DAVID RABINOWITCH
Recent Drawings
December 19 to February 5
Born in 1943, in Toronto, David Rabinowitch has been living and working in New York since 1972 and extensively in Europe since the early 1980s. His work has received wide critical acclaim, most recently at Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum where his exhibition, Pacing The World, Construction in the Sculpture of David Rabinowitch was presented in September 1996 through january 1997. Like his contemporaries, Donald Judd and Richard Serra, Rabinowitch's thinking has contributed to the critique and theory of contemporary sculpture.
When Rabinowtich moved from Canada to New York in 1972, he regularly visited Central Park. Here her came across a beech tree, which he began to draw, intially without any particular purpose in mind. For Rabinowitch drawing has been a primary and singular activity throughout his life. Drawing, however, does not represent an extension of sculpture, but rather a sustained practice or irreducible expression and a palce in which he formulates specific ideas in a singular way. The ongoing concern with the tree motif finds its correlation in the changes that drawing itself undergoes in Rabinowitch's hand during the early 1970s. These are the years of transition from the Construction of Vision drawings-consisting of straight lines and circular forms drawn precisely and with the use of templates. Drawings of a Tree stand in direct contrast to the precision and execution of the Construction of Vision drawings. Expressive, flat-looking strokes, never suggesting a whole tree, depict particular "views". No mark ever takes on a principle role; the drawing moves from groups of marks to other groups of marks without the trunk ever becoming central as a volume, and so that a linear structure dominates. The first group of tree drawings, dating from 1972, were rendered as smaller studies. By 1980, however, these would become larger and more significant in format and scale. For these drawings Rabinowitch invented a crayon made from a mixture of ground charcoal and beeswax. What stands out most clearly in Rabinowitch's Drawing of a Tree is the extraordinary tension between the motif and an increasingly independent organization of lines and internal forms. These works continued until 1982, after which no further drawings on this theme were produced until 1994 when Rabinowitch would return to the subject of the tree, working from elms in Tompkins Square Park in New York City. Drawings of a Tree have continued and they have become and increasingly important body of work.
Rabinowitch has had numerous exhibitions, including major museum shows at the Kunsthalle Tübingen (1987); Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf (1988); Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (1992); the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Kunstmuseum Winterhur, Switzerland (1993). Most recently his work was presented the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, which was accompanied by an important monograph, Pacing the World, Construction in the Sculpture of David Rabinowitch written by Whitney Davis.
For additional information or photographic materials please contact Peter Blum or Arthur Solway. Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10-6pm; Saturday 11-6pm, and Monday by appointment.