November 2 – November 27, 1985
Organized by Elizabeth Murray
Artists Space
Four Artists: An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture
The painter Elizabeth Murray selected the following four artists to participate in this 1985 exhibition: Margrit Lewczuk, Lizbeth Marano, Dona Nelson and Jenny Snider. Though their artistic practices are distinct, each works in related idioms – a reconciling or reclaiming of gestural abstraction, redeployed in the service of representation. This painterly mode cannot be separated from the critical language that surrounded Abstract Expressionism, language which surfaces as well in Murray’s text: “truth,” the “problem,” the “struggle.” About the exhibition she writes, “It is art that is being made because each artist has felt she must make it to have an identity.”
It is precisely the work’s figuring of identity that constitutes its progressive core. The uneasy charge of the rhetoric is neutralized by weird sensibilities and a tendency toward humor. A perplexing painting by Jenny Snider, It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie (1985), features those words super-titled above two faceless figures situated in a cakey haze, broken by two rough perspectival lines. The proclamation shames the viewer, vaguely, at the same time that it embarrasses the painting vis-à-vis its own truth-telling claims.
Margit Lewczuk lives and works in New York City. She recently showed her paintings in the "From abstract to Image" exhibition at Oscarsson Hood Gallery, NY, and in group shows at Jack Tilton Gallery, NY, Matthews Hamilton Gallery, Philadelphia and Pam Adler Gallery, NY.
Lizbeth Marano lives and works in New York City. She has shown her work at the Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Los Angeles and at Baskerville + Watson Gallery, NY.
Dona Nelson lives and works in New York City. Recent exhibitions include "Ripe Fruit", PS1, NY, "The Figure in Paint", Cable Gallery, NY and "The Painterly Figure", The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY.
Jenny Snider lives and works in New York City. Her most recent show was at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston RI and her work was included in "Jewish Themes: Contemporary American Artists", at the Jewish Museum, NY. In 1980 she has a one-person exhibition at Artists Space.
Elizabeth Murray is an internationally renowned artists who is represented by the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. Her work has been shown at major museums such as: the Guggenheim Museum, NY, New York State Museum, Albany NY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinatti, OH, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI, the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, The Brooklyn Museum, NY, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN, San Francisco Art Institute, CA. IN 1984 she received an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters, NY.
Four Artists: An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Exhibition Card, Front
Four Artists: An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Exhibition Card, Back
Four Artists: An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Exhibition Catalog,Front
Four Artists: An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Exhibition Pamphlet
Four Artists: An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Press Release
Artists Space activities are made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal Agency; the New York State Council on the Arts, the Institute for Museum Services, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the Jerome Foundation, Leonhardt Foundation, Betty Parsons Foundation, Samuel Rubin Foundation, and Wallace Fund; the American Express Company, AT&T Communications, Citibank, Consolidated Edison, EXXON, R.H. Macy Company, Mobil Foundation, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, Paine Webber, and Philip Morris, as well as numerous Friends.
