James Rosenquist -- Monochromes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ACQUAVELLA TO SHOW ROSENQUIST MONOCHROME PAINTINGS

With loans from major American and European museums as well as many private collections Acquavella Contemporary Art, Inc. is proud to announce the first exhibition devoted to monochromatic and grisaille works by one of the most acclaimed artists of our time, James Rosenquist. “James Rosenquist – Monochromes” highlights a theme that Rosenquist has explored throughout his phenomenal four-decade career but which has never before been presented either for exhibition or critical study despite countless museum and gallery shows worldwide.

From the Fifties style newspaper advertising imagery that brought Rosenquist to early fame (“Pushbutton”, 1961) to his later encyclopedic panoramas of political, ecological and galactic discourse (“Time Dust-Black Hole” 1992) many of the most powerful paintings have been essentially black and white and shades of grey. This exhibition unites three pairs if paintings that are all owned separately including Rosenquist’s two portraits of Bo Diddley and the mechanized diptychs “Red Applause” and “Yellow Applause”.

In the catalogue accompanying this exhibition Craig Adcock’s penetrating essay “The Sweet Cheat Gone” relates Rosenquist’s oblique, fragmentary and memory-laden paintings to Marcel Proust’s narratives of image distorted by emotion.

The exhibition opens October 4th and runs through November 11th. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday, 10-5p.m