NEW YORK, NY.- David Richard Gallery has just opened Fractured, nine new paintings by Grace Graupe-Pillard from her current series of works that comment on the environmental, social, and global impact of climate change. The irony, of course, is that the adverse impact of climate change to humans was caused by humans, but due more to economic and political interests, along with disregarding warnings by scientists and naturalists, then out of ignorance. This presentation is not only a debut of these new environmentally conscious paintings but also Graupe-Pillard’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.
About Graupe- Pillard’s Artworks: Graupe-Pillard’s approach to art making is to exploit binaries, exposing cultural ignorance, mythologies, and injustices while simultaneously celebrating an underlying truth and beauty that is not fully appreciated in and of itself, or empathizing with harmed and affected parties in any given situation. These qualities are revealed in her many series of artworks since the 1970s. Her artworks are both self-reflexive -- where the artist, her gender, and cultural affiliations are both the subject and under the microscope for critical critique -- while also deconstructing entrenched social constructs regarding gender, race, ethnicity, and politics.
These binaries span Graupe-Pillard’s early work in feminism through the Female Gaze and Delving Into Art to “physical and psychological” changes in meaning over time by placing "details from historical paintings" alongside contemporary photographic portraits in her Keyhole series; celebrating through portraiture undervalued or overlooked contributors in society who are the average person we all know; the atrocities of war through manipulation of information and causing destruction of homes and displacement of people; to her more recent work regarding climate change and Desecrated Landscapes.
The artist’s approach is to have a single visual that is accessible and full of content. Thus, she often uses compositional methods that are like a split screen or presenting two sides of the same coin. Representational imagery, motifs or fragments thereof are broken down, duplicated, collaged and combined to generate contrasting imagery in a single composition, thus providing parallel universes in a single artwork. This approach challenges the viewer's perceptions and provokes introspection and/or discourse with with others.
The exhibition title reflects both the artist’s approach to creating her paintings, but also the ramification and impact of the causes that result in her ongoing calls to action and justice.
Like a Rene Magritte painting challenging notions and perceptions of reality versus that which is experienced in the real world. Graupe-Pillard juxtaposes content, often by way of using diametrically incongruous imagery, while aesthetically unifying and harmonizing such contrasts in the final composition through color, form and abstracting elements. These are finely honed skills that can be subversive--making the difficult and uncomfortable truth a reality. This approach creates layered narratives, provoking and challenging viewer's perceptions of truth and reality as deemed so in socially acceptable and imposed constructs. Graupe-Pillard’s deconstructed imagery challenges those perceptions and offers alternative interpretations and realities, pointing to where multiple diverse constructs can, and do, co-exist culturally and politically.
The artist in a bolder call to action states the following regarding her newest environmental paintings, Blast Wave - a shock that sends tremors beyond the original explosion causing a complete disruption of the status quo, snowballing into political and environmental chaos. I continue to break apart forms that I derive from photographic sources, bringing painterly elements together as a camouflage or a jigsaw puzzle abstraction in order to echo and give visual evidence to the dislocation of one’s culture from its intrinsic surroundings.
Grace Graupe-Pillard
Grace Graupe-Pillard has exhibited her artwork throughout the USA with one-person exhibitions in Hartford, Ct., Jackson, Miss., Chicago, Ill. and Newark, NJ, in addition to NYC at The Proposition, Donahue/Sosinski Art, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Hal Bromm Gallery, and Wooster Art Space. She has also had one-person exhibitions at The Frist Center for The Visual Arts in Nashville, Tenn., The New Jersey State Museum and The New Jersey Center for Visual Arts. In 2006 and 2016, she had one-person exhibitions at Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago, and in 2008 and 2018 she had solo shows at Moravian University’s Payne Gallery and Rupert Ravens Contemporary. She has participated in group exhibitions at The Noyes Museum, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Bass Museum, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Maier Museum, The Aldrich Museum, The Drawing Center, The Hunterdon Museum. Cheim & Read Gallery and The National Academy Museum.
Numerous grants have been received by Graupe-Pillard from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts and The National Endowment for the Arts. She has received public art commissions from Shearson Lehman American Express, AT&T, Peat Marwick, The Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC, and the City of Orange, NJ. Public art projects also include commissions from Johns Hopkins University, NJ Transit for their new Hudson Bergen Light Rail Transit System in Jersey City, and Hoboken’s 2nd Street Station, as well as an artwork for NJ Transit’s Aberdeen-Matawan Station. She also directed The Edwin Austin Abbey Mural Workshop at The National Academy Museum from 2003-2010.
The artworks and exhibitions of Graupe-Pillard’s have been written about in The Village Voice, The NY Times, Art News, The Star Ledger, The New Art Examiner, Newsday, Flash Art, Art Forum, Art in America and Digital Review. From l993-l995, Ms. Graupe-Pillard was appointed a Visual Arts Panelist for The NY State Council on the Arts.
Graupe-Pillard has also been involved with many online projects and has shown her photos and videos at Scope Miami, Scope London, and Art Chicago. Her online articles were published in The Huffington Post, Vice Creators Project, Women's Voices For Change (for which she wrote articles) and A Gathering of the Tribes - Black Lives Matter issue.
Artist Statements
Since 1975, my work has dealt with feminist issues, beginning with large paintings depicting male and female frontal nudes of various ages who did not “fit into” the dictates of the “gaze” controlled by the male-dominated art history/museum network.
Today, in 2024, I am still interested in many of the same issues. Power and the abuse of power—such as the conflicts between men and women both on a personal and political level—are ever-present in my consciousness and my artwork. Violence and especially war, with its collateral damage that turns people into refugees – particularly women and children- have been at the center of my work since 2003.
My videos deal with topics ranging from the death of my mother to personal worries and idiosyncrasies such as the invisibility of older women in the art world.
David Richard Gallery
GRACE GRAUPE-PILLARD
Fractured
January 3 – February 8, 2024
