Joanne Greenbaum : I’m Doing My Face In Magic Marker

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Joanne Greenbaum
I’m Doing My Face In Magic Marker

November 10 — January 12, 2020
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 10,

Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present I’m Doing My Face In Magic Marker, Joanne Greenbaum’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Spanning the entire first floor, Greenbaum will present a series of new paintings and works in kiln-formed glass.

Greenbaum’s practice stretches across an array of mediums, materials, and surfaces. She begins every piece with the intention that it will lead to something different than the last. Greenbaum sets a new challenge for herself with each work, and if something reaches a point of familiarity, she starts over with a fresh perspective. As a result, she has developed a singular body of work—including painting, drawing, and sculpture—that, while instantly recognizable in gesture and spirit, continues to evolve and remain relatively enigmatic.

As complicated and intricate as her compositions are, she still considers herself a minimalist. More and more, the artist looks towards the act of drawing as the basis of her paintings, creating a system that allows her to paint freely with a certain amount of restraint. Throughout this show, underlying geometric structures—resembling architectural details such as staircases or scaffolding—modulate Greenbaum’s compositions and operate as framework or support for the overlying loose and immediate gestural marks. This balance of order and chaos, unique to Greenbaum’s work, seems to mirror the frenetic energy of urbanity. 

Greenbaum’s non-hierarchical approach to making enables her interactions with various mediums to remain intimate and her work to grow organically. Through a recent residency at Bullseye Glass Co., New York, Greenbaum seamlessly integrated kiln-formed glass into her artillery of material. Layers of vibrant glass cut by the artist fuse together in the artist’s signature palatable energy. The artist utilizes a similar language of abstraction found in her sculptures and paintings, one that balances the tumultuous with the systematic. Much like the underlying structure of her paintings, the confines inherent to the production of kiln-formed glass—in terms of scale and color—act as a framework to the compositions she creates, maintaining the presence and energy found throughout her oeuvre. Greenbaum’s refreshing use of line, mark, and layer in her paintings and kiln-formed glass produce intricate and unruly networks that lead from one gesture to the next. 

Joanne Greenbaum (b. 1953, New York, NY) earned a BA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Over the past twenty years, Joanne Greenbaum has exhibited widely at international venues including at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Kusthalle Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany; and MoMA PS1, New York, NY; among many others. In 2008, a career spanning survey of her work, with corresponding catalogue, was mounted by Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, Switzerland and travelled to the Museum Abteiberg in Monchengladbach, Germany. In 2018, The Tufts University Art Galleries at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA mounted Joanne Greenbaum: Things We Said Today, a comprehensive solo exhibition that travelled to the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA.

Greenbaum is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including The Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant; Artist in Residence at The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grant. Her work is included in the collections of the Brandeis Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA; CCA Andratx, Majorca, ES; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Haus Konstruktiv Museum, Zurich, CH; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and the Ross Art Collection at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Greenbaum lives and works in New York.