Winston Wächter Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of Nicole Charbonnet’s new show, One Thousand and One Nights (Paintings to Make You Love Me), on exhibit from April 5- May 13, 2006. In her most recent show at Winston Wächter, Charbonnet used film stills, which reflect only fragments of a narrative, as the basis for her paintings. In this new body of work, the complex narrative structure of Charbonnet’s textual source, 1001 Arabian Nights, is mirrored in her artistic process. Both use a combination of recognizable and highly personal imagery, but retain something of the drama and romance of their original source--whether it be the wild west or the far east.

The Arabian Nights, composed of an eclectic and seemingly haphazard grouping of stories, are in fact connected through a single narrator, the figure of Scheherazade, whose ability to weave rich and cliffhanging tales nightly keeps her alive. The stories of omnipotent genies, irresponsible kings, hidden treasures and magic are dense, textural, and built up over time. Likewise, in Charbonnet’s paintings, the superimposition of textures, images and words creates a visual threshold which is something to look at as well as look through. These peeling, distressed surfaces retain the memory of preexisting stages resulting in a palimpsest, in which some images, colors and textures are obfuscated or buried, while others remain visible, however shaped by previous or subsequent gestures or events.

Memory, in fact, remains a preoccupation for Charbonnet with this new body of work. For her, painting serves as metaphor for the phenomenon of recollection. Her process mimics the process of remembering—with all its layers and numerous contingencies.
Nicole Charbonnet currently lives and works in New Orleans, LA.

For further information please contact Amanda Snyder at [212] 327 2526