Cristin Tierney is pleased to present Joan Snyder: Paper Pulp Paintings, opening October 25th and on view through December 8th, 2012. The artist will be present at the opening reception.

For this exhibition Joan Snyder collaborated with Anne McKeown, Master Papermaker at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions. Together they produced a new body of work in an unusual medium consisting of cotton, abaca, and linen paper pulp. After mixing gallons of multicolored pulp fibers, Snyder scoops out the wet pigmented pulp from vats and spreads it onto a prepared base layer. She applies multiple layers, occasionally pinching the less saturated pulp into shapes on the surface. Fabric pieces, dried rose buds, herbs and sticks are also added as the piece develops. The work is then removed from the vat of water and allowed to air dry.

The resulting pieces have unabashedly beautiful, complex surfaces. Like a Melon Field, with its undulating form and its shades of lime and periwinkle, evokes the feeling of sunlight stretching across an actual field of melons. These latest works are a natural extension of Snyder’s varied painting and printmaking practices, and connections to the history of modern and expressionist painting abound. Monet’s brush strokes, de Kooning’s colors, and the emotive force of Van Gogh and Kiefer all come to mind, yet Snyder’s paintings are unique in both approach and intent.

Joan Snyder first gained public attention in the early 1970s with her gestural and elegant abstract “stroke paintings.” These paintings were included in the 1973 Whitney Biennial and the 1975 Corcoran Biennial, and were the basis of her first solo shows in New York City and San Francisco. Often referred to as an autobiographical or confessional artist, her paintings are essentially narratives of both personal and communal experiences. Through a fiercely individual approach and persistent experimentation with technique and materials, Snyder has extended the expressive potential of abstract painting and inspired generations of emerging artists.

Born April 16, 1940 in Highland Park, New Jersey, Snyder received her A.B. from Douglass College, New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1962 and her M.F.A. from Rutgers University in 1966. Snyder was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1974 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1983. In 2007, Snyder received a MacArthur Fellowship. Snyder’s work is in many public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, the Guggenheim, the High Museum of Art and the Phillips Collection. In 2005, the Jewish Museum in New York City presented a 35- year survey of her work. Abrams Books published a monograph, Joan Snyder, in conjunction with the exhibition with an introduction by Norman Kleeblatt and essays by Hayden Herrera and Jenni Sorkin. In 2011, Dancing With The Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963- 2010, a traveling retrospective of Snyder’s prints, opened at the Zimmerli Art Museum of Rutgers University in New Jersey. The exhibition is currently on view at its fourth venue, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, in Albuquerque, and is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Faye Hirsch and Curator Marilyn Symmes.

For more information, please contact Valerie Altahawi at [email protected] or at 212.594.0550.