VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Menil Collection presents the exhibition Steve Wolfe on Paper. On view April 2, 2010 through July 25, 2010.

Steve Wolfe was born in Pisa, Italy in 1955 and lives and works in San Francisco, California. For the last twenty years, Wolfe has created objects and drawings of astounding craft and visual presence that investigate intersections among material culture, intellectual history, and personal and collective memory. Wolfe’s art represent objects of cultural mass dissemination—books and records. Rather than the ordinary depiction of books on canvas or another two-dimensional framing device, Wolfe’s painted objects employ the tradition of trompe l’oeil, the trick of the eye. Tattered books and worn album covers are meticulously produced to convey the mark of time and handling, and often literally fool the eye on first inspection. The tears, creases, and basic wear point to human contact and become metaphors of enlightenment and culture.

Indebted to Pop Art, Wolfe’s optical strategy manifests an updated approach to craft. But while the patina of time is crucial to Wolfe’s art, perhaps what is most interesting about the collection is its sense of autobiography. Wolfe’s work is conceived and made with both personal history and personal touch, and suggests an almost erotic representation of the fact that one can fall in love with that which is ephemeral (ideas, music). For Wolfe, it is not just any book that necessitates scrupulous handmade reproduction with wood, ink, paper, lithography and paint. His carefully considered subjects include reproductions of books by Gertude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Raymond Chandler, Frank O’Hara, Marcel Duchamp, and James Joyce, thus creating a portrait of the artist as a perpetual student.

This exhibition will focus on the artist’s works on paper, some of which are purely drawn, but most of which combine aspects of drawing, collage and printmaking. The artist’s transformation of common objects requires the viewer to re-think what they mean as such, placing emphasis on craft and the handmade to transform the common into the uncanny and the sublime.

Steve Wolfe on Paper is the fourth exhibition in The Menil Collection’s series, “Contemporary Conversations,” which highlights work by living artists in the collection. The series aims to work with the artist to focus on a specific aspect or time period of their production.

This exhibition and catalogue are collaboratively produced by the Menil Collection and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Organized by Franklin Sirmans, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection, and Carter Foster, curator of drawings at the Whitney Museum.

Pictured: Steve Wolfe,  Untitled (Picasso), 1996 Oil, screenprint, modeling paste, paper, canvasboard and wood 8-3/4 x 5-7/8 x 1/2 inches. The Menil Collection, Houston, Bequest of David Whitney Photo: George Hixson, Houston.