September 8–November 10, 2007

Review:
John Devine in Art Lies (Issue #57, Spring 2008)

HOUSTON, Texas – August 9, 2007 – Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, is pleased to present Amy Sillman: Suitors & Strangers, on view September 8 through November 10, 2007. Featuring an artist considered among the most important female painters of her generation, the exhibition presents paintings Sillman has created within the last five years, offering a unique opportunity to fully appreciate her unwavering commitment to painting.

Ever since instructed in art school to settle on one mode of painting, either representational or abstract, Amy Sillman has chosen work in the very gap in between. “Her approach to painting has proven highly influential for a whole generation of young artists,” explains Claudia Schmuckli, Blaffer Gallery Curator and exhibition organizer. “She combines technical skill with an interest in layered, multifaceted subject matter and an informed engagement with previous artistic traditions, moving effortlessly from one form of representation to the next.”

Sillman’s paintings engage the viewer on an emotional level while asking intellectual questions about the condition of painting today. She conveys her own doubts about the conventions of painting by applying and then skillfully removing paint from her canvas. In Sillman’s words, her artwork is “a form of contemporary painting that wants to be both full of ideas and painterly-ness ... a kind of abstract representation about language and image."

The title of this exhibition encapsulates the complex relationship between figurative and abstract imagery. In Sillman’s paintings, abstraction and representation are both suitors and strangers. Their courtship is one marked by an awareness of difference, and their tentative union implies a state of vulnerability and fleetingness. Always one to relate art to life, Sillman paints the way she lives: driven by passion and desire, full of doubt, but free of fear.

Amy Sillman: Suitors & Strangers is organized by Claudia Schmuckli, Curator, Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston. The exhibition and publication are made possible in part by The Fifth Floor Foundation and The Cecil Amelia Blaffer von Furstenberg Endowment for Exhibitions and Programs. Additional support is provided by Sikkema Jenkins Co., New York.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue.  Containing 16 full color plates of paintings in the exhibition, and essays by New York Psychoanalyst David Lichtenstein, Ph.D., and Claudia Schmuckli, the publication focuses on the development of SiIlman’s themes since 2000.

Related Programs:

• Friday, September 7, 7–9 pm                          Opening Reception 

• Thursday, September 13, 5–8 pm                   Blaffer Student Association Red Block Bash

• Thursday, September 13, 8 pm                       Outdoor screening of Michael Gitlin’s film The Birdpeople

(with Aurora Picture Show and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston)

• Wednesday, September 26, 6 pm                   Contemporary Salon 

• Wednesday, November 7, 12 noon                 Brown Bag Gallery Tour