Bodies

Deborah Druick

Christina Ramberg

Ray Yoshida

David Nolan Gallery is pleased to present Bodies, an exhibition that brings together three intergenerational artists united by their strong interest in pattern, design, figuration, and the human body. Ray Yoshida (1930-2009) grew up in Hawaii during the civil upheaval of World War II; Christina Ramberg (1946-1995) grew up in Kentucky during the socio-political backdrop of the Vietnam War; Deborah Druick (b. 1951) grew up in Canada during the height of the feminist movement. Collectively, their work is informed by the human experience and the politics around the representation of the human form, as well as popular culture.

Yoshida, Ramberg, and Druick stray from the overarching influence of Abstract Expressionism that especially dominated Yoshida and Ramberg’s generations. Their commitment to formal principles lends itself to careful studies of the body that crop it or focus on its minute details. More physiological than illustrative, their mutual interest in the human body is further demonstrated by their strong formalistic compositional focus that reflects much more than just raw emotion.

The influence of cartoons and comic books manifests in defined lines and weighty figures for whom a world beyond the canvas does not exist. Like the panels of a comic book, these spaces are contained, unlike the Abstract Expressionist tendency to imply the brushstroke’s extension well beyond the space of the canvas.

All three artists bring their investigations into so-called low art to a high plane that questions our perceptions of the world around us. They do not shy from depicting “private” body parts or “negative” human conditions, like isolation. They employ style for study’s sake, deeply informed by the very principles of art as observation and as a translation of what it means to be human.