The Baldwin Gallery is proud to present the third solo exhibition in Aspen by Joseph Stashkevetch. Stashkevetch creates precise worlds of carefully constructed compositions that explore contemporary topics through the intimacy of hand-drawn forms. His new works on paper reveal dual impulses that are at once oppositional and complementary: one examines ephemeral remnants of our post-industrial infrastructure, while the other honors the sublime esthetic qualities found in nature. Stashkevetch works with a monochrome palette. With skill and deliberation he slowly builds the surface of a drawing using conté crayon, sandpaper and water washes on rag paper, until the forms emerging from light and shadow crystallize. From a distance these large-scale drawings appear photographic in their level of detail and clarity. However, as the viewer approaches, the pristine, velvety surface gradually reveals the intricate texture and marking evident in hand-drawn work. Joseph Stashkevetch has shown extensively in Europe and America and is in important public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Also showing at the Baldwin Gallery, will be its second exhibition by New York artist Marilyn Minter. Minter is one of several artists of the 1980's whose work is a link between the often-disparaged Photo Realism of the 1960's and 70's and the style's current re-emergence. Showing big color photographs that are almost as voluptuous as her canvases, Ms. Minter continues to emphasize the ambiguous. She does this with distortions of color, form and scale that push an image toward abstraction, and with exaggerated close-ups of faces and other woman’s body parts that explore pornography and the construction of desire. Minter's photos have excruciatingly beautiful surfaces that throb with sensuality, ugliness, and artifice. Also included in this show, is an earlier series of black-and-white photographs from the late 1960s called “Coral Ridge Towers”. In this series, Minter goes right to the source—her own mother. Snapping pictures of her aging, substance-abusing, bedridden parent, Minter captured the queasy day-to-day undoings and recastings of physical appearance. Obsessed with tasks of pruning and priming, Minter’s mother, clad in nightgown and propped with pillows, refused to let even a stray eyebrow lay seed. Minter has had a solo show at San Francisco MoMA in 2005, and was featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Venues for recent solo shows Palm Beach, Frankfurt, Stockholm, New York and Paris.
The public is invited to an opening reception for the artists on Tuesday, December 26th from 6 to 8 pm.
Since 1994, the Baldwin Gallery has been presenting new work by established and emerging artists. It has earned an international reputation as an important venue for contemporary art, with a particular focus on American artists.
Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm, and Sunday from Noon to 5 pm. The Baldwin Gallery is located at 209 South Galena Street in Aspen, Colorado.
