Joanne Ungar Part and Parcel

Front Room Gallery is pleased to present a solo show of new work by New York artist, Joanne Ungar. Joanne Ungar’s cast wax compositions are created with discarded waste from mass produced products, specifically the cardboard boxes—the refuse that is instantly disposed of once the box is opened. Ungar’s poured wax paintings by are composed with the geometric forms of recycled packaging, and layered and infused with pigmented wax. Ungar’s complex sense of color transforms base patterns through multiple luminous strata of graded hues, overlaid with controlled density to either obscure or reveal the accumulated layered color. Her luminous wax paintings are created with refined, purified beeswaxes and encaustic medium, creating work that is archival and stable.

From the sidelong view one can see how deep the wax is, but frontally it is visually disorienting: sometimes the forms are right at the surface, but at times seem to fade into the distance. These physically encapsulated structures feel like landscapes, or often cityscapes with abstracted modular building forms getting sharper and fading in the distance. The wax has an inherent atmospheric tone, of sky, fog, or water. And the boxes themselves replete with repetition, angles on angles, do not readily divulge their humble origins. These pieces are cast in thick wax, and the depth is visceral.

Joanne Ungar is originally from Minneapolis. After several years of liberal arts studies at Oberlin College in Ohio, she moved to New York City, where she earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, focusing on collage. She began employing waxes as her main collage agent, after exploring and working with shellac, resins and acrylic mediums. Since the mid 1990’s, waxes and encaustic have been her main medium. Her wax “recipe” is a work-in-progress: she is often tinkering with it to get the desired lucidity and luminosity for whatever she happens to be burying or revealing in her layers of wax. 

Joanne was awarded a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in 2017. She lives on the Lower East side of Manhattan with her husband and their 2 cats, and maintains her long-time art studio in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.