Rosalyn Drexler: The Greatest Show on Earth
Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to announce Rosalyn Drexler: The Greatest Show on Earth, an exhibition of paintings at 545 West 20th Street. Opening on Thursday, February 21, 2019, the exhibition will be the first in-depth showing of the artist鈥檚 work from the 1980s and 1990s. Long considered an overlooked era in Drexler鈥檚 oeuvre, this time period was one of significant maturation, outside of the artist鈥檚 storied work of the 1960s.
In these paintings, Drexler takes a magnifying glass to the human condition. Touching on some favorite themes鈥攎ost notably, medleys of love and violence鈥攈er narratives appear open-ended and surreal. Multiple characters enter these compositions, filling out the negative space she once carefully cherished. Moving away from simple pairings of couples scuffling about, Drexler captures increasingly complex scenes.
Appropriating imagery from popular journals and other printed matter, Drexler transforms otherwise prosaic images by adding bright pigments and creating new contexts. Cutting reproductions from magazines, Drexler fixes her strategically selected images to canvas and overpaints the resulting collage, thereby eliminating the visual trace of the underlying, mechanically reproduced images.
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Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to announce Rosalyn Drexler: The Greatest Show on Earth, an exhibition of paintings at 545 West 20th Street. Opening on Thursday, February 21, 2019, the exhibition will be the first in-depth showing of the artist鈥檚 work from the 1980s and 1990s. Long considered an overlooked era in Drexler鈥檚 oeuvre, this time period was one of significant maturation, outside of the artist鈥檚 storied work of the 1960s.
In these paintings, Drexler takes a magnifying glass to the human condition. Touching on some favorite themes鈥攎ost notably, medleys of love and violence鈥攈er narratives appear open-ended and surreal. Multiple characters enter these compositions, filling out the negative space she once carefully cherished. Moving away from simple pairings of couples scuffling about, Drexler captures increasingly complex scenes.
Appropriating imagery from popular journals and other printed matter, Drexler transforms otherwise prosaic images by adding bright pigments and creating new contexts. Cutting reproductions from magazines, Drexler fixes her strategically selected images to canvas and overpaints the resulting collage, thereby eliminating the visual trace of the underlying, mechanically reproduced images.
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Elsewhere in our 鈥淥ne-Woman American Century鈥� section we take a look at the life and work of Rosalyn Drexler, who has received accolades as an artist, a playwright, a novelist, and even as a professional wrestler.
