13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present View into the Fertile Country, an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Nicole Duennebier.

The work on display expands the scope of Duennebier's artistic pursuits, leaving behind the dense intimacy of her previous paintings to introduce compelling new vistas that establish the broader universe her work occupies.

Duennebier is perhaps best known for her still lifes that draw on the conventions of Baroque painting to present fantastic biologic forms. With this new series of work Duennebier strives to open up her aesthetic repertoire, trading the heavy chiaroscuro of her earlier paintings for a palette that gives her uncanny terrain an airy lightness. Rich with detail, her compositions offer distant waves, bits of projected light, caves and hollows, and perplexing organisms. Duennebier's intention is to create an entire world that the viewer can inhabit: "I want people to come across my work and somehow get caught in it. Details and resting spots allow that to happen."

The drawings included in View into the Fertile Country are among the first Duennebier is presenting as final works. The starkness of black and white ink on tan paper highlights the immediacy and nakedness of Duennebier's mark making. While painting presents endless opportunities for revision, for Duennebier "there's no place to hide in drawing. When a line is there, it's there...no turning back." Duennebier's drive to challenge herself artistically is revealed through the environments she composes with her meticulous imagery.

Duennebier embarks on a new mode of visual expression with View into the Fertile Country, and through the power of a potent imagination presents a world ready to explore.

May 19 - July 13, 2018

Sat 5/19, 5-7 pm: Opening reception
Sat 6/2, 4-6 pm: Terra Incognita - a conversation with Nicole Duennebier
Sat 6/9, 12-6 pm: Arlington Porchfest
Sat 6/16, 12-4 pm: Feast of the East in Capitol Square
Sat 7/7, 4-6 pm: The Scorbutic Eye - cocktail party and last look at View Into the Fertile Country

About the Artist

Nicole Duennebier was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1983. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Maine College of Art with a major in painting. Her BFA thesis work was most influenced by research into the coastal ecosystems of Maine. In 2006 she was awarded the Monhegan Island Artists Residency. On the island she continued her work with sea life, and perceived a natural connection between the darkness and intricacy of undersea regions and the aesthetic of 16th-century Dutch still-life painting.

In 2008 Duennebier moved to the Boston area, and now lives and works in Malden. She is a 2016 Massachusetts Cultural Council Painting Fellow and her work can be found in the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art. Writing about Bright Beast, her 2013 solo show at the Lilypad in Cambridge, Cate McQuaid of the Boston Globe said Duennebier’s “technical mastery gives the artist what she needs to seduce the viewer; the content lowers the boom.”  Duennebier has also been featured in the Portland Press Herald, Art New England and Hi Fructose Magazine, among other publications.

Duennebier has worked alongside her sister Caitlin Duennebier for a number of collaborative exhibitions, most recently Temple of Flies at Montserrat College of Art. She is featured in an upcoming solo exhibition, Pushing Painting, at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University from June 9 to July 8, 2018. Her first solo show at 13FOREST, The Great Season, ran from January through March 2014. An interview with the artist from that time by gallery co-owner Jim Kiely can be found here.

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