Ioana Manolache
Bio: Ioana Manolache investigates the possibility of materiality and illusion within a flat plane through observation of found detritus. Ioana completed her BFA studies at The Cooper Union (2011). She was nominated for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Grant (2011, 2012), and has exhibited in New York City. She was awarded a residency at the Contemporary Artists Center at Woodside (2014) and recently curated a group exhibition Stirring Still at the LeRoy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University. Her work was included in the publication of New American Paintings MFA Annual Edition (2015). Ioana was born and raised in Romania.
Artist Statement:
One word.
Resurrection, mundane, time, rectangle, place, spiritual, perception, history, sacrifice, materiality, realism, field of vision.
How do you choose the objects you use as subject matter in your paintings?
The “sweet scent of freshly picked strawberries” is still faintly present on the weathered and discarded tree cardboard cutout. The tree’s fuzzy interior contrasts with its hard asphalt resting place, and yet, despite being completely contrasting solids, the two objects share a warm-toned, gray color and visual density.
Little Trees is the name given to the car deodorizers in the stylized shape of an evergreen tree. Designed to camouflage scent in a small, enclosed, and usually private space where one would expect company, Little Trees come in many shades, but just one shape.
The sense of smell is closely linked with memory, evoking powerful and vivid recollections more than any of our other senses. Trees are objects with the ability to transport one back in time to memorable conditions.
Color is the symbolizing agent for scent—red for wild cherry, yellow for lively lemon, blue for new car, and mint for bayside breeze. The shape of the Tree is an iconic symbol for ‘landscape’, while its color is indexical of a fruit or atmosphere, all while being cardboard.
Perpetually complicating its content with its structure, a Little Tree is an object, a representation, and a material at all times. Similarly, a painting captivates both an individual and a collective, as it attempts to convey a view outside its own materiality and structure. A deodorizer attempts to camouflage its space despite its physical shortcomings, and a painting can be understood to do the same to its viewers.
Advertised as an “escape to another place” or offering the chance of “bringing childhood to life,” this cardboard cutout is aspiring, but designed to fail. The illusion of ease, the illusion of cleanliness, and the promise of luxury are all resting within this object which is failing to meet its own illusion—that of a freshly picked strawberry, that of an evergreen tree, that of cardboard, and that of possibility.