Event: NADA NY: Arghavan Khosravi, Bernadette Despujols, Hilary Harnischfeger, Sacha Ingber & Talia Levitt

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NADA New York
May 2 – 5, 2024
Rachel Uffner Gallery, Booth 2.01

Bernadette Despujols, Hilary Harnischfeger, Sacha Ingber, Arghavan Khosravi, Talia
Levitt

548 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

For NADA New York 2024, Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present works by Bernadette
Despujols, Hilary Harnischfeger, Sacha Ingber, Arghavan Khosravi, and Talia Levitt.

Despujols’ presentation at NADA New York coincides with her second solo exhibition at Rachel
Uffner Gallery, which is on view through June 29, 2024. Like the works in the show, the two
works on view in the booth depict the artist’s close family members, serving as an intimate
meditation on womanhood, family and ecological consciousness. The artist’s focus on depicting
women immersed in nature is rooted in tenets of ecofeminism, which draws connections
between the exploitation of the natural world and the oppression of women.

Hilary Harnischfeger’s multimedia works fuse ceramic, hydrostone, paper, and ink to create
bubblegum-coloured geologies of meticulously layered material. Her tactile, material-driven
objects are fired in kilns, cast in molds, then carved away to reveal the layers of vibrant color.
The artist constructed the two works in the booth after her recent travels to northern Maine,
specifically Acadia National Park and up near the border of Canada. The clear fissures and
visible glacial scarring on Cadillac Mountain felt strangely corporal to Harnischfeger, who is
often inspired by earth’s physical structures.

Sacha Ingber works range from conceptual wall-mounted pieces to functional ceramic tables.
Ingber’s innovative process of assemblage engages traditional Brazilian craft techniques,
mold-making, casting, and trompe-l’oeil effects to create complex, multimedia structures that
create mythos out of daily life and found objects. In B-E-L-O-W-A-B-O-V-E, Ingber creates a
hybrid body/architecture “where both the structure and the garment act as places where a body
or psyche could have left an imprint”. The hand-woven bikini top becomes part of the
architecture while the ceramic structure conversely becomes a garment.

Arghavan Khosravi’s presentation at NADA falls on the tail end of her solo exhibition at the
Newport Art Museum. Scratching the Surface, a subtle, dusky work, portrays a female figure
amidst opposing light and dark forces, symbolizing the struggle for autonomy. Her scars reflect
both physical and emotional wounds from societal constraints, yet her gaze shows resilience.
Like in many of Khosravi’s sculptural paintings, this juxtaposition creates tension, reflecting the
internal conflict of balancing tradition and modernity.

Finally, Talia Levitt presents four new small scale paintings, which superimpose trompe l'oeil

embroidery of self portraits and studio scenes atop Dutch still lifes to create both a meta
narrative about painting as well as to complicate the reality of what the viewer is seeing and
observing. Levitt's detail-oriented process results in labored, illusionary faux tapestries that
provide an unusual experience of looking during which one constantly second guesses the
material, the narration and the process in which the work was made