Margaux Ogden
If You Should Look Back
October 27 - December 16, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday Oct 27 6-8PM

Deanna Evans Projects is pleased to present If You Should Look Back, a solo exhibition of new paintings by New York-based artist Margaux Ogden. This is Ogden’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view from October 27 – December 16, 2023.

If You Should Look Back is an observation of time and memory. In this series, as she has done with previous bodies of work, Ogden begins with a basic shape or structure to create the spatial logic of the paintings. With these paintings, she revisits the architectural forms she observed during a residency in Rome. Through repetition and mirroring Ogden creates a structure to paint within, which then allows for a more intuitive decision making later in the painting process. This reflection has led to a deeper inspection of returning to a place, or idea, or a time through paint. In addition, this exhibition marks her return to New York as this will be her first NY solo exhibition in eight years. Using this process of continual return, Ogden explores the different choices through which a practice grows.

In these new paintings, Ogden paints with watered down acrylic on primed canvas, unlike the unprimed surfaces of past works. Both large-scale and intimate, the works in If You Should Look Back call out to each other, echoing both color and compositional elements, pulling both artist and viewer into this unfolding dialogue. Ogden paints both fast and slow, making a gesture, waiting for it to dry, lifting the canvas to look at it against the wall, and then laying it flat again. Every mark is intentional, but you can’t always control the paint.

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Margaux Ogden was born in 1983 in Boston, Massachusetts. She received a BA from Bard College in 2005, a Post-Baccalaureate in Fine Arts from Brandeis University in 2010 and an MFA in Painting from Boston University in 2012. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011, Yaddo in 2017 and most recently was an Abbey Fellow at the British School at Rome in the fall of 2021. She is also a Pollock-Krasner grant recipient. Ogden lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.