Debra Drexler, “Liquid Sun”
online exclusive solo exhibition
ONLINE GALLERY TOUR WITH THE ARTIST (RECORDED FOR VIEWING) take a 10 minute tour with the artist
Front Room Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of large scale abstract paintings by Debra Drexler entitled, “Liquid Sun”. Debra Drexler’s work engages in a feminist conversation with the history of action painting, which is informed by participating in both the contemporary resurgence of abstraction coming out of New York, and by living in the Post Colonial Pacific for close to three decades. Drexler’s selective color palette references the genderization of color; her brushstrokes reference the “heroic” marks associated with Action Painting, and feminize them. Through the use of powerful strokes of pinks, lilacs and lavenders, Debra Drexler's paintings express a muscular femininity and claims space as an act of empowerment.
Debra Drexler’s paintings translate an inner experience into outer form through vigorous athletic process. She works back and forth between the floor and the wall to create a perspective shift within the canvas’ visual plane. The marks are made with the entire body, the choreography recorded on the canvas. Working on the floor allows for gestural sweeps, applications of thin glazes, and pooling of paint. Drexler explores and controls the viscosities of paint through varying medium and application to create a complex textural layer of transparencies and opacities.
The scale is often human sized or larger, creating an expansive experience, immersing the viewer within the frame of the painting. Often she adds an unexpected element that deconstructs and flattens, in order to suggest another reading of space and time. Debra Drexler’s process of layering acrylic and oil creates reactions and interactions of various viscosities which enhance transparency, bite, porousness, impasto, gradations of matt to gloss, and surface dynamics.
"I investigate the contemporary sublime by exploring content dealing with the nature of perception with the intention of making the invisible visible. The luminosity and high key saturation in my work are created through multiple layers of glazing of pigment mixed with polymer and alkyd media. The luminosity and saturation also mirror the unique quality of light and the over-the-top, tropical color interactions in Hawai’i, where I have been living since 1992. I am interested in exploring forms of knowledge that are abstract and non-verbal in nature. Abstraction has the ability to convey meaning that goes beyond the reductive ideology of formalism." - Debra Drexler
