John Wesley

JOHN WESLEY

Favorite Works

February 13 through March 21, 1998

Jessica Fredericks Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of Favorite Works by JOHN WESLEY. The exhibition will include twenty-five paintings on canvas and paper and will span the years of 1968 to 1997. Mr. Wesley has had major retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Portikus, Frankfurt, and  DAAD Galerie, Berlin. His last solo exhibition in New York was at this gallery in April of 1996. This past summer he was included in The Birth of the Cool: American Painting, Georgia O’Keeffe to Christopher Wool curated by Bice Curiger at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg and the Kunsthalle Zurich. The John Wesley Museum is being planned as part of Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Marfa Texas.

JOHN WESLEY began showing with the first wave of pop artists in the early 1960’s. He was included in the original Pop  portfolios, and most of the Pop shows of the time. However, by 1972 when he was chosen to participate in Documenta 5, his paintings were already seen as a departure from the parameters of Pop, and Wesley was given his own room between two rooms titled “Realismus”.  Since then John Wesley has remained uncategorizable.  In her essay for the catalogue Birth of the Cool, Bice Curiger writes:  “(His) spectacular foreshortening and ornamental decor reminiscent of Matisse’s late work transcend the repertoire of Pop-art design. The obsessive eroticism of his motifs clearly distinguishes Wesley from the cool detachment of the New York Pop scene. John Wesley ... fleshes out the erotic subtext of the comics universe with astonishing freshness and relishes the depravity of pink appendages with childlike innocence.”

For this exhibition Mr. Wesley has selected many of his favorite works that have never been exhibited.  

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information and/or photographs please contact the gallery by telephone at (212) 633-6555 or fax at (212) 367-9502.