Debra Drexler

 Debra Drexler

Debra Drexler is an American painter, installation artist, curator and professor. Her work is informed both by participating in the contemporary resurgence of abstraction coming out of New York, and by living in the Post Colonial Pacific since 1992. She has participated in over thirty solo and over 100 group exhibitions in national and international venues including Front Room Gallery, Exit Art, The Drawing Center, White Box-The Annex, Art Finance Partners, Van Der Plas Gallery, Sideshow Gallery, and Denise Bibro Gallery in New York, as well The Honolulu Museum of Art and Maui Arts and Cultural Center.  Debra Drexler is a Professor at the University of Hawaii, where she is Chair of the Drawing and Painting Area. She maintains studios in Brooklyn, NY and on the island of Oahu in Hawai’i.  Debra Drexler's most recent work is highly experimental large-scale abstract painting. In a recent review of a two-person exhibition (Whitehot Magazine,2017) Drexler's work as clearly referencing the long tradition of American abstraction and the established legacy of the New York School. The reviewer, Jonathan Goodman, described the work as a “new non-objectivity” that comes out of the current moment. He states that Drexler's painting “quite accurately describes the spirit of abstract art today, in which painting is struggling to break free of the constraints of time."

 Debra Drexler frequently uses hot pink, a color with heavily gendered associations. Her hot pink brushstrokes reference the “heroic” marks associated with action painting, and feminize them. The luminosity and high key saturation in Drexler's work are created through multiple layers of glazing of pigment mixed with polymer and alkyd media. Some of her color choices reference the post-digital experience with its highly saturated synthetic color. The luminosity and saturation also mirror the unique quality of light and the over-the-top, tropical color interactions in Hawai’i.