Joanne Ungar

"Johnnie Walker Black", waxwork multi-panel wall installation

2019

Joanne Ungar is originally from Minneapolis. After studies at Oberlin College in Ohio, she moved to New York City and earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts. Joanne Ungar is a New York Foundation for the Arts NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship program Grant recipient. Ungar has exhibited extensively in New York and nationally. The poured wax paintings by Ungar are composed with the geometric forms of recycled packaging and layered and infused with pigmented wax. Ungar is an alchemist and her studio is a science lab. Her father was a scientist. When she was growing up, he talked about how art and science were really one and the same thing, a methodical exploration of ideas crossed with joyous creativity and some random surprises. Built on these origins and continuing into an intense studio practice, Ungar states, “I often set up experiments with variables and a control group in order to solve a problem of opacity or pigmentation, for example. I also like to push my materials beyond my understanding of them, seeing what happens when they melt, seeing what will stick to what and for how long, what happens to them at stupidly high temperatures. I am ridiculously methodically organized and in addition to cataloging each piece, I sometimes catalog it through its various versions or changes.” This highly dedicated and rigorous studio practice creates astounding results that have transformed modest materials into gold. The pain relievers themselves have been removed, yet the implication is present in the title of the works. Ungar is an expert in misdirection and illusion and the barrier between the illusionary space and physical becomes blurred into a wholly new modality. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.