Eyes on the City: Drawings by Susanna Heller and Karlis Rekevics
New York Studio School
June 8 – July 16, 2023
Opening reception: Thursday, June 8, 6-8pm
Curated by Karen Wilkin
Susanna Heller and Karlis Rekevics can be described as connoisseurs of the gritty, expedient aspects of urban imagery: unexpected views, neglected corners, utilitarian infrastructure, and more. Heller, who died in 2021, was an indefatigable pedestrian. Rapid drawings made on her walks became the basis of energetic paintings, with another extreme perspective added by a residency at the World Trade Center. At the end of her life, she drew the city from her window, contrasting expansive distance with pitiless self-portraits. During Covid re- strictions, Rekevics, whose site-specific sculptures reinvent the built environment, daily walked miles under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway from his home to his studio. He distills his observations of the elevated structure into generous, high contrast drawings, conflating light, shade, and steel into images as firmly constructed as his sculptures. This exhibition contrasts Heller’s casual notations, installed as they were in her studio, with Rekevics’s refined, graphic improvisations on brute functionalism.
Read the full exhibition text here