Paul Thek
16 Oct - 27 Nov 2010
PAUL THEK
cityscapes and other ideas
October 16 – November 27, 2010
Alexander and Bonin is pleased to announce exhibitions of work by Paul Thek and Peter Hujar on view at the gallery from October 16 through November 27th. The ground floor exhibition, Paul Thek: cityscapes and other ideas, will present two rarely exhibited bodies of work – his cityscape paintings and his drawings for public monuments. The second floor will contain a selection of newly discovered photographs taken by Peter Hujar in Thek’s studio in 1967.
Thek moved between New York and various European cities in the 1970s. In addition to the sculptures and installations for which he is best known, he made paintings and drawings based on observation in Ponza (Italy), Fire Island and Manhattan. They punctuate a profoundly disparate practice and suggest a continued engagement with his place in the world. Living in New York for much of the 1980s he made chromatically similar ‘bad’ paintings and numerous cityscapes viewed from the windows and rooftop of his East 3rd street apartment. Thek’s cityscapes depict the metropolis in which he lived and worked, situated in the midst of the city amongst towering obelisks and alongside its many inhabitants.
The drawings for public monuments, while related to the cityscapes in their urban focus, tend toward more political subject-matter. Perhaps the most well known of this series – drawings of Richard Serra’s ill-fated Tilted Arc re-imagined as a petting zoo – show Thek as a playful ironist skewering a project which would eventually change the face of public art. While this gesture might be read as overly populist, it also seems to suggest that a public use of the contested artwork could, in a sense, save it.
cityscapes and other ideas
October 16 – November 27, 2010
Alexander and Bonin is pleased to announce exhibitions of work by Paul Thek and Peter Hujar on view at the gallery from October 16 through November 27th. The ground floor exhibition, Paul Thek: cityscapes and other ideas, will present two rarely exhibited bodies of work – his cityscape paintings and his drawings for public monuments. The second floor will contain a selection of newly discovered photographs taken by Peter Hujar in Thek’s studio in 1967.
Thek moved between New York and various European cities in the 1970s. In addition to the sculptures and installations for which he is best known, he made paintings and drawings based on observation in Ponza (Italy), Fire Island and Manhattan. They punctuate a profoundly disparate practice and suggest a continued engagement with his place in the world. Living in New York for much of the 1980s he made chromatically similar ‘bad’ paintings and numerous cityscapes viewed from the windows and rooftop of his East 3rd street apartment. Thek’s cityscapes depict the metropolis in which he lived and worked, situated in the midst of the city amongst towering obelisks and alongside its many inhabitants.
The drawings for public monuments, while related to the cityscapes in their urban focus, tend toward more political subject-matter. Perhaps the most well known of this series – drawings of Richard Serra’s ill-fated Tilted Arc re-imagined as a petting zoo – show Thek as a playful ironist skewering a project which would eventually change the face of public art. While this gesture might be read as overly populist, it also seems to suggest that a public use of the contested artwork could, in a sense, save it.