Debra Drexler, Chromatic Utterance (detail), 2015-16, acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
SILVERMAN
and
The Majestic Theatre Condominium Association
presents
Debra Drexler • Venus Rising
November 2, 2016 – February 26, 2017
Opening Reception: Wednesday Nov 2, 2016, 6-8pm
Artist Talk and Walkthrough: Sunday Nov 6, 2016, 2-4pm
The Majestic Theatre Condominiums
222 Montgomery Street
Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.435.8000
SILVERMAN and The Majestic Theatre Condominium Association presents “Debra Drexler • Venus Rising,” curated by Enrico Gomez.
Debra Drexler is a mid-career, abstract painter and exceptional contemporary artist based both in New York and Hawaii. With compositions that include roiling and tempestuous abstractions, Debra Drexler imbues her works with a sense of the emotive and the elemental that tautly hold the viewers gaze through the many passages of their make-up. Drexler is a working artist who maintains art studios in both New York City and Oahu, and her work is informed and inspired by her unique bi-coastal experience. Her art translates the inner experience into outer form through a vigorous and athletic painterly process. Spanning the scale spectrum from intimate to substantial, Drexler’s oil on canvas meditations are a paean and a record of the physical dance that is involved in their making. Created in part on the walls and on the studio floor, her paintings give the viewer a sort of choreographed road map of creation; entreating them to visually step, spin and flow along with the pigments in these many-layered treasures.
Says the artist, “My work is particularly concerned with issues of abstraction in contemporary art and its ability to make the invisible visible. My paintings have explored interruptions, which bend the concept of time and space. Working with abstract space in a manner that is reminiscent of the space of the Baroque, I often add a disruptive element, which deconstructs and flattens and suggests another reading of space.”
This additional element within the composition might be an inset complimentary-colored paint band, or a cluster of texture here and there across the painted field. This play within the various techniques of abstraction, serves to underscore the artist’s interest in abstraction as both a language and a mission. Concerned with the intersection of the physical and the spiritual, Debra Drexler’s works seem a perfect example of the tension between the seemingly paradoxical qualities of both the physical and the spiritual; transcendent and concrete natures shared by most inhabitants on this physical plane. The artist shares, “I paint to speak to our essential nature. Preparing my mind and body to paint are part of my daily ritual. I practice meditation followed by yoga each morning, so I can approach the canvas empty of everything but my relationship with the paint. The luminosity, which is created through multiple layers of glazes, reflects the refraction of inner light into experience.”
On the subject of her works trajectory and development from figurative and narrative in nature to the purely abstract, the artist writes, “My work has gradually transitioned from the narrative to move into an investigation of pure paint. “Gauguin’s Zombie” my first one-person show in New York at White Box Annex (2005) toured from Honolulu Museum. By the time I exhibited “Shadow Play” at HP Garcia Gallery, New York in 2009, the archetypal narrative elements of shadow and tree were overtaken by the quality of paint itself. In my work I often glaze up to 30 layers of paint, creating both depth and luminosity. A review of “Shadow Play” by Michael Carter for A Gathering of Tribes states: “Like the most powerful abstract paintings of the last century, reproductions can only provide a crude chart of her stratagem; the luminosity of the oils themselves, along with their deft application can really only be truly appreciated in person.” Paint speaks its own language.”
Debra Drexler has had 30 solo exhibits and over 100 group exhibitions at galleries and museums in New York, Hawai’i, Australia, Berlin and across the United States. Recent New York solo exhibits include: Van Der Plas Gallery, Pool Art Fair, Chelsea Hotel Blue Mountain Gallery, HP Garcia Gallery and Java Studios Gallery. In addition, Drexler has exhibited in group shows in New York including Van Der Plas Gallery, The Drawing Center, Denise Bibro Gallery, Exit Art, Art Finance Partners, and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, and Sideshow Gallery. Her shows have been covered by publications including Artweek, New York Arts Magazine, and New Art Examiner. Debra Drexler is also a Professor of Drawing and Painting at the University of Hawai’i, and is co-curator with Liam Davis, of “New New York”, a survey of contemporary abstract painting shown at University of Hawai’i Gallery in October-December, 2015, and is traveling to The Curator Gallery in New York in February, 2016. She has curated exhibits in New York including at The Lab of Rogersmith Arts, as well as in Hawai’i and Australia.
The exhibition will be on view at The Majestic through February 26th, 2017. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000. The Majestic is located at 222 Montgomery Street in Jersey City, NJ.
“Debra Drexler • Venus Rising” is the third exhibition that artist/curator Enrico Gomez will organize for SILVERMAN. For additional information on the exhibiting artist Debra Drexler, please visit: debradrexler.com. For additional information on the curator, please visit: enricogomez.com and thedoradoproject.com.
SILVERMAN has presented the works of Mark Van Wagner, Rob Ventura, Robert Hendrickson, Sarah Becktle, Kati Vilim, Mark Dagley, Candy Le Sueur, Ed Fausty, Anna Mogilevsky, Ali Harrington, Sara Wolfe, Anne Percoco, Shauna Finn, Melanie Vote, Paul Lempa, Fanny Allié, Michael Meadors, John A. Patterson, Charlotte Becket, Roger Sayre, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Tom McGlynn, Margaret Murphy, Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa, Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.
(PATH to GROVE St stop : PATH Trains avail from WTC, 33rd St, 23rd St, 14th St, 9th St, and Christopher St)