NEW YORK, NY.- Mary Boone Gallery opened at its Fifth Avenue location The Corps, an exhibition of paintings by Caitlin Keogh, curated by Piper Marshall.

Caitlin Keogh is a painter whose work plays with, and undermines, the traditional relationship between technical illustration and painting. Her use of pattern and decoration suggests that we approach the construction of imagery and its efficacy of communication with our eyes wide open.

The Corps presents a new group of paintings that depict creative types: The Modiste, The Writer, The Guest Lecturer, The Historian. Each specialist works with materials to make things – whether fabric cut and sewn or words strung together to craft a narrative. The various creative practices are metaphors for today’s artist and the various roles one assumes while producing ideas. Yet they are also indicative of Keogh’s self-conscious processes and the roles she assumed to create this body of work.

For these paintings, Keogh sourced photographic imagery and illustrations from women’s magazines dating from 1936 to 1939. This was a period when hand-drawn fashion illustration had not yet been superseded by photography, and when commercial iterations of Surrealism entered mainstream modes of distribution. Keogh re-fashions this source material while adding depictions of elements such as modeled hands, mannequins, and scraps of cloth that gesture toward commodity fetish. By using material from the past, Keogh asks us to reconsider imagery, specifically images targeted towards women.

In The Modiste, for example, a pink ribbon wraps its way around the composition, only to be severed by scissors held by the subject’s own hand. The painting The Novel features a book by Marguerite Duras splayed open. The checkered pattern and flame-like decoration of the dust jacket presses the composition against the surface of the canvas, manipulating depth, illusion and expectation.

The exhibition, at 745 Fifth Avenue, will be on view through 25 April 2015.