"A young artist making maximalist still life paintings, Talia Levitt creates captivating canvases that toy with the idea of painting in surprisingly surreal and conceptual ways. Graduating with an MFA from CUNY Hunter in 2019 before attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and getting a Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant that same year, the artist quickly chocked up a number of group exhibitions, but is making her solo debut with this show at Hesse Flatow, an emerging New York gallery.
Using trompe l’oeil effects, Levitt meticulously paints figures, frames, and objects that cleverly reference the process and history of painting. Dear Painting, I Love You looks like a collage of disparate elements in a decorative frame and yet all of the parts are painted, while her mostly monochromatic Blue Period painting is what its title suggests, a blue canvas with two highlighted periods on a faux piece of paper at the center of it."