John Wesley
May 6 – June 12, 2010**
Fredericks & Freiser is proud to announce May I Cut In? Important Paintings from the Early 1970s, the first historical exhibition devoted exclusively to John Wesley’s major works from this decisive period. The exhibition brings together twelve paintings—several of which have not been shown since the 1970s—and expands the gallery’s ongoing series of focused historical presentations of Wesley’s work, including Question of Women (2008), The Bumsteads (2006), and Don’t Eat My Eagle: Paintings from the 1960s (2005).
The early 1970s mark a pivotal chapter in Wesley’s life and work. During these years he met and married the writer Hannah Green, traveled to Europe for the first time (1971), was included in Harald Szeemann’s seminal Documenta V (1972), and presented his first European solo exhibition at Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, Cologne (1973). By this point his position was firmly outside the mainstream of Pop Art. His palette softened, his cartoon figuration intensified, and the paintings increasingly turned toward private experience, memory, and the psychic undercurrents of intimacy.
The works from this period move away from Wesley’s earlier idiosyncratic juxtapositions and toward a more enigmatic narrative space—one in which desire, distance, and the perpetual deferral of closeness form the emotional core. These paintings chart an important transformation in Wesley’s project: the shift from the public optics of Pop to a profoundly interior, psychologically charged world.
About the Artist:
John Wesley (b. 1928) has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions, including Fondazione Prada, Venice (curated by Germano Celant); PS1/MoMA, Long Island City; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; daadgalerie, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Portikus, Frankfurt. His work has recently been included in group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; PS1/MoMA, Long Island City; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht. His paintings are in major public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Kunstmuseum Basel; and the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, which houses a permanent installation of his work. This is Wesley’s 63rd one-person exhibition and his ninth at Fredericks & Freiser.