Nina Bovasso was born and raised in New York City, NY, where she currently lives and works. She is known mainly for her works on paper, both large and small, and exuberant in color. A kind of semi-abstraction and pattern gone amok with varying surfaces and visual time, see the most simple of marks, a dot and a line, proliferate across a field in varying scale, sometimes morphing into a flower, and sometimes exploding out of a box. There is a nuance of interplay, and an engaged restlessness, moving about like a dance that obfuscates any questions of structure, of who conforms to who. Ms.Bovasso's work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including New Museum, NYC, St Louis Museum, Cleveland MOCA, Sala Uno, Rome & Kavi Gupta, Chicago. Her work has been reviewed in numerous publications such as NYTimes, LATimes, Artfoum, Artnews & Art in America, among others. Her work is in many museums and collections, including MoMA, NY, Whitney Museum, The Henry, Seattle, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and more. Bovasso 's work was recently included in publication One Hundred Painters of Tomorrow, by Kurt Beers. In 2012 she received a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, where she produced a large body of new works. In 2006-07 Bovasso held the one year Lamar Dodd Endowed Chair position at the University of Georgia in Athens. Part of the award included a large studio, where she produced A Giant Ball for a solo project at Atlanta Center for Contemporary Art.
Awards/Grants
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2016 & 2004
Change Inc, 2015; Artists Fellowship inc, 2015
Dieu Donne Papermill Residency, 2003-2004
Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Grant, 2001;
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Drawing, 2001
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 2000, Painting and Drawing.
Sharpe Art Foundation Studio Program, NYC 2000-2001
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2017 Sala Uno, Rome, Italy
2016 Josee Bienvenu Gallery, project room, New York, NY
2015 Schema Projects, Brooklyn, NY
2014 M and E Gallery Tribeca(Museum EDitions, NYC)
2009 Bravin Lee Programs, NY, NY
2008 GalerÃa Casado Santapau, Madrid, ES ;
2007 Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA
Bravin Lee Programs, NY, NY ;
The Apartment, Athens, GR;
2006 Inman Gallery, Houston TX
2005 Aliceday, Brussels,Belgium ;
Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Ohio
Galerie Diana Stigter, Amsterdam, NL ;
Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf,DE
Albany University Museum, SUNY Albany, Albany, NY
2004 PerugiArtecontemporanea, Padova, IT
2002 Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, CA;
Inman Gallery, Houston, TX ;
Clementine Gallery, New York, NY
also* 1997, 1999, 2001,2003*
2001 Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; *Also 1998*
2000 Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2015 Shirley Fiterman Art Center at BMCC, NY, NY
2010 Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC ;
Summer Camp, Exile Gallery, Berlin, curated by Billy Miller
2008 Zombie Surfers, Cell Project Space, London, UK ;
Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2007 Painters and Poets, Ulrich Museum, Wichita, KS,& traveling...
Whole Fragment, Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery, UNR, Reno;
In The Fullness of Time, Luggage Store, SF, CA
2006 Color, IPCNY, New York, NY ;
Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels,BE ; Atelier Cardenas Bellanger, Paris, FR;
2004 Dessins et des Autres, Galerie Anne De Villepoix, Paris,FR ;
Galerie Diana Stigter, Amsterdam,NL
2003 New Projects, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY ;
Perugi Arte Contemporanea, Padova, IT
After Matisse/Picasso, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY
2002 Out of Site, curated by Anne Ellegood,
The NewMuseum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY;
Terra Incognito,St Louis Museum of Contemporary Art
2001 Accumulations, Kent State University, Ohio ;
Tierra Incognito, Nylon, London, UK
The Sensational Line, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO ;
Espacio Minimo, Madrid, ES
2000 Hunter Gallery Selects, (Katy Siegel) Leubsdorf Gallery, NY, NY;
Blurry Lines, Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI;
Multiple Sensations, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF, CA ;
Brent Sikkema (Sikkema Jenkins), New York, NY
Out of Town, The Luggage Store Gallery, SF, CA ;
Urban Hymns, California State University, LA, CA
1999 Shout Outs, Rice University Art Gallery, Houston,TX ;
Pattern, James Graham and Sons, NY, NY;
Monumental Drawings, Exit Art, New York, NY ;
What Big Is,Geoffrey Young Gallery,Great Barrington MA
1997 Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Gallery, Greensboro, NC
1996 Summer Selections '96, The Drawing Center, New York, NY ;
Joyce Goldstein ,NY( 2 person w/ Michael Phelan)
1995 Looky Loo, curated by Kenny Schachter, Sculpture Center, New York, NY
SFMOMA Artists Gallery, Fort Mason SF, CA
1994 20th Annivers. Alumni Exhibition, SoExpo, SF, CA;
1993 Drawing First, Curated by Anne Philbin, SoExpo,SF, CA
Selected Collections:
MOMA, New York, US;
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY;
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY;
Deutsche Bank, NYC and DE;
JP Morgan/Chase Bank, New York, NY;
Neuberger Berman, New York and Houston
The Progressive Corporation;
Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Ohio
SEI/West Family Collection, Philadelphia, PA;
Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA
Princeton University Museum of Art, Princeton, NJ;
Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX;
Berkeley Art Museum Berkeley, CA
Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles, CA;
Neuberger Museum, at SUNY Purchase, NY
Selected Bibliography
100 Painters of Tomorrow, Kurt Beers, Thames and Hudson, 2014
Collecion Berge, Madrid 2008
Meredith Mendelsohn, Review, BravinLee: Artnews, March 2007
Focus Painting Part One: Contemporary Painting Today,Flash Art, Oct 2002
Myers, Holly, "Nina Bovasso at Richard Heller", LA Times, Dec 7,2001
Mahoney, Robert, "Nina Bovasso at Clementine", TimeOut NY, March 3, 2001
Yood, James, "Nina Bovasso at Vedanta", ARTFORUM, Summer 2000
Pagel, David,"Nina Bovasso at Richard Heller", L.A. Times, Jan.1999
Reid, Calvin,"Nina Bovasso at Clementine", Art in America, May 1998
Education
Milton Avery Graduate School, Bard College, MFA, 2000
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1994
San Francisco Art Institute, BFA, 1992
The Cooper Union, School of Art, 1983
Academic Appointments:
Drury University, Artist in Residence, SIVA MART, summer, 2016
Lamar Dodd Professional Chair, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 2006-2007
Illinois State University, Normal, IL, residency, Jan-Feb 2006
California College of Arts & Crafts, Visiting Artist, San Francisco, CA, Spr. 2003
University of Virginia, Visiting Artist, Charlottesville,Spring 2001
University of Tennessee, Artist in Residence, Knoxville, Spring 2000
other visiting artist lectures:
Cornell University, Ithaca,NY; University of Vermont, Burlington VT; University of Houston, Houston, TX; Princeton, Princeton, NJ; AICA New York Studio Program, NYC; University of Illinois, Champaign -Urbana; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; SUNY Purchase, NY; Parsons/ New School, NY, NY;
Montclair State University, NJ; City-as-School, NYC, NY (via NYFA grant).
Curatorial Projects
2009-2013: 1K Projectspace-de Ekster: founder/operator small storefront project space in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Participated in fairs Kunstvlaai 2010, and Next Fair, Chicago, 2011.
2009, I Love the Benelux, Virgil de Voldere Gallery, New York, NY
1998, Son-of-a Guston, Clementine Gallery, New York, NY