FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
GEORGE DEEM October 12 – November 11, 2006
PAVEL ZOUBOK GALLERY invites you to an exhibition of new paintings by GEORGE DEEM. Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, October 12 from 6-8pm, or during the run of the exhibition, which continues through November 11, 2006.
The gallery is located at:533 West 23rd Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues) Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm
GEORGE DEEM’s third solo exhibition at Pavel Zoubok Gallery highlights the artist’s continued investigation of representational space and the act of painting as both a material and historical process. While many painters and paintings from the history of art have found their way into Deem’s visual and conceptual alterations, it is the seventeenth-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer who continues to inspire new work. The nine paintings and two works on paper in the current exhibition find the artist exploring a new and brighter palette and also signal the return of the figure. Deem’s previously spare and contemplative spaces are systematically transformed into jewel-toned interiors where figures, like the objects around them, emerge as key elements in the construction and reconstruction of meaning.
In Okay, Vermeer’s Artist’s Studio stands enigmatically in the fluorescent-lit corridor of an unidentified institution, flanked on both sides by a succession of figures in white lab coats. The startling juxtaposition of this iconic image and the starkly clinical setting are heightened by the general sense of spatial and historical ambiguity. Who are these figures – perhaps conservators, scholars, scientists? The painting is emblematic of Deem’s analytical role in his ongoing “conversations” with Vermeer. Perspective and perception are similarly skewed in new works such as Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Again and A Lady Writing, Again in which the actions implied by the larger interior are only realized as framed representations hanging on a wall. These works and others are an extension of Deem’s previous work in that they continue to question the nature of representation, thoughtfully subverting our sense of what is real and what is constructed.
GEORGE DEEM’s work has been exhibited at the Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Indiana; Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York; University of Oregon Museum of Art, Eugene; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; South Bend Regional Museum of Art, Indiana; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Wichita Center for the Arts, Kansas; Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; among others.
His work is the subject of the recently published How to Paint a Vermeer (Thames & Hudson, 2004, essay by Robert Rosenblum).
George Deem’s work is in numerous public and corporate collections including the Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe; Rockford Art Museum, Illinois; JP Morgan Chase Bank Art Collection, New York; Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton, New York; Evansville Museum of Arts and Science, Indiana; Bank of America Art Collection, Boston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Ludwig Collection, Aachen, Germany; Miami University Art Museum, Oxford, Ohio; Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton and Garrison, New York; Museum Ludwig Donation, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York.
For additional information and images please contact Maggie Seidel at (212) 675 7490 or maggie@pavelzoubok.com
