Dianna Molzan
dal 7/4/2011 al 7/6/2011
Segnalato da
7/4/2011
Dianna Molzan
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Molzan's works engage in an open and unpredictable dialogue with the history of abstract painting. Although she works with traditional materials, such as oil on linen, she approaches her canvases irreverently, invoking elements of fashion, the decorative arts, ceramics, and popular design.
This spring, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents
Dianna Molzan: Bologna Meissen, the first solo museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s work.
This lobby gallery show, opening April 8, is curated by Whitney curatorial assistant Margot
Norton.
Dianna Molzan’s works engage in an open and unpredictable dialogue with the history of
abstract painting. Although she works with traditional materials, such as oil on linen, she
approaches her canvases irreverently, invoking elements of fashion, the decorative arts,
ceramics, and popular design. In this installation the artist’s engaging and sophisticated
works each reveal a highly distinctive character and play off one another in lively
counterpoint.
The title Bologna Meissen, alludes to two of the artist’s longstanding interests: the
twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, who lived and worked in Bologna,
rendering still lifes of vessels with poetic simplicity; and Meissen, the German porcelain
manufacturer renowned for vivid colors, intricately embossed forms, and whimsical
details. Molzan has observed that both painting and ceramics, at their essence, have an
intrinsic identity that can be transformed with the intentional application of pigment and
pattern.
With each work Molzan effects a transformation, as she rends, slices, unravels, sculpts,
and adorns the canvas in a characteristically defining manner. While she uses a variety of
material approaches that differ from one work to the next, each canvas exhibits a subtle
precision in its intention and execution.
About the Artist
Dianna Molzan was born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1972; she currently lives and works in Los
Angeles. After attending the Universität der Künste Berlin in 2000, she earned her Bachelor of
Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001 and her Master of Fine
Arts degree from the University of Southern California in 2009. Molzan’s work has been
included in numerous group exhibitions, including All of this and nothing at the Hammer
Museum, Los Angeles, in 2011 and How Soon Now at the Rubell Family
Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation, Miami, in 2010. She had her first solo exhibition at
Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles, in 2009. Bologna Meissen is Molzan’s first exhibition in New
York.
About the Whitney
The Whitney Museum of American Art is the world’s leading museum of twentieth-century and
contemporary art of the United States. Focusing particularly on works by living artists, the Whitney is
celebrated for presenting important exhibitions and for its renowned collection, which comprises over
18,000 works by more than 2,800 artists. With a history of exhibiting the most promising and influential
artists and provoking intense debate, the Whitney Biennial, the Museum's signature exhibition, has become
the most important survey of the state of contemporary art in the United States. In addition to its landmark
exhibitions, the Museum is known internationally for events and educational programs of exceptional
significance and as a center for research, scholarship, and conservation.
Image: Untitled, 2009. Oil on canvas on fir, 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm).
Collection of Rosette Delug; courtesy Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles. ©
Dianna Molzan; photograph by Brian Forrest
Press contact:Stephen Soba, Molly Gross tel. (212) 5703633
pressoffice@whitney.org
Opening April 8, 2011
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street New York, New York 10021