Selections 12

Selections 12 was the twelfth in an ongoing series of exhibitions drawn from The Drawing Center's Artists' Viewing Program. Much of the work in Selections 12 reflected a renewed interest in the pictorial image. Mark Tansey masterfully rendered illustrations in graphite, while Tony Mascatello, who had been known primarily as a performance artist, exhibited rarely seen, whimsical, cartoon-like drawings derived from dreams or fleeting observations. The drawings were paired on single sheets and related either visually or situationally. Judith Hudson painted traditional still-life objects, sometimes on outlined and isolated backgrounds. William Garbe presented unusually large, richly subdued watercolors of swans, and Armand Conine molded papier-mâché into wall sculptures, making references to fish forms in overall contour and in surface relief. Ivan Schwartz showed several drawings from the Broken Cup Series. Each drawing in some way alluded to aspects of the same broken cup, though in some cases the image was abstracted beyond recognition.

Gerry Morehead assembled separate black-and-white drawings into modular works: four dense, nocturnal landscapes with obscured images recurring from section to section in shifting orders, as variations on a theme. Andy Sichel stenciled images of everyday objects into his shaped collages which were pinned directly to the wall. Janet Kusmierski made thick composition board jigsaw puzzles. Dennis Kardon assembled paper cutouts of fragmented images forming black shapes on buff paper. Linda Gottesfeld presented large charcoal drawings; elements in these works resembled cave drawings or hieroglyphics.