NEW YORK, NY.- Pavel Zoubok Gallery invites you to the tiny picture show, a panoramic survey of intimately scaled collages and constructions. Presenting works by an international group of modern and contemporary artists, this exhibition subverts the age-old association of scale and significance by celebrating ambitious visions expressed in diminutive proportions. Be they intricately wrought or spontaneously composed, densely layered or coolly reductive, each picture represents a small portal into an expansive aesthetic.
Collage and assemblage have largely been regarded as intimate art forms, using the proverbial kitchen table to distill the ever-increasing volume of print media and mass-produced objects. With social engagement playing a key role in its development over the twentieth century, collage has been a crucial medium for correcting historical inequities. Such practices have close affinities with poetry, linking the graphic and rhythmic qualities of the written word to the language of associative compositions. Several of the artists in the tiny picture show have direct ties to the literary arts, among them Mary Bauermeister, Joe Brainard, Ray Johnson, Janet Malcolm and George Schneeman.
Standing in direct contrast to the ambitious scale of the art of their times, artists like Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Cornell captured the popular imagination with highly individual, emphatically small gestures. Perhaps most emblematic of intimate and determined resistance are Anne Ryan’s vigorous abstractions. In 1968 critic Hilton Kramer wrote of Ryan in The New York Times, “Above all, we have the impression of an artist whose strength was inseparable from her sense of tact, who knew exactly at what physical scale her powers could be realized to the fullest.”
Demanding direct and focused engagement, these works command physical space not by scale but by seduction, like precious jewels.
Arman, Jean Arp, John Ashbery, Hannelore Baron, Dan Basen, Mary Bauermeister, Florian Baudrexel, Romare Bearden, Barton Lidicé Beneš, Wallace Berman, Lee Bontecou, Joe Brainard, Buster Cleveland, Joseph Cornell, Robert Courtright, Rosalyn Drexler, John Evans, Marietta Ganapin, James Garrett Faulkner, Ilse Getz, Chambliss Giobbi, Max Greis, Al Hansen, Addie Herder, Jess, Jerry Jofen, Don Joint, Ray Johnson, Ellsworth Kelly, Jiří Kolář, Alfred Leslie, Janet Malcolm, Wangechi Mutu, Louise Nevelson, Robert Ohnigian, John O’Reilly, Howardena Pindell, Leon Polk Smith, Mac Premo, Eric Rhein, Henry Rothman, Anne Ryan, George Schneeman, Kay Sage, Kurt Schwitters, Gail Skudera, Maritta Tapanainen, Lenore Tawney, Jacques Villeglé, Mark Wagner, Tom Wesselmann, H.C Westermann, Hannah Wilke, May Wilson, David Wojnarowicz and others.
