New York-based artist Eleanna Anagnos will share her work with Fairfield residents next week, discussing her practice and inspirations at an opening reception, Friday, March 1, 7-9 pm at the Maharishi University Unity Gallery. The reception is free and open to the public. Anagnos is a Grant Wood Fellow in Painting and Drawing at the University of Iowa for the 2018-19 academic year.
The steps that led to Anagnos exhibition at the Maharishi University actually began in New York City last year. “I'd say it was a wonderful coincidence but I don't believe in coincidences,” Anagnos said. Gyan Shrosbree, a Maharishi University art professor, saw Anagnos’ work while on an annual trip to New York City. She was visiting another artist’s studio in the same building as Anagnos’ studio when she saw her work. Shrosbree had already been following Anagnos on Instagram and immediately sent her a message. “She said she could appreciate it so much more in person. The subtle perceptual shifts didn't translate online. I thanked her for her enthusiasm,” Anagnos said, also asking to see Shrosbree’s work, not knowing Shrosbee lived over 1,000 miles away in Fairfield, Iowa. At the time, Anagnos was a finalist for the Grant Wood Fellowship at the University of Iowa. Shrosbee told Anagnos if she come out to Iowa for the fellowship, she'd like to show her work to her community in Fairfield. “So that is how I was invited to show in Fairfield,” Anagnos said.
Anagnos currently has an exhibition at the Brooklyn Cultural Institution: BRIC Biennial: Vol III, South Brooklyn Edition, up now through April 7. “Making art work, sharing it with others, and having introspective conversations about it, is what I want to be doing with my life, so I am happy and deeply grateful for all of these opportunities,” Anagnos said.
Event:
Eleanna Anagnos, Solo Exhibition
At Unity Gallery
Maharishi University in Fairfield, Iowa
Opening Reception: Friday, March 1, 7-9pm
Exhibition runs from March 1 - April 6, 2019
Anagnos is a Chicago-raised, award-winning artist and curator interested in phenomenon outside of our definable experience. Her work explores the nature of human perception and elicits a physiological response where subjectivity, phenomenology, and the conscious act of seeing are addressed. Made from plaster or paper pulp, the work sits at the cusp between painting and sculpture and evokes a chain of associations: fossil, tablet, fragment, relic, mask, shield. The work is often read as simultaneously ancient and current, a similarity it shares with the cities of Rome and Athens, where Anagnos has lived.
Anagnos has received awards from the Rauschenberg Foundation (2019); Yaddo (2017); BAU Institute (2016); The Anderson Ranch (2011); The Atlantic Center for the Arts (2009) and the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2011,2009). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artnet, Artsy, and The New York Observer, among others, and her curatorial project, "Wish Me Good Luck," was reviewed in Art in America. Anagnos shows her work nationally and internationally. In the US she has shown at: Maharishi University of Management (2018); HIGH NOON Gallery, NYC (2017); dOGUMENTA, NYC (2017); SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NYC (2017); South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, IN (2011); The National Hellenic Museum, Chicago, IL (2009), among many others. International exhibitions include: 68 Projects, Berlin, Germany (2014); Die Ausstellungsstrasse in Vienna, Austria (2012) and at Galerie Vaclava Spaly in Prague, CZ (2009). Her upcoming New York City solo debut exhibition at High Noon Gallery opens in April. Anagnos earned her MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art (2005) and a BA with honors and distinction from Kenyon College with a concentration in Women's and Gender Studies (2002). Since 2014 she has been a co-director at Ortega y Gasset Projects, a not-for-profit, artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space.
Monday, February 25, Anagnos will explore the gaps between what we know and what we think we know when coming to a work of art during her talk “Paradigm Shift” at 7:30 pm, Art Building West, 116, 141 North Riverside Drive, Iowa City, IA 52246. Link to event: https://outreach.uiowa.edu/event/19366