SON OF THE FOREST: March 2012

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Fiction/Non-Fiction at Adam Baumgold

My drawing "Sisters" (post below) will be included in the exhibition Fiction/Non-Fiction at Adam Baumgold Gallery opening next week

...FICTION/NON-FICTION...

March 16 - April , 2012

For Immediate Release:

. . Adam Baumgold Gallery presents Fiction/Nonfiction from March 16 - April 21, 2012. This exhibition explores different types of narrative in drawings, paintings, and sculpture from the ambiguous and open-ended to the fully realized. Artists included in the exhibition are Rafael Ferrer, Saul Steinberg, George Grosz, Robin Tewes, Mark Tansey, Chris Ware, Julie Doucet, Charles Burns, Robert Crumb, Seth, Renée French,Tony Fitzpatrick, Barbara Kruger Ed Ruscha, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Glen Baxter, Marc Bell, Marcel Dzama, John Borowicz, Aline Kominsky Crumb, Mark Kostabi, Adam Dant, Elisheva Biernoff, Ruth Marten, Jules Feiffer, Huston Ripley, Bette Blank, Ellen Lanyon, Scott Teplin, Emilie Selden, and Anton van Dalen.

. . .Featured in the exhibition is Saul Steinberg's drawing Allegory, 1963, which combines symbols for beauty, justice, progress, and death to create an absurdist pastiche. In his double-sided drawing Der Dichter am Schreibtisch (At the Writing Table) 1921, George Grosz bemoans the failure of the literary scene with his image of a writer struggling to put pen to the page, and a coffin looming behind him. Tony Fitzpatrick's drawing collage Juarez Beast, 2011 metaphorically tells of the harsh realities of the Mexican drug trade and its brutal consequences, especially on women.

. . .Mark Tansey's cut-out painting, Untitled 1982, depicts a man methodically arranging stone tiles into a floor as if it were a jigsaw puzzle. In an unsettlingly serene and warm scene, Robin Tewes's painting 911, 2002 makes a symbolic reference to the tragedy using her own surrealist vocabulary, without affecting false sentimentality. Elisheva Biernoff's lifelike paintings of postcards memorialize the final journeys of lost explorers. Bette Blank's romantic painting Starlight Drive-In 2012 transports us back to a simpler time.

. . .Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Robert Crumb, and Julie Doucet draw quasi-autobiographical comic tales that are funny and poignant in their honesty. Chris Ware's drawing Jordan Lint: Age 58 & 59 (Childbirth and Stepdaughter Bikini) approximates Lint's inner life through a muddled stream of overlaid thoughts, personal symbols and mislaid memories. In The Green Ghost & Co., 2011 Seth assembles an unlikely cast of comic characters, invented for his book The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists. Charles Burns's drawing El Borbah: Title Page: Love in Vein, 1999 evokes pulp fiction, heavy metal, and noir film.

. . .The large ink and watercolor drawing by Adam Dant, The Coliseum: Culture vs. Transit, 2012, unites quotidian drama and high art as a series of commuter trains rudely interrupts a performance of Swan Lake at the Coliseum Theatre in London. A man is unceremoniously tied up in the center of a room while four other men consult maps and plans in an undefined, ritualistic game in Glen Baxter's Untitled, 1973.