Patricia Treib was born in 1979 in Saginaw, Michigan, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Treib’s paintings are composed around sensuous details, absences, and shifts in perspective. While her work draws on far-ranging references – the outline of a sleeve, the contours of a 35 mm camera, a cornice, a ribbon – Treib’s true subject is the process of looking, through which she discovers new relationships while dismantling what is merely recognizable. The space in between forms become primary motifs, peripheral elements become central presences, shapes suggest calligraphic gestures. Although made in one sitting to sustain a sense of immediacy and directness, the paintings develop over time. The aim is to create a pictorial language that’s personal but not private, always open and in flux.

Treib received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2020) and has participated in residencies at the American Academy in Rome (2017), Dora Maar House (2014) and MacDowell (2013). Treib received an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.