ERIKA SOMOGYI: Verdant Dream
November 1 - December 20
The gallery is thrilled to present a solo exhibition of paintings by Erika Somogyi in our main galleries and a solo exhibition of paintings by KB Jones in our viewing room, in partnership with Tribeca-based Chozick Family Art Gallery. Somogyi’s solo exhibition is her third at Kristen Lorello and first dedicated exclusively to her oil on canvas paintings. Living and working in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, Somogyi looks to the urban garden as a source of inspiration both inside and outside the home. KB Jones’s paintings locate inspiration in another neighborhood of New York City, Manhattan’s upper east side, relating scenes and objects associated with its landscape, architecture, and goods for purchase. The theme of women living and working throughout New York also inspires Kristen Lorello's collaboration with Chozick Family Art Gallery. Lorello and Chozick Family Art Gallery’s founder, Rebekah Chozick, first met in the summer of 2014 when Lorello was starting her gallery on the lower east side and Chozick was starting her career at a blue-chip contemporary art venue in Chelsea. The two women have supported each other both professionally and personally ever since.
To read the full text on KB Jones’s exhibition and for images, please click HERE.
Erika Somogyi’s paintings celebrate the joy of losing oneself in the tangible realm of the garden. The artist grows plants both indoors and outside her home in Brooklyn. She makes frequent visits to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden by bike, immersing herself in the environment of plants. Working from initial photographs, the artist paints indoors in a light-filled studio while listening to science fiction and Gothic novels on audio book that feature female protagonists. Having an ongoing interest in the consciousness of living organisms beyond the human, Somogyi’s flowers become the blossoming protagonists of her paintings. Exuberant poppies, irises, lilies, and sunflowers burst from their stems within cropped landscapes, while women in profile play the role of witness—haunting, peaceful, and tranquil. The women in Somogyi's landscapes are floating clouds, leaves, stems, and shadows, absorbed in their surroundings. Rooted in the earth and cultivated by people, nurtured flowers and gardens regenerate and transform, while providing an environment for reflection and psychological projection. For Somogyi, the process of growing plants relates to the process of painting, which grows and rewards tangibly with work, care, and time.
Erika Somogyi’s solo exhibitions include ‘Wild Flower,’ Kristen Lorello, 2023, 'Luminous Bloom,' Brattleboro, VT, 2021, and 'Reawakening,' Kristen Lorello, NY, 2021. Group exhibitions include ‘Spectrum,’ Kristen Lorello, 2025, ‘Holding,’ Van Doren Waxter and Kristen Lorello, 2023, 'Home Edition,' Essex Flowers, New York, NY, 2019, and 'Spirit Assembly,' Waiting Room, Tokyo, Japan, 2007, among others. Her work has been discussed in The New York Times, The Village Voice, New York Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Art on Paper, among other publications. She was born in 1977 in New City, NY and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated with a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1999.