The Drawing Center

I don't think there's one clinker in the group included in the new show at The Drawing Center (and actually I wouldn't mention it if I thought there was). Although some of the work is immediately seductive, some of it may have to wait a bit for the kind of recognition it's certainly going to find. I'm thinking right now of the powerful, disturbing drawings of Zoë Charlton.

You know it's a good group show when you find yourself wondering about the actual process of assembling a group of (in this case 14) artists you've seen little or nothing of before. I mean, how does it happen? And where have they been up to now?

In any event, the pictures included below offer barely a hint of the deptha nd breadth of the show, and they definitely don't describe all of my pleasure in what I found at tonight's opening. As usual, they are images which happened to come out the best in a few of my modest attempts to record things which attracted or provoked me. I certainly don't always get what I want.

Sometimes it's just the ambient light which won't cooperate, but the work itself can be the obstacle. I really liked the gorgeous assemblies of Jonathan Herder which I had first seen at Pierrogi 2000, but it's impossible to show them with a hand-held subminiature camera. Any reproduction of Nancy Jackson's extravagantly-imagined worlds probably shouldn't be attempted, and Jennie White's exquisite, pierced white paper samplers almost defy the eye even if you're standing in front of them.


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Tucker Nichols untitled (2004) installation detail


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Ricardo Lanzarini untitled books (2003-2004) installation detail



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Alejandro Diaz detail from "works from ongoing series of cardboard signs" (2003-2004) marker on cardboard, dimensions variable


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Published on September 14, 2004 10:59 PM.

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