Raw, uncanny renditions and revisions of canonical myths and legends
This is the first monograph on Virginia-born, New York-based artist Kyle Staver (born 1953), considering her paintings, works on paper and relief sculptures from 2009 to 2024. Staver's foreshortened paintings, often chimerical in their color palettes and perspectives, place the viewer within the lurid, dramatic tales of Greek mythology and traditional folklore. Her three-dimensional reliefs emulate classical friezes, capturing the tension of Europa being thrown off Zeus as a bull or Paris offering the golden apple to Aphrodite. Despite the popularity of the source material, Staver creates new, fantastical scenes for her characters to inhabit, whether it be Artemis chatting with forest creatures around a campfire or waterfowl pecking at the drowned Ophelia on the riverbank. As Staver explains, "there is so much expressive opportunity in the space between what is expected and what is actually there."