All In: Summer Group Exhibition

For almost a decade now, Katherine Mangiardi has been making intimate portraits of examples of historic lace.  Adopting very different styles in the course of her obsession ranging from relief to photography to installation, the motif has varying stimuli for the artist – initially “a portrait of my own brain,” then a portal into another age, and ultimately identification, whether political and personal, with lost, invisible creators who truly vindicate the slogan that Anonymous was a woman.  Subdued empiricism coupled with empathetic touch makes even her most “straight” realism somewhat a fish out of water  amidst the high-chroma hyperrealism of  Bernarducci Meisel Gallery’s summer group show, though there is no denying fanatical fidelity in Mangiardi’s approach.  DAVID COHEN

Katherine Mangiardi, For Lizbeth, 2012. Acrylic on panel, 24 x 18 inches. Courtesy of Bernarducci Meisel Gallery