Yevgeniya Baras

Yevgeniya S. Baras is a contemporary painter and cofounder of Regina Rex Gallery and Bull and Ram Gallery. Baras is inspired by touch, the way materials layer, decompose and transform. Her portrait size paintings are densely layered and heavily textured. She makes paintings that disrupt expectations of format and stretch the bounds of what a painting is, by veering into sculptural relief, building up the painting surface with various ‘weird’ materials (aluminum foil and chunks of wood for example) on all parts of the support — front, sides and back. By employing typically feminine techniques such as knitting and crocheting as a part of her painting practice, Baras challenges the accepted notions of ornamentation and domesticity.

 

Baras received her BS in fine arts and psychology, MS in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003 and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Regina Rex and Bull and Ram have exhibited artists as diverse as EJ Hauser, Nancy Haynes, Katherine Bernhardt and Peter Gallo.Her recent solo exhibitions include Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York; One River Gallery, Englewood, NJ, among others. Her work has been reviewed on ArtNews, The New York Times, Huffington Post and Art in America, among others. She is represented by Michelle Beauchene Gallery in New York. 

Yevgeniya Baras, Untitled, 2015; oil and mixed media on canvas; 18 x 22 in.