Wild Angels-Catalog-small-with-cover

W i l d A n g e l s are sketched in gentle lines and translucent hues, their wings embroidered with flowers. But Engler’s angels are disquieting. Poised in a frozen landscape, they echo the anxious tone of the artist’s exploration of European classical architecture in Barbarian in the Garden , in which she documented the crumbling of former grandeur (figure 1). Architectural references, however, are absent from the Uplift paintings. Rather, the yearned-for garden fades beneath a layer of mist; frozen and lifeless. In some paintings it is traversed by a narrow bridge, on which the winged figure is dangerously poised, while a suggestive trickle of red paint accumulates in a puddle on the frosty ground (figure 2). Figure 1: Nogah Engler, Embroidered in Marble #2 , from the series Barbarian in the Garden , 2018 Figure 2: Nogah Engler, Uplift #26 , from the series Uplift , 2020