Raymond Pettibon’s work embraces a wide spectrum of American “high” and “low” culture, from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, literature, sports, religion, politics, and sexuality. Taking their points of departure in the Southern California punk-rock culture of the late 1970s and 1980s and the “do-it-yourself” aesthetic of album covers, comics, concert flyers, and fanzines that characterized the movement, his drawings have come to occupy their own genre of potent and dynamic artistic commentary.
Read MoreBorn in 1957 in Tucson, Arizona, Pettibon graduated with a degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1977. He joined David Zwirner in 1995. In 2016, the gallery held two exhibitions in New York and London dedicated to the collaborative works by Pettibon and Marcel Dzama. On view February 25 through April 15, 2017, TH 'EXPLOSIYV SHOYRT T marked the artist's tenth solo exhibition at David Zwirner, New York.
Currently on view at the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht, The Netherlands, is A Pen of All Work, a major solo exhibition of Pettibon’s work featuring over seven hundred drawings from the 1960s to the present. The largest presentation of his work to date, the exhibition was organized by, and first presented at, the New Museum, marking the artist’s first museum survey in New York. The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow is also presenting a portion of the show (through August 13, 2017).
Recently on view at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg was Homo Americanus, a major museum survey of Pettibon’s work, encompassing over six hundred works from every part of the artist’s career, the majority of which have never been shown before. The show was first presented at Deichtorhallen Hamburg - Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg in 2016. Accompanying the exhibition is a large-scale, comprehensive publication by David Zwirner Books, created in close collaboration with Pettibon.
Pettibon's work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad. In 2013, he reworked a drawing from 2010 that was featured as the tenth installation of the High Line Billboard, located at 18th Street and 10th Avenue in New York. Prominent venues which have held recent solo exhibitions of the artist's work include the Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland, 2012; Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, 2007; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain, both 2006; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, California; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, both 2005. In 1998, he had his first American museum presentation, organized by The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which traveled to The Drawing Center, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
He has participated in a number of group exhibitions worldwide, including the Istanbul Biennial (2011); Liverpool Biennial (2010); SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2010 and 2004); Venice Biennale (2007 and 1999); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004, 1997, 1993, and 1991); and documenta XI, Kassel, Germany (2002).
Museum collections which hold works by the artist include the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; among others. Pettibon lives and works in New York.
Text courtesy David Zwirner.