David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by the British artist Rose Wylie (b. 1934) at the gallery's 533 West 19th Street location in New York. Following her acclaimed 2020 solo presentation at the Aspen Art Museum, this will be the artist's fourth exhibition with the gallery, and the first with David Zwirner in New York.
Drawing from such wide-ranging cultural arenas as film, fashion photography, literature, mythology, history, news images, and sports, Wylie paints colourful and exuberant compositions that are uniquely recognisable. Frequently using images as a prompt, the artist works primarily from memory, resulting in paintings and drawings that are replete with associative afterimages that remain only loosely tethered to their original referents, but tightly connected to the memories as they have developed over time.
In this respect, drawing is an important aspect of Wylie's practice—once she has selected an image or a topic, she typically makes numerous drawings as a kind of mnemonic exercise from which her paintings eventually emerge.
As the curator Clarrie Wallis notes, Wylie's 'large pictures are painted in a kind of visual shorthand that is direct and legible. The ability to elicit a range of responses is made possible precisely because of her reduction of form to an essential vibrancy that incorporates, via the very physicality of her medium, not just what the artist sees but an accompanying multitude of thoughts, feelings, and memories. Wylie's work is a sophisticated transmutation, or sifting of perceptual experience, carrying as it does a wealth of affective and allusive resonances, into the painted form.'
British artist Rose Wylie (b. 1934) creates paintings and drawings that on first glance appear aesthetically simplistic, not seeming to align with any recognizable style or movement, but on closer inspection are revealed to be wittily observed and subtly sophisticated mediations on the nature of visual representation itself. The layers of newspaper that line her studio floor are a frequent source of material for the artist, as she encounters images by chance while working. Drawing from such wide-ranging cultural areas as film, fashion photography, literature, mythology, news images, sports, and individuals she meets in her day-to-day life, Wylie paints colorful and exuberant compositions that are uniquely recognizable. The artist has acknowledged her great admiration for Philip Guston, whose late paintings likewise make use of an idiosyncratic visual lexicon, the directness of cartoonish figures, and a flattened perspective, but simultaneously betray a deep awareness of art history and painterly conventions.
David Zwirner is a contemporary art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Hong Kong, and currently represents more than eighty artists and estates. The gallery has been home to innovative, singular, and pioneering exhibitions across a variety of media and genres. Active in both the primary and secondary markets, David Zwirner has helped foster the careers of some of the most influential artists working today and has maintained long-term representation of a wide-ranging, international group of artists.
