Heart-Hell II Print

Leemour Pelli is an artist who lives and works in New York City. She is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts (B.F.A., painting), and Hunter College (Master of Arts degree in Art History). In 2008, the artist had her first solo exhibition at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York. Her other recent solo exhibitions include two at the Annina Nosei Gallery in New York in 2004 and 2005, and in 2003 at the Art Gallery of the University of Central Florida in Orlando. The University published a catalogue, and produced a mini-documentary about the artist and her work. Pelli’s recent exhibitions include the Robert Fontaine Gallery in Miami, Kinz Tillou and Feigen Gallery, the Whitney Museum the American Art at Champion, Connecticut, PS1 Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Island City, Spaces Contemporary Art Center in Ohio, and the Artcore Gallery in Toronto. Her work has been reviewed in various publications including ArtForum (2008), Art News, The New York Times, New York Arts Magazine, Tema Celeste, and The Globe and Mail. Artist's Statement: I work in the media of Painting, Sculpture, installations, works on paper, photography, and prints. In my work I focus on human inter-relationships and states of being. I use poetic, anatomical, and medical imagery as an extension of the figure/body to convey human experiences. By incorporating the latter elements into the work, the paintings often become like x-rays of life, or x-rays of figures or certain situations. This appears in the form of multiple or single figures in heightened states of emotion, state of solitude, creativity, or love and connection. The figures are often merging into one another, and being affected by one another. At times the figures appear with enlarged and out of control hearts, overlapping lungs, and other anatomical organs as an expression of one’s inner realities and dramas. The depths of the human heart and soul are explored within personal and universal struggles and realities. The works are conceived in layers of paint that build up and at the same time disintegrate as an expression of the ambiguous nature of human kind.