In this publication, Mark Grotjahn’s (born 1968) collectively titled 50 Kitchens drawings are presented in an accordion-folded, pocket-size catalog. 50 Kitchens documents a group of drawings, created over the span of five years, all in the same size and format to comprise a singular work of art. Shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in May 2018 under the same title, each of the drawings is done in Grotjahn’s signature “butterfly” style, composed of a unique combination of alternating, radiating bands of color, executed in color pencil on paper. When fully unfurled, the accordion format of the publication allows for all 55 drawings to be seen simultaneously and in the order in which they were exhibited.
Published by Karma, New York. Text by Mark Grotjahn.
In the early 1990s, Mark Grotjahn (born 1968) was living in San Francisco, and weary of the figurative painting he and his colleagues were doing. He found inspiration at Lloyds, a bar across the street from his studio, in their handmade signs advertising hot dogs and drink specials. Grotjahn started painting copies of the bar’s signs. Sensing that the difference between his copies and the originals was the audience, Grotjahn “figured in order to get my sign to be as good as their signs, I needed to get my sign in their store.”
Thus began Grotjahn’s series of Sign Exchanges, where Grotjahn would paint copies of the signs of liquor stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants and bodegas, and exchange his signs for the readymades on display. Mark Grotjahn: Sign Exchange explores this early series of works, displaying the signs the painter received in exchange for his paintings.
Published by Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Text by Carroll Dunham.
Los Angeles-based artist Mark Grotjahn (born 1968) is well known for using the human face as a starting point for his intense, abstract paintings. This publication exhibits his large-scale series Nine Faces, in which he uses a palette-knife technique to apply thick slashes of complex color.
PUBLISHER Anton Kern Gallery, New York
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 12.25 x 15.25 in. / 48 pgs / 27 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 7/28/2015 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2015 p. 177
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780983362210FLAT40 List Price: $90.00 CDN $120.00 GBP £80.00
Mark Grotjahn's (born 1968) ongoing Butterfly series--one of several investigations into the natural world in Grotjahn's oeuvre--focuses on perspectival techniques used since the Renaissance, such as dual and multiple vanishing points, to create the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface. Though at first the Butterfly paintings may appear entirely formal and graphic (alluding to modernist painting from Russian Constructivism to Op art), the raylike "butterfly wings" are often layered over under-paintings, giving them texture and tonal depth. This volume, published to accompany the first exhibition of Grotjahn's butterfly paintings at Blum & Poe in New York, not only collects these arresting compositions, but also delves into the artistic contexts involved, in an essay by Douglas Fogle that discusses the history of the Butterfly works since their conception in the early 2000s.
Published by Aspen Art Press. Foreword by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson. Text by Barry Schwabsky, Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.
The paintings and drawings of Los Angeles artist Mark Grotjahn (born 1968) collide abstract and figurative elements into spider-webbed splinters that skew traditional perspective and dazzle the eye. This fully illustrated catalogue constitutes the first survey of his work from the late 1990s to the present and features essays by the art critic Barry Schwabsky and Aspen Art Museum Director Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson. The catalogue chronicles Grotjahn’s series of Butterfly paintings and drawings, in which he combines varying schemes of one-point perspective and a systematic investigation of color to mesmerizing effect; his penetrating flower and face paintings; and a recent series of “mask” sculptures that extend Grotjahn’s idiosyncratic investment in process and ritual in painting into three dimensions.
Mark Grotjahn: Sign Exchange
Mark Grotjahn: Nine Faces
Mark Grotjahn: Butterfly Paintings
Mark Grotjahn