LA Artcore is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of paintings by Los Angeles based artist Zara Monet Feeney. This exhibition showcases Feeney’s current research trajectories re-examine voyeuristic compositions, the male gaze, and socio-sexual empowerment issues. As a gay feminist, she designs her work to engage with historical and contemporary notions of intersectional feminism and patriarchal authority. Meticulously controlling the play between the subject and the space it occupies, the work is able to guide, critique and call into question the intention of the viewer’s gaze. The subjects are posed, the color schema is non-naturalistic, the spatial play is ambiguous. She skews the locus of composition, reverses the light logic, exploits value relationships, all in hopes to present a mysteriously contrived yet intriguing aesthetic. She precisely layers candy-like flat surfaces over highly rendered illusionistic space, and then back again. It is her intention for the work to reify a sort of psychological, reflexive experience, when the thing being viewed demands a self-critical penetration of vision. Feeney feels there is a specific moment when we believe an illusion, or become seduced by something outside of ourselves. When this happens, we are not looking at something, but looking at ourselves perceiving it. By challenging traditional modes of representation and exploiting optics of value and color, she hopes the viewer will call into question the generic way a painting is received. Zara Monet Feeney has been published in Huffington Post, Manifest, Juxtapoz, Beautiful Bizarre, Young-Space and Art in America periodicals. She has been awarded solo shows at Carnegie Art Museum- Oxnard, LA Artcore Gallery, CES Contemporary Gallery, Namba Gallery, CAP Gallery, Eastern Projects Gallery and Sleeth Gallery, to name a few. Her credentials also include numerous national and international art residencies and first place honors at juried group exhibitions. She works as a college art professor at California State University, Northridge, Moorpark College and Ventura College. She received a BA from UCLA and an MFA from LCAD, studying under acclaimed artists such as Lari Pittman, Barbara Kruger, and Catherine Opie.