Ida Applebroog Exhibition
Hauser & Wirth
This event has ended.
In 1969, Bronx-born Ida Applebroog was living in southern California with her husband and four children. Busy as a mother and an artist, she took refuge in the one place that guaranteed solitude: the bathtub, a “little sanctuary” where she would soak for two to three hours every evening. Over the course of several weeks that year Applebroog also brought sketchpads to the bathroom and drew her own naked body – specifically her crotch – from reflections in a mirror. The result of this ritual was more than 160 vagina drawings rendered in India ink and pencil. Some were highly detailed, others were fancifully exaggerated, and still others were abstractions comprising a single elegantly curved line. Each drawing chronicles an intimate act of self-exploration by a woman and artist.
These drawings, unseen by anyone other than their maker, returned with Applebroog to New York City in 1974 and were packed in a basement and forgotten until studio assistants discovered them in early 2009. Together these images comprise a remarkable archive that, forty years on, serves as a key component in an entirely new body of work called Monalisa. The centerpiece of this project is a room-sized wooden structure covered with more than 100 new drawings made from the original vagina images, which Applebroog has scanned onto handmade Gampi paper, enlarged and digitally manipulated, enhanced with occasional washes of pale pink, grey, and yellow. Translucent vellum wrapping a bare, enclosed wooden structure, the facades of this building evoke skin stretched over a bony skeleton. Applebroog’s architecture – an updated “little sanctuary” conceived through the lens of 80 years of life – makes home and body interchangeable analogs, containing the terrors and pleasures of existing in both.
[Image: Ida Applebroog "Monalisa" (2009) Gampi, mylar, ink, pigment, oil, watercolor and wood, 110 x 144 x 146 1/2 in. Photo: Thomas Mueller]
Media
Schedule
from January 19, 2010 to March 06, 2010
Opening Reception on 2010-01-19 from 18:00 to 20:00