Fred Torres Collaborations presents a survey of drawings, paintings, and assemblages by Madeleine Gekiere, on view from January 13 through February 18, 2012. This is Gekiere’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Fred Torres Collaborations is located at 527 West 29th Street, New York. An opening reception will be held on Friday, January 13, from 6 to 8 PM. The artist will be present.

The exhibition features a selection of over 50 years of Gekiere’s extensive body of work. Throughout Gekiere’s oeuvre, whether working in painting, drawing, or other mediums, there is a constant interest in form, memory, emotion, and text. Many of the early drawings and paintings explore modernist abstraction and feature an earthy palette of blacks, browns and tans. Later Gekiere began to experiment with assemblage, using everyday found objects including light bulbs, wood handles, toys, hosiery, and books to create witty juxtapositions. Like many of Gekiere’s works, her assemblages imply connections to figurative forms, which relate to earlier works. Gekiere’s “book assemblages” and “hieroglyphic” works demonstrate her interest in text, language, and memory. Throughout her career, Gekiere has written short stories and published many illustrated books, whereby text and book covers naturally find their place in a significant portion of her fine art work.

Madeleine Gekiere was born in Switzerland in 1919. She lives and works in New York. Gekiere studied at NYU, Brooklyn Museum School, and the Art Students League. Gekiere began exhibiting in the 1950’s with Babcock Gallery, and continued to show there through the 1970’s. Between 1953 and 1963, her books were named five times by the New York Times as one of the “Ten Best Illustrated Books of the Year.” In the 1970’s and 1980’s her experiments in over 20 films screened extensively throughout the U.S. More recently, in the fall of 2011 Anthology Film Archives screened several of her short films including the1980 film Chewing. In addition to Babcock Gallery, she has exhibited at Forum Gallery, New York University, and Galerie Wolfsberg, Zurich. Her work is in numerous museum collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and the San Francisco Museum of Art