NEW YORK, NY.- Judith Bernstein presents a new body of work, specifically commissioned by The Drawing Center, for her exhibition Cabinet of Horrors in the Main Gallery. Focusing on work made since Donald J. Trump was elected president in November 2016, the exhibition includes approximately eighteen new drawings, four large-scale paper panel murals, a series of drawn “dollar bills”, vintage piggy banks in a vitrine, and a free political campaign pin designed by Bernstein. As well, the exhibition features one of Bernstein’s earliest political drawings from 1969 and a selection of five “Word Drawings” from 1995, including: Liberty, Justice, Equality, Evil, and Fear.

Bernstein began engaging with social issues in her work during the 1960s, creating anti-Vietnam drawings, monumental phalluses, and pieces consisting entirely of her own signature. The present series of drawings use Trump’s own insult-driven, childlike syntax and language to distill Bernstein’s anger, disgust, and disapproval of the current administration and its policies. Through her new series of drawings, Bernstein transforms her critique into powerful graphic and text-based works. The exhibition is organized by Brett Littman, Executive Director.

For over fifty years, New York-based artist Judith Bernstein (b. 1942, Newark, New Jersey) has created expressive drawings and paintings that boldly address the underlying psychological connection between warfare and sexual aggression. Her provocative pieces have direct impact yet also carry nuanced meanings and allusions. As a student at Yale in the 60s, Bernstein developed a fascination with the graffiti she found in men’s restrooms, images that would later inform the basis of her work. Recent solo exhibitions include Cock in the Box, The Box, Los Angeles (2017); Judith Bernstein, Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2016); Dicks of Death, Mary Boone Gallery, New York (2016); Voyeur, Mary Boone Gallery, New York (2015); Rising, Studio Voltaire, London (2014); BLACK LIGHT/BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE, Gavin Brown Enterprise, New York (2014); BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE, The Box, Los Angeles (2013); HARD, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2012–13); and FUCK VIETNAM at The Box, Los Angeles (2011). Bernstein’s work is included in New York collections, such as The Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Brooklyn Museum; and the Jewish Museum, as well as internationally in the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zürich; Kunstmuseum Basel; Sammlung Verbund, Vienna; and the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, among others. Bernstein is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. She is represented by Mary Boone Gallery, New York; The Box, Los Angeles; and Karma International, Zürich/Los Angeles.

What the Body Can Do: Open Sessions 11
October 13–November 19, 2017
What the Body Can Do: Open Sessions 11 captures the movement and potential of individual bodies in collective action. The artists in this exhibition dissect spectacles of war, memorialize immigrant and refugee narratives, savor protest cinema and images produced by the paparazzi. The exhibition features artists, Danielle Dean, Olalekan Jeyifous, Jennifer May Reiland, Slinko, and Hồng-An Trương. Dean’s animations unravel speech; Jeyifous’ images collapse surrealist aesthetics and the design trope of architectural folly; telephone screens, mirrors, and the camera’s eye are a window into Reiland’s versions of biblical and mythological tales; bread figures embody uprising and rebellion in Slinko’s large storyboard drawings; and Trương’s photos compose an archive of fragmented views of the Asian American activist movement in the United States.