Opener 17: Nicole Eisenman: The Way We Weren't
Exhibitions, September 26, 2009 through January 3, 2010
The Way We Weren’t features a recent series of paintings that continues artist Nicole Eisenman's almost two decades-long exploration of our social and psychological lives. This new body of work explores ways we cope with sadness, hardship, and depression in a culture engrossed with happiness. Surly and melancholic figures crowd her scenes of street corners and beer gardens, simultaneously finding community and reveling in the anonymity of the crowd. While Eisenman’s disenchanted figures feel unmistakably contemporary, the scenes also hearken back to earlier times, recalling Impressionist and German Expressionist paintings that share a similar fascination with human interaction and isolation.
Born in Verdun, France, in 1965, Eisenman received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and currently serves as Visiting Associate Professor of Studio Art at Bard College. Her psychologically revealing work includes installations, drawings, murals, sculptures, and, increasingly, paintings. She has deftly mixed a range of compositional sources from Renaissance, Impressionist, and Social Realist painting to comics, television, and pornography. With a humor at once playful, biting, and raunchy she challenges cultural and social norms associated with gender and sexuality, popular culture, and the current art scene.
Eisenman has exhibited her work at numerous museums and galleries, including exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (2009), the Kunsthalle Zürich (2007), Frac Ile-de-France, Le Plateau, Paris (2007), Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca (2003), and Rice University Art Gallery, Houston (1998). Her work was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and in group exhibitions at the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005), the Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2005), the New Museum, New York (2000), the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami (1996), and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1993) among many others.
Opener 17: Nicole Eisenman: The Way We Weren’t is organized by Ian Berry, Susan Rabinowitz Malloy '45 Curator of the Tang Museum, in collaboration with the artist. The Opener series is made possible with the generous support of the New York State Council on the Arts, the Overbrook Foundation, and the Friends of the Tang.
Born in Verdun, France, in 1965, Eisenman received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and currently serves as Visiting Associate Professor of Studio Art at Bard College. Her psychologically revealing work includes installations, drawings, murals, sculptures, and, increasingly, paintings. She has deftly mixed a range of compositional sources from Renaissance, Impressionist, and Social Realist painting to comics, television, and pornography. With a humor at once playful, biting, and raunchy she challenges cultural and social norms associated with gender and sexuality, popular culture, and the current art scene.
Eisenman has exhibited her work at numerous museums and galleries, including exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (2009), the Kunsthalle Zürich (2007), Frac Ile-de-France, Le Plateau, Paris (2007), Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca (2003), and Rice University Art Gallery, Houston (1998). Her work was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and in group exhibitions at the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005), the Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2005), the New Museum, New York (2000), the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami (1996), and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1993) among many others.
Opener 17: Nicole Eisenman: The Way We Weren’t is organized by Ian Berry, Susan Rabinowitz Malloy '45 Curator of the Tang Museum, in collaboration with the artist. The Opener series is made possible with the generous support of the New York State Council on the Arts, the Overbrook Foundation, and the Friends of the Tang.