James Romberger
dal 6/2/2002 al 9/3/2002
Segnalato da
6/2/2002
James Romberger
Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York
Night. A show of pastels by James Romberger. A chronicler of urban survival, he opens a door to the day by day life of a Lower Eastsider from the homeless recycling cans at Key Food to the neon glare of the Social Services office. With a sympathetic eye to the details of everyday existence, he has been drawing his community for 15 years through the desolution of the 80’s to the gentrification of the 90’s. Romberger captures the rhythm of our city with a photographic mind for detail coupled with an astute sense of light.
'Night'
James Romberger's pastels are like calendars of the day to day shift in human
resilience under the blind eye of government. -David Wojnarowicz, 1989
The Gracie Mansion Gallery is pleased to present a show of pastels by James
Romberger.
A chronicler of urban
survival, he opens a door to the day by day life of a Lower Eastsider from
the homeless recycling cans at Key Food
to the neon glare of the Social Services office.
Romberger is a social
realist on the level of John Sloan, George
Bellows, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton and Max Beckmann.
With a
sympathetic eye to the details of
everyday existence, he has been drawing his community for 15 years through
the desolution of the 80’s to the
gentrification of the 90’s.
Romberger captures the rhythm of our city with a
photographic mind for detail coupled
with an astute sense of light.
Relying on memory, he records not the bricks
and mortar but the soul. Whether it is
Katz’s at twilight or Suffolk Street after midnight, he makes the light
physical. Within the darkness of 4th Street
Nocturne, there is the light reflected off a street made wet from a recent
rain, lit by display window of the liquor
store and the headlights of oncoming cars.
He tenderly portrays the late
night activities of a city that never sleeps.
In a backyard view from my apartment, he brought to life the blue light of
snow illuminated only by the light of
surrounding apartments.
You can sense the cold and stillness of the moment
caught in time, luminous in its
darkness. Romberger’s masterful use of light goes beyond capturing the glow
of freshly fallen snow to exposing the
beauty in the detritus and the spirit in the homeless and dispossessed. His
drawings are a marriage of frankness
and compassion.
Romberger's collaboration with Wojnarowicz, the graphic novel "Seven Miles A
Second", was exhibited in the New
Museum's 1999 "Fever" retrospective and included in MOMA's "Open Ends" in
2000. Romberger was also featured in
"New York, New York: the City in Art and Literature", published by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001. His
drawings are in many private and public collections, including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Parrish Museum,
the Newark Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Hours: Tues.-Sat. 11am-6pm and by appointment
image: James Romberger, 4th Street Nocturne
Gracie Mansion Gallery
504 West 22nd Street NY 10011
New York City
Tel : 212.505.9577
Fax: 212.462.4111