Fein’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Berkeley Art Museum (CA); the Fogg Art Museum (Harvard University); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and many others.