Nicole Eisenman / MATRIX 248 : Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA

3 May - 14 July 2013

Information

MATRIX 248 showcases the work of New York–based artist Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965), who became prominent in the 1990s and has been steadfastly expanding dialogues surrounding painting and drawing ever since. Having come of age in the East Village in the 1980s, Eisenman's work reflects myriad sources both art historical and popular, culling from what writer and critic Lynne Tillman has referred to as a “vast image bank” that ranges from eighties punk ephemera to canonical works from the history of art. Parisian cafe settings found in late nineteenth-century paintings by Manet and Degas become open-air beer gardens one might find in present-day Berlin or Brooklyn, with the smartphones on the tables locating the scene in time. Intermixing styles associated with American Regionalism and the Italian Renaissance with German Expressionism, Eisenman brings history to bear in her canvases and drawings, yet twists the imagery...