John Wesley
Fredericks & Freiser is proud to announce an exhibition of paintings by John Wesley. May I Cut In? Important Paintings from the Early 70’s will be the first historical exhibition to focus on the artist’s major works from this time period. The exhibition will include twelve paintings; several that have not been exhibited since the 1970’s.
Over the last five years, Fredericks & Freiser has presented historical exhibitions that focused on specific periods or series of Wesley’s work: Question of Women (2008), The Bumsteads (2006), andDon’t Eat My Eagle: Paintings from the 1960’s (2005). May I Cut In? Important Paintings from the Early 70’s will be the fourth exhibition to provide a deep examination of a crucial stage of the artist’s production.
During the early 70’s, Wesley met and married the writer Hannah Green. He travelled to Europe for his first time (1971), was included in the seminal Documenta V curated by Harald Szeemann (1972) and had his first European solo exhibition (Rudolf Zwirner Gallery, Cologne 1973). By this time, his position in the art world was firmly outside the mainstream of Pop Art. During these years, his advances in color palette and cartoon figuration move further into the realm of private experience and memory. Focusing less
on the idiosyncratic juxtapositions of disparate images and more on perverse narratives, Wesley paints an extremely enigmatic body of work where the only constant is that the ever-present promise of intimacy is never fulfilled.
About the Artist
John Wesley (b. 1928) has had numerous one-person exhibitions including Fondazione Prada, San Giorgio Maggiore Island, Venice (curated by Germano Celant); PS1/MoMA, Long Island City; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany; Daad-Galerie, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Portikus, Frankfurt. This past year he was included in group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, PS1/MoMA, Long Island City, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht. His work is in numerous 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, DC; Kunstmuseum, Basel; and Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX., which houses a permanent installation of his work. This will be his 63rd one-person exhibition and his ninth at Fredericks & Freiser.