For Immediate Release:
EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING
ANN CRAVEN
A POPPY IS A POPPY IS A POPPY
March 9, 2005 - May 25, 2005
Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 9, 2005 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm
The Horticultural Society of New York is pleased to present never before
exhibited paintings by Ann Craven as part of its continuing program of
exhibiting classical and contemporary artworks investigating botanics and
horticulture. On view will be three new paintings riffing on allure,
illusion and the openness of poetic license - Craven is at her best - showing us
something again, for the first time.
Accompanying the show, the gallery's project walls will feature a selection of
voluptuous, filigreed water lilies made during the artist's residency at Monet's
Giverny in 2003 - paintings that the artist considers her "phoenix".
Ann Craven, most famous for her seductive bird monikers and reproductive
chicanery, will be painting flowers here. By no means backing down from
her aggressively conceptual repetitive strategy (her 2004 solo at Klemens Gasser
& Tanja Grunert Inc. a direct copy of her 2002 show there - but bigger), Craven
carefully plays on Minimalist tactics yet manages so willfully to shatter open
Minimalism's "frigid little heart" with paintings so unabashedly beautiful and
heart wrenching it seems impossible to break free from their aura. Is it
possible to impeccably create the same painting twice, even three times, maybe
more, rupturing everything we hold sacred about painting - spilling it out in
front of our eyes in hallucinatory fashion? Like aliens in a diorama,
Craven's paintings are specimens of a process, interesting not because of the
depicted image, but compelling by way of their birth in the world.
"Rather than making us feel foolish for falling for her skillful act of tromp
l'oeil, Craven's strategy lets us fall in love again with both sentimentality
and painter-liness. Just as we listen to the same love song, over and over
again, or watch a home movie repeatedly, sentimentality causes us to let go of
our need for originality and to relinquish our reservations about reproduction.
By repeating herself, Craven acknowledges these repetitive activities - you
could call it human reproduction - as something more than acts of futility or
nostalgia. They are signs of optimism, even resiliency, defying the
recycled cynicism evident in too much of what passes for originality in
contemporary culture." Barbara Pollack - Time Out NY
Exhibiting broadly in the United States and recently in Europe, Ann Craven has
been reviewed and featured in such publications as Artforum, Frieze, ArtNews,
Art in America, Tema Celeste, the New Yorker and the New York
Times, to cite from a lengthy list. Recently, Craven mounted her first
solo exhibition in Milan at Paolo Curti/Annamaria Gambuzzi & Co., garnering
numerous revues and features from many prominent European publications.
Her work is included in the Permanent Collections of the Whitney Museum of
American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Miami. In April, concurrent with the HSNY exhibition,
Craven's paintings will be on view at the Angstrom Gallery in Dallas, Texas.
In addition, Craven will be a featured artist in the April 2005 issue of
Modern Painters, published in tandem with her show at the Horticultural
Society of New York. This publication will be available for gallery visitors.
HSNY's mission is to improve the quality of life in New York through its
library, community outreach and education programs.
The Gallery at The Horticultural Society of New York is open Monday - Friday
from 10 am - 6 pm.
For further information, please contact Jodie Vincenta Jacobson at
jjacobson@hsny.org or at 212.757.0915
ext.113.