JULIE MEHRETU
DRAWING INTO PAINTING
27 May - 08 August 2004
REDCAT (the Roy and Edna/Disney/CalArts Theater)
631 W. 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012 USA
+1 (213) 237-2800
www.redcat.org
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 27, 7-10 p.m.
Artist’s CHAT: Sunday, May 30, 3 p.m.
The Gallery at REDCAT (the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition JULIE MEHRETU: DRAWING INTO PAINTING curated by Douglas Fogle of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. This will be the first time that Mehretu’s paintings have been shown in Los Angeles.
Mehretu’s language of abstraction borrows from real and imagined geography, architecture, history, mapping and photojournalism to navigate the unstable terrain of what she has identified as “a narrative filled with urgency and optimism, like a strange dream.” The underlying structure of Mehretu’s work consists of charged public spaces — government buildings, museums, stadiums, schools and airports — drawn in the form of maps and diagrams. Into these now decontextualized, highly controlled spaces the artist inscribes her own narrative through the incorporation of personal markings within layers of Mylar, vellum and paper. Mehretu’s works have been presented in numerous exhibitions, including Freestyle (2001) at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Painting at the Edge of the World (2001) at the Walker Art Center, and the 2004 Whitney Biennial.
JULIE MEHRETU: DRAWING INTO PAINTING features 12 paintings completed from 2002 to 2003. According to exhibition curator Douglas Fogle, “Julie Mehretu attempts to put the world into the world. At the onset of a millennium defined by the twin forces of globalization and the legacy of September 11, she is producing a new form of history painting. Her sources range from the geometric abstractions and revolutionary utopian impulses of Kasimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky to the iconographic contours of contemporary skateboard graphics and tattoos, comic books, institutional architectural schematics, and news photographs of riots and uprisings. Filtering these strands through her highly idiosyncratic lexicon of signs and symbols, she creates synthetic worlds in which historical and fictional landscapes collide.”
REDCAT is located at 631 W. 2nd Street at Hope Street in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles. The Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, from noon until 6 p.m. or curtain. Admission to the Gallery is free. Please visit www.redcat.org or call +1(213) 237-2810 for additional information and directions.
JULIE MEHRETU: DRAWING INTO PAINTING is organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. It is made possible by generous support from the Voyager Foundation Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation. The Los Angeles presentation of JULIE MEHRETU: DRAWING INTO PAINTING is made possible in part by The Ovitz Family Collection.
