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METRO PICTURES - Robert Longo

2,907 views · Published 12 April 2014 · 5:55 · Indexed 10 November 2026

Channel: NYC GALLERY OPENINGS · 2014 · Entertainment

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Robert Longo
GANG OF COSMOS

Metro Pictures
519 W. 24th St.
New York, NY 10011 

April 10th - May 23rd, 2014
Opening:  April 10th 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM


"Gang of Cosmos" an exhibition by Robert Longo at Metro Pictures includes 
twelve charcoal drawings of well-known Abstract Expressionist paintings. In 
entering into this dialogue with major figures of 50 years ago, Longo 
acknowledges Abstract Expressionism's undiminished importance in 
American art and its influence on his own thinking. This thoroughly studied 
and finely executed body of work represents Longo's most personal 
engagement with his subject and the revelatory process of executing the 
drawings in minute detail. 

Longo studied the actual paintings in museum collections and worked from 
photographs that he digitally manipulated to take on the challenge of 
drawing a painting, representing the overall picture and translating the 
three-dimensional detail of the physical paint and the color into black-and-
white. Rendered in charcoal, the original artworks are immediately 
recognizable, but it is the overlooked or imperceptible details of the complex 
surface, the tactility of the paint, the brushstrokes, and the pattern of the 
canvas that Longo has made visible. Exploring his own ambivalence toward 
painting, Longo's drawings address the historical magnitude of Abstract 
Expressionism in art historical and cultural contexts—the shift in political and 
cultural dominance from Europe to the United States in the years following 
the Second World War—as well as the fundamental differences between the 
execution and behavior of painting and Longo's own intensive and acutely 
rendered drawings. Represented are Willem DeKooning, Adolph Gottleib, 
Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Norman Lewis, Joan Mitchell, Robert 
Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko 
and Clyfford Still.

A concurrent exhibition by Robert Longo at Petzel Gallery looks at the U.S. 
Capitol building and the American flag, two highly polarizing national 
symbols that stand in counterpoint to new aggression of the Abstract 
Expressionist paintings and their exploitation for international propaganda. 
In Longo's enormous seven-panel drawing, the immutable monumentality of 
the Capitol image is particularized by subtle variations in the molding above 
each of the building's windows and by their individual curtains. Longo's 
most recent confrontation with the contentious nature of the American flag 
as symbol of both nationalism and protest is a 17-foot high black wax 
surfaced sculpture that appears to collapse into or fall through the gallery's 
floor. A mediating note is a drawing of the poignantly solemn image of the 
riderless horse that led JFK's funeral procession. 

For more than 30 years Longo has been a prominent figure in New York's 
cultural scene. His artworks, performance pieces, music performances, films 
and videos invent, cull, and recycle iconographic images from an expansive 
cultural visual cache to comment on ideas surrounding image potency, 
production and circulation. He was among the five artists included in the 
seminal 1977 Artists Space exhibition "Pictures" and is a key figure of the 
subsequently named Pictures Generation. In May Longo will be honored by 
The Kitchen. Longo has had one-person exhibitions at the Musée d'art 
moderne et d'art contemporain, Nice; Krefelder Kunstmuseum, Krefeld, 
Germany; the Albertina, Vienna; Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo; the 
Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of 
Contemporary Art Chicago and the Menil Collection in Houston. Robert 
Longo has participated in Documenta, the Whitney Biennial and the Venice 
Biennale.


Music by:
Chill Carrier - A New Day

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