The Drawing Center Archives

Xiyadie: Queer Cut Utopias at The Drawing Center

Xiyadie, Sewn, 1999. Papercut with water-based dye and Chinese pigments on Xuan paper, 55 1/8 x 55 1/8 inches (140 x 140 cm). Courtesy of the artist

In February 2023, The Drawing Center will present Xiyadie: Queer Cut Utopias, the first solo exhibition of work by Chinese artist Xiyadie in New York. The name Xiyadie, which translates to Siberian Butterfly, is one the artist chose for himself to describe his upbringing in Weinan, a city in the Shaanxi Province of Northwest China. A reflection of his personal and artistic evolution, the pseudonym also denotes Xiyadie’s enduring resilience despite the fact that he has never been able to freely show his work or live openly with regard to his sexual orientation. Occupying two floors at The Drawing Center, Queer Cut Utopias will feature more than thirty of Xiyadie’s intricate paper-cuts, dating from the early 1980s through today, each of which articulates his longing to fully express his queer desire. Xiyadie presents a strong sense of artistic autonomy; his highly graphic works on paper fuse traditional folk forms and iconography with narratives from his personal life.

Continue reading “Xiyadie: Queer Cut Utopias at The Drawing Center” →

‘World AIDS Day: Open Community Circle & Screening’ at The Drawing Center ~ December 1

The Drawing Center, World AIDS Day

Installation View, Ecco Hoo: The Drawings of General Idea, The Drawing Center, New York. October 7, 2022-January 15, 2023. Photo: Daniel Terna.

Join The Drawing Center on December 1, World AIDS Day, for a daylong open community circle—a quiet space for remembrance and contemplation in the galleries—followed at 6pm by a public film screening, held in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition Ecce Homo: The Drawings of General Idea.

Continue reading “‘World AIDS Day: Open Community Circle & Screening’ at The Drawing Center ~ December 1” →

The Drawing Center Presents ‘Ways of Seeing: Three Takes on the Jack Shear Drawing Collection’

Soho, The Drawing Center

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Portrait of Alexis-René Le Go, 1836. Graphite on paper, 11 7/8 x 8 3/4 inches (30.2 x 22.2 cm). Jack Shear Collection.~ Joaquín Torres-García, Composición (Composition), 1930. Ink on paper, 5 1/4 x 3 1/2 inches, (13.3 x 8.9 cm). Jack Shear Collection. ~ Julie Mehretu, Untitled, 2000. Ink and color pencil on vellum laid on paper, 19 x 24 inches (48.3 x 61 cm). Jack Shear Collection.

Ways of Seeing: Three Takes on the Jack Shear Drawing Collection will present three curatorial interpretations of the extraordinary collection of drawings that artist, curator, and collector Jack Shear has built over the past half-decade.

Continuing The Drawing Center’s tradition of exhibiting drawings from outstanding public and private collections, Ways of Seeing: Three Takes on the Jack Shear Drawing Collection offers a revealing experiment in connoisseurship and exhibition-making. During the course of the exhibition’s fifteen-week run, artist Arlene Shechet, critic and curator Jarrett Earnest, and Shear himself will each present an exhibition curated from Shear’s holdings.

Continue reading “The Drawing Center Presents ‘Ways of Seeing: Three Takes on the Jack Shear Drawing Collection’” →

Ebecho Muslimova: Scenes in the Sublevel at The Drawing Center

Soho, The Drawing Center

Ebecho Muslimova, Fatebe Phantom Cage, 2020, enamel and oil paint on Dibond aluminum, 96 x 144 inches. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Maria Berheim, Zürich and Magenta Plains, NY.

For Ebecho Muslimova’s first solo museum exhibition, the artist presents Scenes in the Sublevel, a site-specific installation that includes ten large-scale mixed-media drawings. Muslimova (b. 1984, Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia) is known for her pen-and-ink drawings and large-scale paintings that feature her bold and uninhibited cartoon alter ego, Fatebe. Her latest body of work takes up The Drawing Center’s downstairs gallery as the stage for Fatebe’s intrepid misadventures.

Continue reading “Ebecho Muslimova: Scenes in the Sublevel at The Drawing Center” →

David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968-1979 at The Drawing Center

Soho, The Drawing Center

David Hammons, Untitled (Man with Flag), n.d. Grease, pigment, and white crayon on paper, 29 3/4 x 39 3/4 inches (75.6 x 101 cm). Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland, Photograph by Alex Jamison, courtesy of Mnuchin Gallery, New York.

The first museum exhibition dedicated to David Hammons’s pivotal early works on paper, David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968–1979 brings together the monoprints and collages in which the artist used the body as both a drawing tool and printing plate to explore performative, unconventional forms of image making. More than a half century after they were made, these early works on paper remain a testament to Hammons’s desire to reinterpret notions of the real; his celebration of the sacredness of objects touched or made by the Black body; his biting critique of racial oppression; and his deep commitment to social justice.

Continue reading “David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968-1979 at The Drawing Center” →

‘100 Drawings from Now’ to open at The Drawing Center

Soho, The Drawing Center

The Drawing Center will reopen to the public by appointment only on Wednesday, October 7, 2020 with the exhibition 100 Drawings from Now.

Featuring drawings made by an international group of artists since early 2020, 100 Drawings from Now provides a snapshot of artistic production during a period of profound global unrest that has resulted from the ongoing health and economic crises, as well as a surge of activism in response to systemic racism, social injustice, and police brutality in the United States. Together, the works in the exhibition spotlight the urgency, intimacy, and universality of drawing during moments of upheaval and isolation.

Continue reading “‘100 Drawings from Now’ to open at The Drawing Center” →