Bienvenu Steinberg & J is pleased to present Works on Paper, Lydia Dona’s first solo show with the gallery. The show focuses exclusively on her works on paper produced between 2021 and 2023. The images encapsulate the themes that have dominated and defined Dona’s production for more than a decade.

In a catalog essay for an exhibition of paintings, Raphael Rubinstein writes, “Dona is preoccupied with the urban environment. These are paintings created with a keen sense of the invisible infrastructure that keeps a city running and, even more, of the constant breakdowns of urban systems. In their very diversity of sources, their multiplicity of overlapping languages, I see Dona’s paintings as reflections of the place where they are made, New York City, this dynamic site of “borderline engagements”… The critic Tony Godfret adds, “Cultural codifications of the “cosmetic bodies” of femininity and masculinity are both quoted and displaced to build a systemized degendered “code”, a third zone of schisms and multiplicities: the zone of techno-urban bodies”.

All of the elements found by these critics in Lydia Dona’s earlier paintings are further explored and expanded upon in these most recent works. Deploying a range of materials—acrylic paint, and metallic and India inks; Dona embeds an element of her iconic imagery taken from automobile parts catalogs, biotechnical manuals and organic illustration. Dona achieves a spatial depth and a muscular vibrancy infrequently encountered in works on paper.

Concurrent with the gallery exhibition, a major survey of Dona’s paintings from 2008 - 2018 is on view in the lobby of 375 Hudson Street. Curated by Jay Grimm this installation of large scale paintings will remain in place through March, 2024. Additionally, a 1993 work by Lydia Dona is included in an exhibition entitled Schema: World as Diagram. Curated by Raphel Rubinstein and Heather Bause Rubinstein, the show will be held at Marlborough Gallery, opening on May 11th and running through August 15th, 2023. Among the other artists in the show are Jennifer Bartlett, David Diao, León Ferrari, Charles Gaines, Jane Hammond, Alfred Jensen, Julian Schnabel, Amy Sillman, Tavares Strachan, Outtara Watts and others.

Lydia Dona is an American artist, born in Romania, who lives and works in New York City. She holds a BFA degree from both the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem and New York City’s School of Visual Arts, and an MFA from Hunter College in 1984. Dona has an extensive history of solo and group exhibitions both in the United States and internationally. Works by her can be found in major institutional collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba; S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Belgium and Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland. 

For a complete cv, images or more information please contact: michael@bsandj.com