Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 4, 5:30 - 7:30pm

  

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Hannah Wilke (1940-1993).

 

The gallery will present early drawings and sculpture from the legendary sculptor and conceptual artist who pioneered female sexuality in artworks bringing into play politics, social stereotypes and critical irony.

 

"Since 1960 I have been concerned with the creation of formal imagery that is specifically female, a new language that fuses mind and body into erotic objects that are namable and at the same time quite abstract. Its content has always related to my own body and feelings, reflecting pleasure as well as pain, the ambiguity and complexity of emotions." From Hannah Wilke, A Retrospective, University of Missouri Press, 1989

 

The exhibitions' works on paper are strong examples of Wilke's development of her iconic organic shapes. Female body and explicit vaginal imagery creatively addressed standardized reactions (fear, aggression and gender prejudices) and eventually became her hallmark. One early drawing shows use of photography collage, central to her work in the 70's and 80's. Folded soft shapes, stand-ins for female genitalia, were also explored in terra cotta, bronze, latex, and later, chewing gum, placed on her body in a serial motif fashion.

 

Hannah Wilke studied at Temple University in Philadelphia, earning two degrees: one in Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art and a Bachelor of Science. After 1965 she lived in New York and taught art at schools and, later, at the School of Visual Arts. Her first solo exhibitions were in 1972 at Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York and Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles.

 

Throughout her life she exhibited internationally, receiving critical acclaim. Recent exhibitions revisiting the revolution of feminist art, WACK! (curated by Connie Butler at LA MOCA) and Elles at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, have helped to provide an historical context to her central role. Since her death in 1993 of lymphoma (documented in her photography series Intra-Venus), Wilke's works have been acquired by New York MoMA, The Whitney Museum of American Art, MOCA Los Angeles, the LA County Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.