Amy Sillman

Amy Sillman works at, and to an extent with, the border between abstract and figurative painting. In a 2010 interview she stated: “I broke up with Abstractionism.” Both figures and shapes are recognizable in some of her works. In Song Cave (2017) and She/They (2021), uneasy figures inhabit worlds of vibrant color. In Black Doorway (2011), on the other hand, a central black rectangle detaches itself from its green surroundings. 

Sillman disrupts figurative relationships in her compositions, by twisting and fragmenting bodies for example. Individual body parts are emphasized, while others recede into the background. In another instance, the intense yellow in Song Cave contrasts with the clumsy and slumped body of a crying woman. Employing a great deal of self-irony and sensitivity, the artist creates pictorial worlds in which the body is not always depicted, but can be felt in its emotional and physical state.

Art historian Rose Higham-Stainton has noted: “Sillman (…) makes bodies that are implicit if not figurative – unheroic, unwieldy bodies that are funny ‘haha’ but also strange. Because there is something funny, almost slapstick about bodies – painting bodies and painting with bodies – when every gesture is frozen, as if caught in the act.”