ARTIST RECEPTION / OPENING: Mythology and the Island, Pastels by IRVING PETLIN

IRVING PETLIN is renowned for his mastery of the pastel medium, collaborations with other artists, and his ‘series form.’

For the past 36 summers Petlin has created a considerable body of work each year in his studio on Martha’s Vineyard – which leaves the island silently to be shown in Europe. He feels that, “the apartness of the island, the fact that it’s surrounded by water” – invites the mythological, the magical – which takes hold and allows him to “enter imagination and memory.” This past winter he created a body of work in Paris specifically for the Vineyard.

Three strands of imagery emerged while preparing for this exhibition: The Cottage, The Boat and The Island. The resulting group of pastels is an exploration of the transformation of the ordinary into the mythic.

The four Cottage pastels ‘picture’ an immeasurable personal attachment to an actual place. Each work explores its mythic appearance, disappearance and evaporation. A small wood frame house, surrounded by trees, sky, children and a boat, becomes his voice.

The Boat: A boat appears often in his work. A simple form becomes a metaphor for the wanderers, the door to the sea. In the dyptich, the boat is intertwined with the fate of the planet, as the ancient Egyptian goddess spins her top determining who wins, who loses. In Portrait of Queequeg and the Boat, Queequeg peers down into the Pequod, riddled and struggling.

The Island: This group of four pastels is a symbolic representation of the four seasons : ‘Winter Sun’, ‘Night Sun’, ‘Fate of the Island’ and ‘Lovers, Summer Storm’ . The island is a giant rock, rendered up close in a reversal of perspective, a mythic apparition.

Petlin, (b. 1934, Chicago, IL) received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1956 during the height of the Chicago Imagist Movement. He then attended Yale to study under Joseph Albers, earning his MFA in 1960. Since the 1960s Petlin has been a leader in artists’ political activism when he became one of the founding members of “Artists and Writers Against the War in Vietnam”, helped to create The Peace Tower in 1966. According to Petlin, artists have a particular social duty to explore themes of injustice, and has done many works inspired by post-9/11 American politics, the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan, and other areas of conflict. 

Has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, has taught at Dartmouth College, UCLA, the University of Haifa, as well as the Art Institute of Chicago.

Collections include MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, amongst others.

He lives and works in New York City, Paris, and on Martha’s Vineyard.

Exhibit runs through September 15, 2014