Julia Wachtel, Howard Halle, Lisa Beck

Julia Wachtel: Displacement (closes January 20th)

Elizabeth Dee is pleased to present Displacement, the highly anticipated exhibition of Julia Wachtel’s latest work. This exhibition, occupying the ground floor of the gallery, is the largest exhibition in New York to date by the artist, known for her impactful paintings that address the power and social politic of the American landscape. Displacement introduces ten epic paintings that address the implication of urgent, radical viewpoints from digital and print sources that reflect the nation’s current political and larger global psyche. Opening precisely one year after the election of Donald Trump, this is the first complete body of work by the artist to address the significant shifts of our time.

This fully conceived monographic exhibition takes a sweeping, wide angle view of the post-truth, zero sum ideology so profoundly impacting our society. The “post-truth” American landscape can be applied to all of the ten works in the exhibition and continues as a central theme for the artist. A spectrum of topics as diverse as: the marketability of “fake news” by the alt-right, the question of the citizen in relation to the dispossessed, tech’s monopoly in global business and social media, financial hacking, political interference, the Republican conservative agenda, the Second Amendment, global warming, entertainment and television, racism and the sexist backlash are all topics or related departure points presented in these paintings. In confronting this, the paintings in this exhibition meditate on the collective trauma in many forms, and engage in a call to action.

Julia Wachtel (American b. 1956) recently had a solo survey at the Cleveland Museum of Art, with an accompanying publication by Yale University Press. This year, she participated in Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Upcoming exhibitions in 2018 include Brand New: Art and Commodity 1979-1989 at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C.

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Howard Halle: Return to Graceland, Works from the '80s and '90s

In our upstairs gallery, we present Howard Halle: Return To Graceland, Works from the ’80s and ’90s, the artist’s first solo exhibit in NYC since 1991. The show presents a selection of paintings, photo-objects and assemblages created and conceived between mid-1980s and the early 1990s.

Halle’s work from the period explored two dovetailing issues: The idea of memory as a space colonized by artifacts from popular culture and current events (in Halle’s case, from the Cold War/Vietnam Era), and the question of agency: Who has it, who doesn’t, and how is agency abetted/constrained by larger social forces? The best example of their overlap is America itself, where discarding the past is the prerequisite for fulfilling the promise of liberty.

Howard Halle (American b. 1956) has a long standing practice and has exhibited in museums internationally. During the 1980s he was included in the most culturally influential venues of the time: Hallwalls, The Kitchen, Artists Space, and Art in General. Halle’s work is included in the Menil Collection, Houston, and has been featured in a number of their exhibitions curated by founding director, Walter Hopps.

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Lisa Beck: Rising and Falling

In the Research Gallery we are pleased to present Rising and Falling, Lisa Beck’s tightly composed new paintings. This series examines the relationship between the observable aspects of reality, like landscape or the body, and the aspects that are too vast or too tiny to see, or grasp completely, like space or atomic physics, that necessarily become abstractions. These paintings are the means to visualize the place where these different aspects meet or interact, and that place is a shifting point, as our understanding of the world is constantly challenged and changed by new knowledge.

Lisa Beck (American b. 1958) has exhibited worldwide, including seven solo exhibitions at Feature, New York since 1992. Curator Bob Nickas has included Beck in eight shows at various venues, including: Anton Kern Gallery, White Columns, and Martos Galleryk, as well as Rapperswill, Switzerland. Beck recently was the subject of a new publication catalogue from her survey exhibiton at Circuit, Lausanne highlighting her work between 1986-2015. Upcoming exhibitions in 2018 include Doomtown, at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; and a solo show at the Suburban, Minneapolis.