ARTIST STATEMENT
I look for transformative moments that reconfigure feminine archetypes and rewire the male gaze. The context of the work is a response to the tradition of the female nude, the odalisque, the reclining figure, the artist’s model. My figures have lived and embody the feminine through experience. They stare back at the viewer, cautioning against an artificial reading of the female body as playful or dutiful or as a sex object.
ARTIST BIO
Melissa Capasso earned her MFA from Brooklyn College in 2016. Recent exhibitions include several prominent group shows and solo shows at Gold/Scopophilia (Montclair, NJ) and Sweet Lorraine Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). In a review of her work for Two Coats of Paint, Jennifer Rose Bonilla-Edgington wrote that Capasso’s “work’s energy invites viewers’ engagement and its intricacy stimulates them to search their own minds for connections to the content, sparking the neurons.” Capasso teaches painting and drawing at Suffolk County Community College and has also taught at Rutgers-Newark. Residencies and honors include the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency and the Edward F. Albee Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship.