Space, that nothing which is present everywhere, is the animating force in “Roberta Eisenberg: A Life’s Work”, a posthumous retrospective. This well organized exhibition showcases an artist who had a powerful command of the void. She treated the expansive swaths of vacancy in her large paintings and drawings as dynamic sites of mood and theatre. Her brushwork could crash in those nebulous painted grounds until they formed wide rivers of turbulent water. Roberta Eisenberg, "Bardo," oil on canvas, 96 x 48". Likewise she could flatten darkness out like a hard fragment cut from dull, veined stone only to unexpectedly dissolve organic forms in it like hot, melting rocks. As strong as her large paintings on canvas are, however, the surprise and delight of this exhibition is the assembly of her mixed media paintings on paper. These 1989 works are remarkable not only for the ongoing freshness of their imagery but the way they capture the sheer liveliness of the artist’s hand and mind.
January 11, 2009 - 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Reception: Roberta Eisenberg: A Life's Work
Space, that nothing which is present everywhere, is the animating force in “Roberta Eisenberg: A Life’s Work”, a posthumous retrospective. This well organized exhibition showcases an artist who had a powerful command of the void. She treated the expansive swaths of vacancy in her large paintings and drawings as dynamic sites of mood and theatre. Her brushwork could crash in those nebulous painted grounds until they formed wide rivers of turbulent water. Roberta Eisenberg, "Bardo," oil on canvas, 96 x 48". Likewise she could flatten darkness out like a hard fragment cut from dull, veined stone only to unexpectedly dissolve organic forms in it like hot, melting rocks. As strong as her large paintings on canvas are, however, the surprise and delight of this exhibition is the assembly of her mixed media paintings on paper. These 1989 works are remarkable not only for the ongoing freshness of their imagery but the way they capture the sheer liveliness of the artist’s hand and mind.