Exhibition

Amy Gartrell
She's so bright she's dark

Greene Naftali, New York

Press Release

Amy Gartrell, Pink (I really feel for her), 2002. Ink and acrylic on paper. 30 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches (77.5 x 39.4 cm)

The Greene Naftali Gallery is pleased to present “She’s so bright she’s dark,” an installation of drawings, paintings, and sculpture by New York-based artist Amy Gartrell. On display from June 19-July 31, 2002, this is Gartrell’s first one person exhibition in New York.

Moving between bedroom earnestness and nature morte, Gartrell’s work is marked by a pronounced gothic sensibility informed by rock-and-roll iconography, hallucinogenic colors, and finely drawn text and image interplay. In Yellow Siouxsie (Personal style is very important) and Pink Darby Crash (Why is it so much easier to admire the dead), both 2001, Gartrell’s tight lettered musings frame out classic images of punk idols—a languorous Siouxsie Sue pin-up and a picture of Crash’s tombstone, respectively. Images literally to be read, Gartrell’s drawings and paintings are portraits of attachment and self-projection: the frozen signs of cult mythology and commodified style reanimated as personal mantra. Seen next to these, Wishing Well (2002), an eleven-foot tall sculpture of a wishing well covered in climbing roses, is a perfect allegory of the gothic: desire juxtaposed with impossibility, the unreachability of promise.

Since graduating from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1996, Gartrell (b. 1974, Berkeley, CA) has participated in numerous group exhibitions around New York and elsewhere. In 1998, she had her first solo exhibition at La Panaderia, Mexico City and, in 2000, a special project, entitled “Feeling Stupid,” was shown at PS1, New York. From 1999 until its dissolution in 2001, Gartrell was a member of the conceptual art-rock group Actress, which staged concerts and performances at the Greene Naftali Gallery, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, PS1, and Exit Art, among many other venues.


This show is dedicated to my sister Emily and the memory of Erica Hilary Hope Small R.I.P.

Big ups to…. My family, Hope, Raoul, Dave Karein, Piefer and Niki, Elizabeth, Jason, Sadie, Jesi, Lizzie & Spencer, the Khabarla Family, Ghost Exito, Delia, Gavin, Christian Hosltad, Rob Pruitt, Jonathan Horowitz, Tara & Daniela, Jason Mattress, Elizabeth, Snax, Kid Congo, Wendy, Glynnis, Richard, Artemio, Amy K., Steve L., Jen Williams and Todd…extra to Carol and Molly.

Much love xxoo

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