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Email PageRooms and People
February 14, 2008- March 15, 2008
Reception: February 14, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Betty Woodman
Max Protetch
511 W 22nd StMax Protetch Gallery is pleased to announce Rooms and People, an exhibition of new work by Betty Woodman. Featuring wall-based and free-standing pieces that emphasize both the sculptural and painterly currents in Woodman's practice, the works in the exhibition explore the relationship of the human form to architecture. The wall works, in which ceramic vases and fragments are juxtaposed against brightly-painted canvas, suggest window views from or into domestic spaces. The diptych and triptych ceramic vases, glazed with images of rooms populated by nude figures, are experiments in fragmentation and perspective.
Betty Woodman is one of the most singular American artists of her time. Refusing to abide by any attempt to categorize her work, she nonetheless manages to absorb countless historical and cultural references. Throughout her career she has been concerned with redefining the boundaries between sculpture and painting, utilizing clay as a medium for its rich cultural, physical, and symbolic lineages. In 2006 her achievements were recognized in a comprehensive retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and her work has been shown and collected by many major institutions throughout the world.
The wall-piece Rooms in the current exhibition continue Woodman's evolving approach to wall, space, and relief. This marks the first time that the canvas elements that sometimes accompany the ceramic ones have been painted with acrylics, pushing the works into even closer relation to with the recent history of painting. Each of the Rooms features a brightly colored canvas sub-divided into square and rectangular areas, creating an illusion of a view through a window; the view gives onto a scene made up of glazed ceramic fragments. The vases in these works seem to exist inside the rooms like figures, metaphorical stand-ins for people. There is also a series of new wall pieces in which unglazed terracotta fragments have been installed over intricately patterned canvas backdrops. These latter works suggest silhouettes. One wall work on view, Chinese Pleasure, is a maquette for a major large-scale commission to be completed for the new American Embassy, Beijing, in 2008. The piece synthesizes references to three distinct moments in the history of Chinese art: ceramic and bronze money trees from the second century, eighth century Tang Dynasty ceramics, and early 20th century graphic art used on package labels for firecrackers.
Woodman's diptychs and triptychs have long formed a major facet of her oeuvre. While clothed figures have been appearing in these pieces for a few years, on these new pieces Woodman has painted nudes in domestic settings. The result of this development is a more psychologically charged kind of portraiture, due to both a change in the artist/model relationship and the history of the artist's gaze such a relationship recalls. The planes of the multiple vases break up each painted figure, enhancing its dramatic presence and complicating the role architectural space plays vis-à-vis painted surface and sculpted volume.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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