NYAB Event - Susan Rothenberg Exhibition

Susan Rothenberg Exhibition

Sperone Westwater

This event has ended.

Sperone Westwater presents an exhibition of thirteen new paintings by Susan Rothenberg, the artist’s tenth solo show at the gallery since 1987. Rothenberg continues to challenge and extend painterly conventions in her spatial and distorted compositions as well as in her exploration of light, color, form and movement. The works feature fragments of the human body, such as heads and hands, along with imagery of dogs and ravens. Juxtaposed against minimal yet heavily worked backgrounds, parts and partial figures are dispersed across the picture planes or cropped at the edge of the canvases. Bodies become shapes, and the tension between figuration and abstraction is heightened.

Rothenberg’s first solo exhibition at 112 Greene Street in 1975, consisting of three large-scale paintings of horses, was heralded for introducing imagery into minimalist abstraction and bringing a new sensitivity to figuration. For this show, Rothenberg continues to use animals as surrogates for the human body, transforming the representation of the figure into a study of space and form.

The silhouette of a black bird with its beak open in, Raven (2009-10), dominates the height of the painting. The raven is slightly off-center and juxtaposed against a white, scumbled background. In Ring Necks, Covering (2011), Rothenberg paints two doves at the edge of the canvas, perched on branches that extend into the picture plane, bisecting it diagonally.

White on White Head (2009-10) depicts the profile of a large head outlined in grey and black paint. As in many Rothenberg paintings, figurative and abstract elements merge in the compositional space, leaving little room for a narrative. In the large-scale work Strangers in the Night (2009-10), two disembodied heads share a dark, layered background.