Amy Cutler. Alterations

3 july, 2007 - 10 september, 2007 /
Sabatini Building, Espacio Uno
Exhibition view. Amy Cutler. Alterations, 2007
Exhibition view. Amy Cutler. Alterations, 2007

Amy Cutler’s (New York, USA, 1974) work manifests in meticulous drawings and watercolours; with them she recreates a fascinating universe inhabited by women, in which -on an allegorical, surreal and feminist level- she plans certain founding ideas of a new world. Faced with the proliferation of digital drawing, Cutler has distinguished herself with manual work, increasingly polished, precise and conceptually more complex. The artist recreates female imagery made up of fantasy stories, similar to folktales that have been transmitted orally and written. In her work there is the intention of anthropological reconstruction with domestic heroines in a process of adaptation to the environment. Her protagonists are always women who appear in an organised group, working or in transit from a trip, pioneers or colonising powers of a world waiting to be discovered, achieving a very personal poetry, which circulates with an artistic greatness, either through prosaic or real scenes, or also through dreamlike scenes.

The unexpected narrative tension that is apparent in Cutler’s drawings immediately attracts the attention from specialised critics; she was selected to participate in such important exhibitions as the Whitney Biennial 2004, Greater New York in PS1/MoMA in 2005, and is included in major collections such as the Walter Art Center in Minneapolis, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.

In this exhibition, with which Cutler is exhibited for the first time in Europe, the artist moves the imagery of her paintings and drawings to three-dimensionality. The drawing is transmuted into installation, her most ambitious project to date. Never before has she addressed sculpture and when she was proposed this specific project for the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the space itself suggested the use of this technique.

The connection between all women, a network of female solidarity, is the subject of this installation, which, like in all of Cutler’s work, there is a reference to the construction of identity through common work and effort. Through a work so common in many cultures: winding string into a ball so as to be able to weave, the artist forms a highly effective scenic metaphor.

Exhibition´s details

Organized by: 
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Artists: