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Miriam Cahn
Ohne
titel, 2007
Oil on
canvas
70.87 x
49.21 inches (180 x 125 cm)
Courtesy
of the artist and Elizabeth Dee, NY
MIRIAM
CAHN
5 Nov
2011 - 22 Dec 2011
Elizabeth Dee is pleased to
present Miriam Cahn's second solo exhibition
following her long-awaited return to New York earlier this
year in her debut with the gallery. This exhibition will focus
on Cahn's painting practice spanning three decades. A beloved
and historically significant voice in Switzerland, Cahn
represented her home country at the 41st Venice Biennale in
1984.
In
Drawing Room Confessions Issue #3, a journal
published on the occasion of Cahn's current solo exhibition
with the David Roberts Art Foundation in London, Cahn
describes how her investigations in film, drawing, books, and
performance inevitably led to making paintings. Growing up
with black and white television and experiencing art history
through books with black and white plates brought Cahn to rule
out color as an unnecessary complication in her early career.
Color signified wealth since few could afford to print in
color.
Years
later, Cahn began producing paintings in color for the first
time. Cahn's psychosomatic color palette is generational,
influenced by the hyperreality of color experience depicted in
artificially colored films like Michelangelo Antonioni's,
Il deserto rosso (1964). The idiosyncratic quality of
her paintings can be seen as an intentional confusion of
perception with reality. The figure, animal, or landscape
becomes reduced to a few brutal performative gestures in some
paintings while areas of sensitive but deliberate rendering
exist in others.
A
rigorous decision-making process results in psychologically
complex and historically ambiguous works. She might decide
upon a predetermined amount of time - a matter of hours, a
night, a week - to feverishly complete a body of work from
scratch. When she returns to the pieces, she never makes
adjustments; rather, she edits: approving or rejecting her
creations wholesale. While retaining the spontaneity and power
of her drawings, films, and performances, Cahn's paintings
speak to the development of color images in television, film,
and print-production from her mid-century childhood to
today.
This
is Miriam Cahn's second exhibition at Elizabeth Dee. Select
exhibitions include David Roberts Art Foundation (2011, solo);
Galerie Meyer Riegger, Berlin/Karlsruhe (2009, solo); Galerie
Jocelyn Wolff, Paris (2009, solo); David Roberts Art
Foundation, London (2009); Kirchner Museum, Davos, Switzerland
(2006, catalog); MGK Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2006);
Fundación La Caixa, Madrid, Spain (2003, solo, catalog);
Castello di Rivara, Centro d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivara, Italy
(1999, solo); ICA London (1997); Kunsthaus Zürich (1993, solo,
catalog); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (1992); 5th
Sydney Biennial (1986); 41st Venice Biennale (1984); Museum of
Modern Art, New York (1984); Kunsthalle Basel (1983, solo);
Documenta 7, Kassel (1982), STAMPA, Basel (1981, 1979, 1977,
solos)
ELIZABETH DEE GALLERY
545 West
20th Street
New
York, NY 10011
T: +1
212 924 7545
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