For Immediate Release: October 31, 2008
DRAWING REVIEW: 37 YEARS OF WORKS ON PAPER
November 22 – December 23
Eleanor Antin, Ida Applebroog, Arakawa, Conrad Atkinson, Joseph Beuys, Tony Bevan, Alexander Brodsky, Brodsky & Utkin, Chris Burden, Nancy Chunn, Keith Cottingham, Jud Fine, Terry Fox, Carl Fudge, R. Buckminster Fuller, Rico Gatson, Leon Golub, Margaret Harrison, Newton Harrison & Helen Mayer Harrison, Cameron Hayes, Kelly Heaton, Christine Hill, Ilya Kabakov, Peggy Jarrell Kaplan, Brian Knep, Vitaly Komar, Komar & Melamid, Mark Kostabi, The Martinchiks, McCarren/Fine, Ed Moses, David Opdyke, Pepón Osorio, Roxy Paine, Panamarenko, Bruce Pearson, The Peppers, George Petty, Edwin Schlossberg, Todd Siler, SITE, David Smyth, Tavares Strachan, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Ilya Utkin, Andy Warhol, Clemens Weiss, Allan Wexler, Hannah Wilke, Tom Wudl
The Ronald Feldman Gallery will exhibit drawings spanning thirty-seven years by more than forty artists who are, or have been, represented by the gallery since 1971. The works on paper comprise a wide spectrum of techniques and materials reflecting the broad range of subject matter of the artists.
The exhibition features early works by innovative artists who explored performance and issues of identity in the 70’s – Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Eleanor Antin, and Hannah Wilke, as well as West Coast artists from the same period who were inspired by American color and abstraction. Artists who developed new strategies to integrate art and politics include Conrad Atkinson, Margaret Harrison, and Nancy Chunn, all of whom comment on current events. Russian dissident artists include Komar & Melamid, whose smuggled works were shown at the gallery in 1976, and Ilya Kabakov and The Peppers exhibited during Perestroika.
Containing a variety of work that is extremely hard to classify, the exhibition can be curated in a number of ways, and the installation is random rather than conceptually-based. The interdisciplinary artists, Todd Siler and Brian Knep, use imagery based on nuclear physics and biology respectively. Mierle Laderman Ukeles and the collaborative team, Helen Mayer Harrison & Newton Harrison, incorporate maps, photography, and other documentary material that relate to the sustainability of the earth and its cities. Several artist/architects, Brodsky & Utkin, Allan Wexler, R. Buckminster Fuller, and SITE, depict fantastical and realized projects, and Panamarenko makes diagrams for his visionary flying machines. Both Edwin Schlossberg and Terry Fox play with language and the alphabet; Arakawa employs text and a sensuous palette to explore nothing less than “how not to die.” Expanding the interpretation of a drawing to include its function, but not on paper, the exhibition will display a small ready-made gavel by Pepón Osorio related to his large installations that survey the sociological aspects of the Hispanic culture – a synecdoche in which a part represents the whole.
The drawings by Ida Applebroog, Leon Golub, and Tony Bevan, comprise a body of work comparable in stature to their socially-engaged painting oeuvre. Pop is represented by Andy Warhol; and the culture of the 40’s and 50’s is represented by the pinup artist George Petty, who created illustrations for Playboy Magazine.
Other works by younger artists include abstractions with subliminal content by Carl Fudge and Bruce Pearson, drawings dealing with racial issues by Rico Gatson, provocative drawings that comment on the complex, fragile and futuristic potential of the millennium by David Opdyke, Roxy Paine, and Tavares Strachan, and watercolors by the master of accumulation, Christine Hill.
There will be a reception on November 22 from 6 – 8. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 – 6. Monday by appointment. For more information, please contact Sarah Paulson (212) 226-3232 or sarah@feldmangallery.com
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