Susanna Heller & Karlis Rekevics: Eyes On The City
New York Studio School is pleased to present Eyes on the City: Drawings by Susanna Heller and Karlis Rekevics, curated by Karen Wilkin.
Susanna Heller and Karlis Rekevics can be described as connoisseurs of the gritty, expedient aspects of urban imagery: unexpected views, neglected corners, utilitarian infrastructure, and more. Heller, who died in 2021, was an indefatigable pedestrian. Rapid drawings made on her walks became the basis of energetic paintings, with another extreme perspective added by a residency at the World Trade Center. At the end of her life, she drew the city from her window, contrasting expansive distance with pitiless self-portraits. During Covid restrictions, Rekevics, whose site-specific sculptures reinvent the built environment, daily walked miles under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from his home to his studio. He distills his observations of the elevated structure into generous, high contrast drawings, conflating light, shade, and steel into images as firmly constructed as his sculptures. This exhibition contrasts Heller鈥檚 casual notations, installed as they were in her studio, with Rekevics鈥檚 refined, graphic improvisations on brute functionalism.
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New York Studio School is pleased to present Eyes on the City: Drawings by Susanna Heller and Karlis Rekevics, curated by Karen Wilkin.
Susanna Heller and Karlis Rekevics can be described as connoisseurs of the gritty, expedient aspects of urban imagery: unexpected views, neglected corners, utilitarian infrastructure, and more. Heller, who died in 2021, was an indefatigable pedestrian. Rapid drawings made on her walks became the basis of energetic paintings, with another extreme perspective added by a residency at the World Trade Center. At the end of her life, she drew the city from her window, contrasting expansive distance with pitiless self-portraits. During Covid restrictions, Rekevics, whose site-specific sculptures reinvent the built environment, daily walked miles under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from his home to his studio. He distills his observations of the elevated structure into generous, high contrast drawings, conflating light, shade, and steel into images as firmly constructed as his sculptures. This exhibition contrasts Heller鈥檚 casual notations, installed as they were in her studio, with Rekevics鈥檚 refined, graphic improvisations on brute functionalism.
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Susanna Heller and I have been friends going all the way back to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design [NASCAD] in Halifax from which I graduated in 1976, and Susanna in 1977.