contact
Plase email me to inquire about a painting or collaboration: studio@alisonkruvant.com
@alison_kruvant
bio
Alison Kruvant is an artist born in Washington, DC, based in New York City. She received a B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. in Painting from Tyler School of Art and Architecture. She studied abroad in Florence and Rome, Italy.
Kruvant has exhibited at Ki Smith Gallery (New York, NY), Central Park Tower Penthouse (New York, NY), High Line Nine Galleries (New York, NY), The Painting Center (New York, NY), Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Kleinert/James Center for the Arts (Woodstock, NY), Bridgette Mayer Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), Da Vinci Art Alliance (Philadelphia, PA), and GoggleWorks Center for the Arts (Reading, PA). Her work is featured in the White Columns Curated Artist Registry. Kruvant’s writing is published in Painters On Paintings and she was interviewed in Whitehot Magazine.
Additionally, she helped facilitate community mural projects in the New York area and contributed to the reconstruction of a 17th-century Polish wooden synagogue roof and ceiling murals, which are now permanently displayed at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland.
artist statement
I paint to describe an experience of seeing—fluid, shifting, and deeply personal. My work invites the eye and mind to wander rather than fixate. Each composition resists a singular focal point or visual closure. A multiplicity of viewpoints, spatial contradictions, and subtle shifts in color reflect the complex, incomplete nature of perception. Through painting, I intend to inspire more nuanced, mutable perspectives.
Preparing the surface is integral to my process. I fold and unfold fabric into shallow reliefs on the canvas, allowing the surface to shift in response to the subject. These reliefs can describe and contradict form, divide and define space, suggest and flatten meaning. This topography catches light, casts shadows, and creates edges disrupting a conventionally resolved image before I begin to apply paint. As I paint, I respond to the interplay of tactile surface, fluid paint, flat color, and illusionistic space. This tension evokes an expansive, multidimensional terrain where the image becomes as malleable as the fabric itself.
My practice engages a layered, non-hierarchical kaleidoscope of art histories. Each painting becomes a still dance with my family’s creative lineage—such as my grandmother’s sculptures and her large-scale embroidered reinterpretations of Modernist works—and my lived experience. I play with the contradictions inherent to painting, synthesizing representational techniques with flat, material abstraction, further collapsing distinctions between figure and ground. My paintings function as a ‘window onto the world,’ reflecting back on the act of looking.
Painting helps me locate myself in history—personal, cultural, and art historical—as I look and move forward. I weave together my interpretations of Western Modernist painting, Postmodern critique, and vernacular traditions such as community muralism, which have directly influenced me. I see Postmodernism as a rupture exposing cracks in inherited worldviews. In my personal healing process, I continue to unravel belief systems passed down through generations. As I evolve, I reassemble the fragments while acknowledging where they fell apart. In painting, I look for what’s next—an answer that shifts as the world does.
© Alison Kruvant. All rights reserved.
Photographs by Jason Mandella.
cv
Lives and works in NYC
EXHIBITIONS AND FEATURES
2025
Ghost Image, curated by Lucia Côté, UTOPIA, Kingston, NY
Above All, curated by THE KNOW Art Advisory, Central Park Tower Penthouse, New York, NY
2024
If Walls Could Talk, Baron Art Gallery, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH
Converge, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Byrdcliffe Reflections, Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, Woodstock, NY
Trove [flat file], Deanna Evans Projects, New York, NY, Online
2023
The Collective by Visionary Projects, High Line Nine Galleries, New York, NY
Liquidity, Ki Smith Gallery, New York, NY
2022
Curated Artist Registry, White Columns, New York, NY, Online
2021
2021 Benefit Exhibition, The Painting Center, New York, NY
2020
Here, Now, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Art File Gallery, The Painting Center, New York, NY, Online
2019
13th Annual Exhibition, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, Reading, PA
Works on Paper ll, Da Vinci Artist Alliance Philadelphia, PA
2018
Looking Through (solo), Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia, PA
Tyler/Independent Hotel Partnership Show, Independent Hotel, Philadelphia, PA
2017
MFA Exhibition, Temple University Rome Gallery, Rome, Italy
2014
Advanced Painting Exhibition, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, New York, NY
2011
On Portraiture, Fisher Gallery, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH
2010
Selected Works by 2D and 3D students, SACI Gallery, Florence, Italy
AWARDS
2023 Artist in Residence, Byrdcliffe Art Colony, Woodstock, NY
2021 Artist in Residence, Singing on a Sinking Ship, The Neighbors, Chicago, IL
2018 Independent Hotel Curatorial Fellowship, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA
2017 Gamblin Paint Award, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA
2016–18 Graduate Teaching Assistantship, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA
PUBLICATIONS
2023 Liquidity at Ki Smith Gallery, Gemima, Clare, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art
WRITING
2022 Kruvant, Alison, Painters on Paintings, Alison Kruvant on Hedda Sterne
SELECTED PUBLIC ART
2012 NurtureNature, P.S. 84, Brooklyn, NY | Assistant Artist, Los Muralistas De El Puente
2011 Gwoździec Synagogue Reconstruction Project, POLIN Museum, Warsaw, Poland
EDUCATION
2018 M.F.A. Painting, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, PA
2017 Temple University Rome, Rome, Italy | Year Abroad
2014 Columbia University, New York, NY | Advanced Painting Intensive
2011 B.A. Studio Art, Art History, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH
2010 Studio Art Centers International, Florence, Italy | Semester Abroad
SELECTED TEACHING
2019 Instructor, Painting | Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, PA
2018 Instructor, Painting | Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, PA
2018 Instructor, Drawing and Painting | Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA
2013 Panelist, Columbia University, New York, NY | Jewish Heritage and Contemporary Art
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