Joanne Greenbaum

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Joanne Greenbaum
March 8 - April 20, 2014
Opening reception: Saturday, March 8, 6-8pm

Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present its first exhibition with Joanne Greenbaum, the artist’s first solo presentation of large paintings in New York since 2009. The exhibition - installed in the gallery's main ground floor space in its new location at 170 Suffolk Street - comprises eight large new paintings that continue the artist's process based engagement with abstraction. Over the past two decades, Greenbaum has developed a singular body of work including painting, drawing, and sculpture, that while instantly recognizable in gesture and spirit, has remained relatively enigmatic. Where her earlier paintings were often characterized by a highly concentrated and linked cluster of forms set against an expansive blank canvas, the new works are Greenbaum's decidedly most dense and labored paintings, confidently mixing disparate materials in remarkably forceful and intricate compositions.

Greenbaum's newest paintings reveal an influx of new forms, colors, and information. Though familiar shapes and past configurations inevitably emerge - architectural maps, collapsing grids, and interlocking networks - no two paintings are alike. Greenbaum moves freely between thin and transparent layers and thick and opaque textures, often collapsing foreground and background, shifting toward a more disorienting, in-between space. Her use of color and materials, now looser and more assured, finds inks, markers and flashe pushed against oil drips and washes, coexisting in a confrontational, a-hierarchical realm. These are regenerative paintings that reveal themselves slowly, with shapes giving way to new systems, fluid gestures frenetically painted over, spaces activated and restructured, and are conceivably both durational and limitless.

Joanne Greenbaum lives and works in New York City. Over the past twenty years she has participated in numerous shows in the U.S. and Europe. Most recently Greenbaum has exhibited her work at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Crone Gallery, Berlin, Van Horn Gallery, Dusseldorf, and is currently on view at Texas Gallery in Houston. Other recent solo shows include Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago and D’Amelio Terras, New York. Greenbaum has also been exhibited at The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, PS1 MoMA, New York, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Kunsthalle, Basel, Whitechapel Gallery, London. A career-spanning survey of her was mounted by Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich and travelled to Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, Germany in 2008/2009. She earned a BA from Bard College, Annandale-on- Hudson, NY. She shows with greengrassi in London, UK, Nicolas Krupp in Basel, Switzerland, Crone Gallery in Berlin and Van Horn Gallery in Dusseldorf, and Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago.