Selections Fall 1991

The Selections exhibition series, while typically non-thematic, provided the artists with an opportunity to present a significant body of work, and demonstrated the diversity of content, materials, and formal concerns found in contemporary drawing. Selections Fall 1991 featured the work of Robert Blanchon, Kavin Buck, Charles Castillo, Ruth Libermann, and Megan Williams.

Kavin Buck's series of works are based on a 19th-century drawing by Jean-François Millet, entitled Man Turning Over the Soil (Le Bêcheur). Buck uses silk-screen methods to evaluate and confront the historical alignment of economy, power, and structure found within Millet's piece, reflecting on ideas of recreation, forcible change, and the contrast between a roughcast and an original. The cartoon-like aspect of Megan Williams' work points toward a childlike way of assessing the world as both ominous and gleeful, with Williams noting that the drawings "are the product of [her] continual search for something unconscious and undigested." Robert Blanchon's installation, Untitled, consisted of portraits that he collected over a year and a half, from artists who worked in public parks, shopping malls, and on street corners. Blanchon's installation navigated notions of self, authority of representation, and autobiography. Charles Castillo's work similarly explores issues of authorship, style, memory, and identity, while socializing the private in an attempt to present highly charged materials with a flatness of affect.

Selections Fall 1991 was one in a continuing series of exhibitions that brought the work of emerging artists from across the nation and abroad to public attention. All of the featured artists had participated in The Drawing Center's Viewing Program, a service which offered emerging artists an opportunity to present drawing to the curatorial staff for professional feedback and to be considered for inclusion in an exhibition.

The exhibition featured an artists' symposium moderated by Philip Yenawine, Director of Education, The Museum of Modern Art, during which artists discussed their work and answered questions from the audience.