John Currin "Works on Paper"
Andrea Rosen Gallery (525 W 24th St)
This event has ended.
Carefully selected from every work on paper in Currin's oeuvre, this exhibition is both an extensive overview of the artist's complex use of the genre as well as an in-depth study of the artist's engagement with the female body as subject, object, and formal foil within his practice.
While the exhibition represents every period of Currin's works on paper, it is by narrowing the focus to what clearly emerges as his principle subject that we hope to unveil how the artist's depiction of women throughout his work is a strategy he employs to blur and even confuse subject matter and form. As the most traditional of subjects, one would anticipate that the female body would become the most banal of images; however, it remains continually distracting in its physicality, compelling as the perfect metaphor, and hauntingly mysterious in its assumed knowability. Currin is interested in how a viewer's attention can be consumed by subject matter. Like his paintings, it is often assumed that the strong visceral response to Currin's works on paper is triggered by the imagery, however, Currin and his work strongly argue that even more than images it is the powerful influence of form and style and technique that generates an emotional viewing experience.
Media
Schedule
from June 19, 2009 to August 21, 2009