Raymond Pettibon: And What is Drawing For?
Raymond Pettibon (b. 1957, Tucson, Arizona) has been a key figure in American art since the 1990s. In his unique drawings, he delves into America and its cultural and historical strata, from the formative ethos of the American spirit to the subcultures on its margins.
The mirror placed by Pettibon reflects a complex reality which distances its gaze to the previous century, speaking the language of each social stratum he discusses. The core of each and every drawing, however, is the dynamic relationship between image and text, which opens up a space of reflection on behavioral patterns and cultural conditioning. From this space, Pettibon's work refines insights into the cultural moment in which we live, not only in America.
Featuring some 100 drawings and three video works, the exhibition presents, for the first time in Israel, a concentrated and substantial body of work from Pettibon's extensive oeuvre. Clusters of motifs identified with his work (e.g. surfers, baseball players, and Charles Manson) and of the major themes it addresses (including capitalism, the American government, and the war in Iraq) are intertwined in the exhibition along an ars-poetical axis of drawings relating to art itself and engaging with the artist's social status and human condition.
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* Audio guide available only in Hebrew
No Title (Is that not…), 2011
Pen, ink, and acrylic on paper, 88.9×120 cm
Collection of Maurice Marciano, Los Angeles
© Raymond Pettibon, courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles