Selections 34
November 6 – 29, 1986
Selections 34, an exhibition which featured the work of twelve emerging artists, opened at The Drawing Center in 1986. Included in Selections 34 were: Celeste Boehm, Virginia Buchan, Chris Daubert, Salvatore Federico, Elizabeth Gourlay, Gilbert Hsiao, Dennis Kane, Richmond Lewis, Vytas Sakalas, Amy Sillman, Thomas Weaver and Barbara Yoshida. All of the artists in the exhibition had been chosen through The Drawing Center's unique Viewing Program. The rich variety of media and subject matter in the exhibition illustrated the broad range of work included within The Center's definition of drawing — any unique work on paper.
A number of the artists in the exhibition took natural forms as a source of inspiration. Barbara Yoshida's large acrylic drawings exploded with the energy she found inherent in the diverse forms of orchids, while Elizabeth Gourlay's small monochromatic abstractions explored the quieter aspects of nature. Amy Sillman had developed an abstract vocabulary based on body parts, flowers and seedpods. Thomas Weaver's mysterious landscapes were at once seductive and threatening. The ink drawings of Richmond Lewis depicted a nightmare world inhabited only by ominous machinery. Virginia Buchan's colorful acrylics captured the rhythm and energy of a world no farther than outside a city window.
The graphite drawings of Chris Daubert documented the artist's sculptural and photographic investigations into the properties of light. Celeste Boehm's illusory pencil drawings began as translations of trivial events and ended as documents of the drawing process. Salvatore Federico's monumental black and white abstractions were full-scale cartoons or studies for his large shaped canvases. Gilbert Hsiao used a household paint sprayer and acrylic paint to build up layers of color and texture in his geometric abstractions. Vytas Sakalas saw his ink and brush drawings as evolving organically into a complex overlapping surface pattern. Dennis Kane's mixed media compositions were somber and elegiac in tone; hauntingly suggestive, they remained open-ended and ambiguous.
All of the artists in Selections 34 participated in a symposium on Wednesday, November 19th at 7:00 p.m. The artists discussed their work and answered questions from the audience.
Curated through The Drawing Center’s Viewing Program.
Featured Artists
- Celeste Boehm
- Virginia Buchan
- Chris Daubert
- Salvatore Federico
- Elizabeth Gourlay
- Gilbert Hsiao
- Dennis Kane
- Richmond Lewis
- Vytas Sakalas
Amy Sillman
b. 1955, Detroit, MI
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Amy Sillman (b. 1955) is a painter who has lived and worked in NYC since 1975. She earned her BFA in 1979 at SVA, and her MFA from Bard College in 1995. Sillman’s work is rooted in drawing, the process of improvisation, and to negotiating the terrain between things, e.g. the corporeal and the intellectual, figuration and abstraction, or the intimate scale of the hand versus a larger sense of meaning that unfurls across physical spaces. Her work is held in many private and public collections in the US and Europe, including MoMA, The Whitney, the Brandhorst Museum in Munich, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and The Tate Modern in London. A mid-career traveling survey show "one lump or two," curated by Helen Molesworth, originated at The ICA Boston in 2013 accompanied by a monograph. Her animation After Metamorphoses was created for The Drawing Center, and was on view in the winter/spring of 2017. Last fall Sillman curated the exhibition “The Shape of Shape” for MoMA’s re-opening, accompanied by a 'zine entitled “Shapes” produced for MoMA Magazine. Sillman is represented by Gladstone Gallery in NYC, where her current solo show “Twice Removed” will be on view until November 14th, 2020.- Thomas Weaver
- Barbara Yoshida
Ephemera
Exhibition Checklist
Installation Photography
Press
Credits
Selections 34 was made possible in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Institute of Museum Services, a federal agency that offered general operating support to the nation's museums. The Drawing Center was the recipient of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Drawing Center received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., the Jerome Foundation, and the Joe and Emily Lowe Foundation.