NYAB Event - Yvonne Jacquette "The Complete Woodcuts: 1987-2009"

Yvonne Jacquette "The Complete Woodcuts: 1987-2009"

RYAN LEE

This event has ended.

Mary Ryan Gallery presents Yvonne Jacquette: The Complete Woodcuts, 1987-2009, the first retrospective of this body of work. This exhibition will travel to the Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, MO, and marks the completion and debut of Jacquette’s newest print, Chrysler Building Flanked by High Rise Buildings, II (2009). A catalogue, which includes a catalogue
raisonne of Jacquette’s woodcuts, accompanies the exhibition. Over the past 22 years she has produced 18 woodcuts, and Mary Ryan Gallery has published all of them since 1997. This is her first solo exhibition at Mary Ryan Gallery.

Jacquette is best known for her use of aerial perspective, which she has employed in her work since the 1970s. Working from airplanes or from the highest floors in skyscrapers—for years she had studio space in the World Trade Center--she draws and photographs the scene below, generally in preparation for larger paintings or prints. Her woodcuts, based on the underpaintings for her canvases, are monochromatic nightscapes that render familiar cities mysterious. Her nocturnes are reduced, yet all-encompassing, simultaneously intimate and remote. Though they are immediately recognizable, not all of the scenes in Jacquette’s works appear exactly as they exist; many are composite images--sometimes a mix of perspectives, sometimes a mix of architectural elements depending on her preference.

Chrysler Building Flanked by High Rise Buildings, II, a strikingly linear depiction of Midtown architecture, confronts its subject from a 20th floor penthouse on East 37th street. Combining gridded line work with varied grooves and notches, this latest woodcut is a powerful rendering of structure, light and reflection. It is one of three images Jacquette has done
looking up at her subjects in the last year. This shift in perspective is one that Jacquette has been exploring as she is increasingly interested in being in the middle of a view. Like the majority of the woodcuts, it is printed in black ink on Okawara paper, which Jacquette prefers for its natural contrast and ability to smoothly absorb the dense ink. Chrysler

[Image: Yvonne Jacquette "Building Flanked by High Rise Buildings, II" (2009) Woodcut on Okawara paper, 35-5/8 x 23-1/2 in.]