Frederieke Taylor Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Julie Langsam, entitled Of Other Spaces. Julie Langsam’s paintings address issues of style, beauty and idealization by combining images that reference the Romantic sublime of the 19th century with 20th century’s Utopian ideals of high modernism. Featuring modernist buildings isolated within the landscape of vast skies, the newest paintings are now grounded by abstract minimalism.

Julie Langsam’s juxtaposition of iconographic structures such as Le Corbusier’s Chapel at Ronchamp, Richard Meier’s Atheneum and Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal, with backgrounds of broad, big sky landscapes associated with Hudson River School painters, alludes to the relationship of the sensuous body with the rational mind. Langsam adds another layer of Utopian idealism by adding abstract elements to the base of the painting which refer to Ad Reinhardt’s paintings from the 1950’s “Blue” and “Red” series.

“Her iconographic opposition of modernist artifice and romantic nature also serves as a prelude to the conflicted condition of a postmodernism that strives to construct a subjectivity that can accept that the desire for an objective reality can never be realized but still must be sought.” Saul Ostrow, Bomb magazine, Spring 2003.

Julie Langsam’s work has been exhibited at various locations throughout the Unites States, including The Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art/MOCA Cleveland, The Drawing Center NY, and Smack Mellon, NY. Her works have been reviewed in publications including The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, Dwell, and The Plain Dealer. She is the current Endowed Chair & Head of Painting at The Cleveland Institute of Art.

Julie Langsam catalog will be available with and essay by David Carrier.