Small.

This group exhibition features a selection of international contemporary artists who adopt an intimate format to explore issues related to visual perception, personal and historical memory, the construction of gender stereotypes, and the power of the imagination. In an age when cavernous galleries and outsized images and objects suggest that bigger is necessarily better, working small carries a certain risk. It is a risk, however, that the nine artists in the exhibition are willing to take as they create minute worlds that absorb the viewer while resisting possession. The selected works range from graphite photo-realist renderings to interventions in found objects to site-specific installations, including a custom-made tabletop bearing microscopic figurations and a postage-stamp-sized watercolor inserted directly into the gallery wall. The artists in Small. are: Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Santiago de los Trenta Caballeros, Dominican Republic), Emmanouil Bitsakis (b. 1974, Athens, Greece), Paul Chiappe (b. 1984, Kircady, Scotland), Claire Harvey (b. 1976, United Kingdom), Tom Molloy, (b. 1964, Waterford, Ireland), Rita Ponce de León (b. 1982, Lima, Peru), Peggy Preheim (b. 1963, Yankton, SD), James Sheehan (b. 1964, San Francisco, CA), and Tinus Vermeersch (b. 1976, Belgium).
Curated by Claire Gilman, Curator, and Joanna Kleinberg Romanow, Assistant Curator.
Small. is made possible by the support of Fiona and Eric Rudin, Irene Panagopoulos, Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo, Lora Reynolds Gallery, and Steve Shane.
CATALOGUE
Read Drawing Papers 117: Small.
Buy the catalogue.
Image: Paul Chiappe, Untitled 48, 2010. Pencil on paper, 5 5/16 x 6 7/64 inches. Collection Lea Weingarten.
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Paul Chiappe, Untitled 48, 2010. Pencil on paper. 5 5/16 x 6 7/64 inches. Collection Lea Weingarten.
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Claire Harvey, Easily Removable People, 2006. Acrylic on easily-removable scotch tape. Dimensions variable.
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Fons Welters. -
Firelei Báez, Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River), 2014. Mixed media. Dimensions variable.
Courtesy of the artist. -
James Sheehan, Death of Malevich, 2013. Watercolor on rag board, inserted into wall, 7/8 x 1 inch. Courtesy of the artist.
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Rita Ponce de Léon, Rodrigo’s Deep Little Drawings, 2014. Seventeen drawings on platform. Dimensions variable.
Courtesy of the artist and PACA, Mexico City; 80M2 Livia Benavides Gallery, Lima; and Ignacio Liprandi Gallery, Buenos Aires. -
Tinus Vermeersch, Untitled, 2009. Brown ink on paper. 14 7/32 x 12 7/32 inches. Private collection.
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Tom Molloy, Dead 1, 2012-13. Graphite on paper, 17 1/4 X 17 1/2 inches.
Collection Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman NY. Courtesy The FLAG Art Foundation.