JUDY LEDGERWOOD

Since the beginning of her career in the 1980’s Ledgerwood has been exploring light, color, and space in painting. These concerns also inform her architectural interventions, from her wall paintings to the stained glassed windows in the Paris Metro Station at Bir Hakeim. Ledgerwood combines the formal vocabulary of concrete abstraction with influences from pop culture to create vividly colored compositions. Her paintings combine decorative patterning, central to textile design and other traditionally female crafts, with bold color and assertive brush strokes, traits associated with the male-dominated tradition of gestural abstraction. For this reason, the sensuality in Ledgerwood’s paintings is both immediate and subversive with the ability to resonate beyond its initial impact.

For Ledgerwood, content lies in chroma’s ability to create moments of simultaneous harmony and disequilibrium. The aggression of her color palette and paint application undermines the stability created by the repetition of her marks. These compositional strategies are reflected in her statement that appears on the back of her recent monograph:

“I am not interested in balance and equilibrium. Life is more precarious.”

Ledgerwood was born in Brazil, Indiana in 1959. She lives and works in Chicago, IL and has exhibited internationally at numerous institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and The Renaissance Society in Chicago. Her work is held in several important public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and The Art Institute of Chicago.

The exhibition Chromophilia occurs in conjunction with the release of Judy Ledgerwood’s monograph published by Hatje Cantz in 2010.