Liliane Tomasko distills her paintings to a focused meditation on color, shape, and texture. The resulting works are engrossing, multicolored arrangements of sweeping, curvilinear brushstrokes, and other irregular forms. Each gesture is applied with varying degrees of opacity, creating a palimpsest-like effect, wherein the initial stages of the painting are visible between later-stage brushstrokes. Negative space creates the illusion of pictorial space and depth, which is furthered by changing tonalities and light. Each work harnesses the expressive power of the fundamental qualities of painting, thereby using abstraction to conjure distinct emotional and psychological states. Given the works are framed as “portraits of the self,” Tomasko asks viewers to consider what notion of the self these compositions depict. For Tomasko, the self is inchoate and capricious; its portraits, therefore, do not refer to representational images of a person, but rather articulate a panoply of subconscious moments moving between memory and feeling. Liliane Tomasko earned her BFA at the Chelsea College of Art & Design, and her MFA at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. She has had solo exhibitions at the New York Studio School, New York; IVAM, Valencia; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; Kewenig, Berlin; Kunstmuseum Kloster unser lieben Frauen Magdeburg; The Edward Hopper Museum and Study Center, among many others. Tomasko’s work is collected by many public and private collections, including the Albertina Collection; the Lowe Art Museum; Try-Me Collection; Sammlung Klein; Hilti Art Foundation; Collection du Conseil Départemental du Var; Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; Kunstmuseum Kloster unser lieben Frauen Magdeburg; Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; IVAM-Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia; K20 K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, among others.
[excerpted from Nino Mier Gallery: www.miergallery.com]
