Matthew Marks Gallery (522 West 22nd)
522 West 22nd Street, 212-243-0200
Chelsea
September 11 - October 24, 2009
Reception: Thursday, September 10, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Rebecca Warren: Feelings, the next exhibition in his gallery at 522 West 22nd Street. This exhibition, the artist’s third one-person show at the gallery, will consist of twelve new sculptures made in a variety of media including unfired clay, painted bronze and, for the first time, welded steel.
Warren’s sculptures continue to ebb from figuration to abstraction and range from amorphous to more clearly recognizable forms, which are sometimes sexual in nature and reference the body in humorous and challenging ways.
Rebecca Warren’s sculptures can be both playful and aggressive in their depiction of the female form. She often manages to both invoke and skewer the work of familiar male artists like R. Crumb, de Kooning, Fontana, Giacometti, and in her recent steel sculptures, Anthony Caro.
The steel sculptures have hard edges, seem precipitously balanced and, save for the occasional flourish like a small pom-pom, appear free of the familiar touch that one associates with Warren; however, many similarities bridge these works to her earlier sculptures. Warren states, “Though the metal sculptures are hard, they still have a kind of delicacy; they look like they’re carefully balanced and could collapse at any moment. I suppose the addition of a pom-pom makes it—this is terrible—as if I was Richard Serra’s wife. Then someone might say, ‘Oh look at Richard Serra’s wife. She’s made a little steel thing. It’s nice she’s got a hobby.’”
Rebecca Warren (born 1965) has had one-person exhibitions at Kunsthalle, Zurich; the Serpentine Gallery, London and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006. In 2007, her work was included in “Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century,” the inaugural exhibition at the New Museum, New York. Warren lives and works in London.