Drawn Together Again

FEBRUARY 23 - MAY 18, 2019

This survey of contemporary drawing focuses on the intimate act of drawing through the variety of traditions and practices artists employ. The exhibition of more than 120 artists eschews themes and categorization, instead favoring an intentionally broad artist list to show the strength and dynamic range of contemporary practice.

At the heart of the exhibition is a fifty-foot-long salon wall that brings together unexpected dialogues between multi-generational artists with a range of backgrounds and training—from outsider artists, to those with expansive careers, to classically taught students, alumni, and faculty from The New York Academy of Art, chosen through an open call. Monumental unframed drawings by Dawn Clements, Marlene McCarty, and Jenny Saville punctuate the exhibition and bring a heightened physicality to what is often thought of as a more intimately-scaled medium. Robert Longo’s large-scale, hyper-realist graphite drawing of Albert Einstein’s paper strewn desk looks deceptively like a photograph, while Ewan Gibbs starts with photographs of iconic tourist sites and celebrities and through his meticulous process, effectively blurs the familiar into abstraction.

Lauren Seiden’s three-dimensional, undulating graphite wall work fuses the vocabularies of drawing and sculpture to create a form reminiscent of crumpled steel. Conor BackmanNatalie FrankRobert Morris, and Robert Rauschenberg also expand upon the traditional definition of “drawing”—often thought of as a dry on dry medium—through the use of collage, gouache, and watercolor, while Aurel Schmidt integrates more unusual elements, including AriZona Lemonade, Orange Crush, Grape Crush, Diet Pepsi, and cigarette burns. Though a variety of subject matters are represented in the exhibition—including geometric abstraction, still lifes, landscapes, etc.—portraiture has the dominant presence, though executed though a tremendous range of styles by artists such as Will CottonBen DurhamToyin Ojih OdutolaElizabeth Peyton, and Jim Torok. Cartoons and text-based works allow artists to inject social commentary, as well as humor into the show, including Andrea BowersR. CrumbPope.L, and David Shrigley.

Artists include: 

Kamrooz Aram
Ruth Asawa
Conor Backman
Matthew Barney
Ellen Berkenblit
Ashley Bickerton
Nayland Blake
Lee Bontecou
Michaël Borremans
Joe Brainard
Andrea Bowers
Don Brown
Delia Brown
Trisha Brown
Elijah Burgher
Andrew Brischler
Peter Cain
Vija Celmins
Mathew Cerletty
Chloe Chiasson
Dawn Clements
Marti Cormand
Will Cotton
R. Crumb
Amy Cutler
Anton van Dalen
Dan Fisher
Jay DeFeo
Marc Dennis
Peter Drake
Ben Durham
Nicole Eisenman
Tom Fairs
Richard Forster
Mark Fox
Natalie Frank
Tom Friedman
Margaret Garrett
Ewan Gibbs
Sullivan Giles
Joanne Greenbaum
Nancy Grossman
Mark Grotjahn
Karl Haendel
Jacob El Hanani
Trenton Doyle Hancock
Hilary Harkness
Jim Hodges
Yun-Fei Ji
Butt Johnson
Kurt Kauper
Ellsworth Kelly
Margaret Kilgallen
Susan Te Kahurangi King
Cary Kwok
Dr. Lakra
Stacy Leigh
Tony Lewis
Roy Lichtenstein
Graham Little

Robert Longo
Danica Lundy
Marco Maggi
Brice Marden
Marlene McCarty
Stefana McClure
Sean Mellyn
Luisiana Mera
Tom Molloy
Jonathan Monk
Robert Morris
Portia Munson
Ciprian Muresan
Prinston Nnanna
Chris Ofili
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Lauren Owens
Anna Park
Raymond Pettibone
Elizabeth Peyton
Pope.L
Richard Phillips
Tatiana Córdoba
Elliot Purse
Robert Rauschenberg
Charles Ray
Rene Ricard
Duke Riley
Sam Roeck
Carlos Rolón
Ed Ruscha
Nicolas V. Sanchez
Jenny Saville
Aurel Schmidt
Frank Selby
Joan Semmel
Jim Shaw
Lauren Seiden
David Scher
David Shrigley
James Siena
Lorna Simpson
Ken Solomon
Robert Therrien
Terri Thomas
Wayne Thiebaud
Richard Tinkler
Jim Torok
Bill Traylor
Cy Twombly
Kaari Upson
Beto De Volder
Melanie Vote
Justin Wadlington
Karl Wirsum
Melvin Way
Michael Weiss
Charles White
Kehinde Wiley
Tsuruko Yamazaki

This survey times with the release of The FLAG Art Foundation’s 10th Anniversary Catalogue and is inspired by one of its earliest exhibitions in 2008, Drawn Together.

Purchase Catalogue

Press:

“…The works are necessarily hung salon-style, but without the sensation of elbowing that such close installations often elicit, each congenially assigned a seat. Partly, this is due to the 50-foot length of the main wall, partly to a room height that does not tower, partly because the configuration of the space feels open, aerated, helped by some windows that permit the entrance of daylight, and partly because the selection and installation were deftly, cannily made, curating images so there are engaging, at times surprising visual conversations going on between the works.”

— Lilly Wei, studio international