White Columns is pleased to present a solo exhibition in the gallery's Project space by the Oakland-based artist Aurie Ramirez. This is Ramirez’s second exhibition at White Columns – following her widely celebrated debut in 2005. For her current exhibition Ramirez is presenting a discrete group of watercolor on paper works from c. 2001 that mostly focus on food stuffs and their consumption. Writing in 2005 on the occasion of Ramirez’s original show at White Columns, critic Roberta Smith wrote: “Ms. Ramirez makes extraordinary watercolors that delineate a stage-set universe … There are signs of violence, frequent indications of romance, sex and family dysfunction.” Critic David Valesco, writing in Art Papers, suggested that: “Aurie Ramirez has created a world as layered as the faces she conjures, as inscrutable as the expressions beneath her masks.”
Over the past twenty five years Ramirez has created one of the most idiosyncratic and extraordinary bodies of work – invariably watercolor drawings on paper – that echoes the visionary production of Henry Darger. (Both artists have created psychologically complex imaginary realms inhabited by a recurring cast of characters, scenarios, and narratives). Aurie's earliest work was inspired by her interest in manifestations of the popular gothic, e.g. the Addams Family, or the rock band Kiss; more recently her work has evolved to describe a paradoxical late–nineteenth century, quasi-Victorian, suburban milieu populated by androgynous, mask-wearing dandies or rainbow-hued waifs.
Project Aurie Ramirez at White Columns
May 26 through July 16, 2011
White Columns 2330 West 13th Street New York NY 10014 www.WhiteColumns.org