NYU's 80WSE Gallery Presents Major Survey of Artist Marlene McCarty, Thru Dec. 18

New York University’s 80WSE gallery presents the first major survey of Marlene McCarty’s work, i’m into you now: some work from 1980-2010, on view through Dec. 18, 2010.  The exhibition of painting, prints, and drawings, curated by Michael Cohen, is on display at 80WSE gallery, 80 Washington Square East (between West Fourth and Washington Place). In addition, large-scale prints of McCarty’s punk stage-sets will be exhibited at 80WSE Broadway Windows (Broadway and 10th Street) and 80WSE Windows (near Washington Place) through Feb. 26, 2011. The 80WSE gallery is open Tues. through Sat., 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

The survey includes mural prints of McCarty’s 1980 stage-set designs for Swiss punk bands such as Lilliput and Mother’s Ruin; her “heat transfer” paintings of dirty words; “show-girl” and crucifix matchbook sculptures, “Hearth” and “Cross-fire” (1992); her famed large-scale drawings of teenage killers; and selections from more recent multi-figure drawings dealing with primates and religion. Both the heat transfer paintings and the matchbook sculptures have not been exhibited since the early 1990s.

In addition, the gallery will premiere several of McCarty’s monumentally scaled drawings which have never been exhibited before: “Binti Jua, August 16, 1996,” (2009-10) featuring an ape cuddling a human infant, and “Hearth 2,” (2010), depicting a large horizontal landscape of a fire pit from a teenage murder scene.  The gallery will also premiere “Sixteen Forgotten House Drawings” (1997), featuring the domiciles of female teenage murderers.

The survey seeks to make connections between McCarty’s conceptual work and the actions of Gran Fury, an AIDS activist organization and artist collective of the late 1980s and early 1990s of which McCarty was a founding member.

A catalogue, designed under the direction of the artist and notable in its image juxtapositions and layout, accompanies the exhibition. It includes essays by Kathleen Hanna, former lead singer of Le Tigre and Bikini Kill, NYU German professor and theorist Viola Kolarov, artist and theorist Catherine Lord (former chair of CalArts and UCIrvine), and Michael Cohen, assistant director of 80WSE and the curator of the Marlene McCarty exhibition. The catalogue is available for purchase at the gallery for a $20 donation.

In conjunction with the show and catalogue, a panel on McCarty’s work will take place on Nov. 18 from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m in the auditorium of the Barney Building, 34 Stuyvesant St., between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.  Participants will include MoMA Drawings Curator Cornelia Butler, film-maker and founding Gran Fury member Tom Kalin, as well as Michael Cohen, Viola Kolarov and Catherine Lord.  Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.  The event is free and open to the public.

McCarty is a 2002-3 Guggenhiem fellow.  Her work is in the collection of major institutions including MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum and MoCA Los Angles.  McCarty is a founding member, with Donald Moffet, of the multidisciplinary design firm, Bureau.

The 80WSE Gallery, located on the east side of Washington Square Park,between 4th Street and Washington Place, is directed by artist and NYUSteinhardt faculty member Peter Campus. 80WSE is an extension of the program in studio art in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at NYU.