Robin Kandel
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January 14 - February 20, 2009

“Our tendency is to depict memory as black and white or sepia toned or faded and hazy…But I'm thinking about when we remember something and describe it as, for instance, "The brightest moon. The bluest sky. The hottest day." I'm thinking about when memory is bigger and (perhaps) better than reality. Maybe we call that romanticized. I'm calling it amplified.” - Robin Kandel

Prior to this exhibition, Kandel drew inspiration for her work from her powerful family history. As a child, Kandel’s Ukranian father and his family were taken to a Nazi labor camp during World War II where they were forced to dig peat from the earth, cut it into blocks, and stack it. Drawing from her father’s memories, Kandel covered her large-scale panels with sepia toned abstract shapes that stretched before the viewer like antique filmstrips or old family albums.

Unlike her previous work, Kandel’s new paintings focus on her own childhood memories instead of those of her father’s. The paintings begin with her memories of growing up near the five Great Lakes in Michigan; memories of “shady banks, frozen lakes, canoes, paddle boats, a black rubber inner tube, the smell of a wooden dock, the wooziness on land after a day on a lake.” Her palette is brighter than before with saturated bands of blues, greens, and browns that extend across the panel like horizon lines.