The Drawing Center is pleased to announce the exhibition Alan Saret: Gang Drawings, on view in the Main Gallery from November 9, 2007 through February 7, 2008. Alan Saret: Gang Drawings, organized by The Drawing Center, marks the first major museum exhibition of the pioneering artist’s work in nearly two decades. Saret is an important figure in the history of Post-Minimal art and was a vital part of the SoHo alternative art scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The exhibition will trace the evolution of Saret’s process-based experimentation with drawing, including approximately 30 “Gang Drawings,” made with fistfuls (“gangs”) of colored pencils swept across the page, spanning from the late 1960s to the present. Organized in close collaboration with the artist, Alan Saret: Gang Drawings aims to reveal Saret’s influence on a generation of postwar American artists and his contributions to the alternative arts movement, and will feature never-before-seen work from Saret’s personal archive. This exhibition is curated by João Ribas, Curator, The Drawing Center.

Saret’s drawings, like his sculptures, address the artist’s interest in gestural encounters with mutable materials and a commitment to the metaphysical and spiritual dimensions of art, reinforced by his trip to India in the 1970s. The “Gang Drawings,” begun in 1967 as preliminary studies for three-dimensional work, combine spontaneous gesture with formal rigor. While regimented by structured repetition, Saret’s drawings are composed of improvised marks, combining chance procedures with the delicacy of touch and a transparency of process.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Alan Saret was born in New York, NY in 1944 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Saret received a Bachelor’s degree in architecture from Cornell University in 1966 and subsequently studied with the artist Robert Morris at Hunter College from 1966 until 1968. In the early 1970s, Saret traveled to India, a trip that served to reinforce his spiritual convictions and continues to influence his output to this day. In the mid-1980s, Saret gradually withdrew from the commercial art world to focus on site-specific and architectural projects. Saret’s work has been exhibited at museums throughout the U.S. including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Modern Art Pavilion in Seattle, WA; Fine Arts Gallery, Irvine, CA; and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY. His most recent solo exhibition took place in 1990 at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, a MoMA affiliate, in Long Island City, NY. Saret’s work is included in numerous public and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.