Heist Gallery pleased to present Carmelle Safdie's first solo exhibition as Heist Gallery's inaugural show. Paintings is comprised of five oil paintings completed over the course of the last year. The work is a manifestation of geometric art of at once vast and miniature scale, using elements of spatial disorientation and subtle color vibration.

Emerging with deliberate, simplified representation, Safdie imagines new realities removed from the concrete world, working with formal abstractions of space and color. Precise yet manual and crafted from cartoonish colors while retaining a sense of taste, this work challenges ideas of modern formalism. The paintings take form gradually while pulling the viewer into their imagined spaces, revealing hints of natural elements while remaining in the realm of mechanization. Safdie welcomes you into her world of abstraction, cultivating and skirting lines of reality reflected from the wellspring of her colorful mind.

Carmelle Safdie (b. 1982, Cambridge, MA) lives and works in Queens, NY. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2004. She will be an artist-in-residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, CT in June 2008, and has received a grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center.