Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Marlene McCarty on view from April 5th through May 3rd, 2008.

McCarty came to prominence in the early 1990s through her explorations of sexuality and obscenity via textual renderings on canvas. By the middle of that decade the artist began creating figurative works based on narratives of transgressive true-life incidents. These works, rendered tightly and compulsively in ballpoint pen and graphite, continue to grow in scale and complexity, from individual portraits of female murders in the mid 1990s to the now mural-sized works involving groups of figures seen in the current exhibition. The monumental scale of the recent works creates an immersive setting where the family – both immediate (human) and extended (hominid) – takes center stage. These seemingly innocuous scenes are contrasted by the tragic true-life stories on which the works are based.

McCarty’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. In 1990 she participated in the Venice Biennale APERTO with the activist/artist collective Gran Fury. She also exhibited six of her mural-size drawings in the 2003 Istanbul Biennale. Her work has been recently exhibited at P.S. 1 in Long Island City; ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany; and Museum Ludwig in Cologne. McCarty has been a visiting and adjunct professor at many institutions, including New York University, Yale University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and The Cooper Union.