Selections Fall 1997

Selections Fall 1997 was one of a continuing series of exhibitions which brought the work of emerging and under-represented artists to public attention. The Selections exhibition series provided artists with the opportunity to present a significant body of work and demonstrated the diversity of content, materials, and formal concerns found in contemporary drawing. The exhibition featured the work of Johannes Kahrs, David Nelson, Kathy Prendergast, and Mike Stevenson.

Johannes Kahrs writes of their work saying, "My work uses images from newspapers, magazines, notebooks, cookbooks, technical manuals, medical atlases, field guides, art magazines, artists' books, advertisements and photographs. I also use images from movies, videos, and television. I work with an explained fictitious reality." David Nelson writes, "These drawings were done in memory of David Knudsvig (1947–1993), who died of AIDS. The wooden man and train were toys of David's which sat on our dresser." Kathy Prendergast writes, "In 1992, I started a long-term project transcribing in pencil the anatomy of every capital city in the world. I hope the resulting drawings transcend the idea of the map and start to mimic other organic structures and life forms. I would like each drawing to impart a sense of evolution; to record a moment in the process of organic growth and, lacking the typical information of the map, to become an entity in itself. The completion of the project will depend on the amount of capital cities in the world at that time. The project will not so much have a beginning, middle and end, but a circularity where each drawing is an element of the whole and the gallery becomes a microcosm."

Mike Stevenson writes, "Every disaffected artworker, experts say, develops hallmark responses to questions about the artworld and their role in it. Pathologically stricken by their loss of autonomy, these artworks seek reassurance in the politics of extremes. The following is an attempt to trace a commonality in their responses. What these artworks voice isn't necessarily politics. It is in a political domain, it has the language and referents of politics, but it is the articulation of bitterness. It is the politics of an art world culture gone amiss, the conflation of art and life."