Opening on Saturday, September 12th, the gallery presents an exhibition by New York-based artist Katy Schimert. This will be the artist's first one-person exhibition at David Zwirner and her third solo show in New York. In this exhibition, the artist will present drawings, large-scale wall drawings, sculpture and a Super-8 film transferred to video. This will be Schimert's first new body of work since "Oedipus Rex: The Drowned Man" which was exhibited at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 1997 and the 1997 Whitney Biennial. The exhibition will coincide with the release of a catalogue of the artist's work published by The Renaissance Society. The catalogue includes an essay by Lynne Cooke and is the first monograph on the artist's work.
For her current exhibition Schimert has developed a set of ideas in a group of drawings which in turn inform a body of sculpture and a Super-8 film. The images that this body of work evokes are archetypes, both old and new: the sun, sun spots, the island of Manhattan, the Twin Towers, the Wall Street trader. But rather than forming a linear narrative, these images are reference points for work that is essentially abstract. The sculpture is executed in blown glass and ceramic which is saturated with color. It demands from the viewer an involvement which goes beyond the analytical. These highly sensual works investigate one of man’s most mysterious motivations: desire.
In the past, Schimert has looked to our shared lexicon of classical mythology and Romantic literature to create her work. While these references have informed the making of her work, they are not static loci of meaning; they constantly refract. The transgressive movement between the exterior world and the world that is unexplored or imagined as illustrated in mythology and Romantic poetry have allowed Schimert the dual task of making that which is unknown physical, and making that which is known transformative. In Schimert's new body of work, the references are even more circuitous and the gestural language of sculpture more pronounced.
The catalogue, "Oedipus Rex: The Drowned Man" published by the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago will be available at the gallery.