Cheryl Donegan: GRLZ + VEILS

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) is pleased to announce the exhibition Cheryl Donegan: GRLZ + VEILS. Organized in collaboration with Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, the exhibition marks the artist’s first solo museum exhibition devoted predominantly to her paintings. CAMH will host a public opening reception on the evening of Friday, January 18, 2019 from 6:30–9pm, with the exhibition remaining on view through Sunday, March 31, 2019. As always, admission to CAMH is free.

Over the last decade, Cheryl Donegan has made paintings that are as irreverent and subversive as her widely-acclaimed political, feminist approaches to video. Similar in content to the performative work she created in the 1990s—which, today, is included in standard art history textbooks—her painterly practice is infused with an ironic eroticism, often time-based, and pointedly references the male-dominated history of Abstract Expressionism and action painting. Donegan’s newest highly conceptual painted and printed works continue her investigations into mark-making, beauty, seduction, fashion, and the nature of art.

Magnifying her process, Donegan’s abstract paintings highlight the studio as a space for discovery and experimentation as well as its relationship to the vivid streets of New York City. Her recent paintings—gleaned from debased images of consumer objects, shopping spaces, and humble patterns—employ digital appropriation and reveal her playful yet deceivingly serious manner. For instance, Donegan has taken cell phone snapshots of the ubiquitous graffiti made by individuals that have scratched their tags into the collapsible grills of air-conditioner units. The resulting motif, both cosmic and quotidian, forms the basis of a new collection of garments, which will be on display in the exhibition. These images, when printed on fabric and animated by movements of the body, bring out both the street beauty and art-historical resonances of this mark-making practice.

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s presentation of Cheryl Donegan: GRLZ + VEILS, features roughly 80 works, including mannequins featuring a sampling of the artist’s new collection of clothing as well as six of the artist’s videos from the last decade.

The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color, fully-illustrated catalogue with contributions by Bill Arning, Daniel Baumann, Robert Buck, Johanna Burton, Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, Wade Guyton, Rem Koolhaas, and Heidi Zuckerman. The catalogue is published by Aspen Art Press, Colorado; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas; and Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland.

Cheryl Donegan: GRLZ + VEILS was co-organized by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and the Aspen Art Museum, and curated by Bill Arning and Heidi Zuckerman.

About the artist
Donegan received her MFA from Hunter College, New York, New York, and BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. Her work has been exhibited internationally including the 1995 Whitney Biennial, New York, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; New York Film and Video Festival, New York; 1993 Venice Biennale, Italy; Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas; New Museum, New York, New York; Galerie Vidal Cuglietta, Brussels, Belgium; and White Flag Library, St. Louis, Missouri. She has been a frequent seminar leader and guest critic at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; a faculty member at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; and a visiting artist/lecturer at numerous art programs across the United States.