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Marsha Mateyka Gallery - Exhibition
"Drawing"
 May 11 -  June 30, 2011


Nancy Wolf
William T. Wiley
Nathan Oliveira
Jae Ko
Gene Davis
L.C. Armstrong

Washington Post Review



                                         Press Release

The current exhibition at the Marsha Mateyka Gallery celebrates the act of drawing.   The six artists included have exhibited at the gallery for many years.   They are particularly well known for their innovative use of materials and their mastery of the drawing tradition.


Nancy Wolf

Reckless destruction of cultural sites and communities has long been the focus of the drawing of New York artist Nancy Wolf.  Since the 1970's, the artist has perfected a style of architectural rendering to create surrealistic images that comment on urban renewal, contemporary architecture and misguided "progress".
In 2004, Nancy Wolf was an artist-in-residence at the University of Hong Kong.  While there, she was greatly impacted by the scale and speed of such changes in the urban environment.  The three drawings in this exhibition are part of the artist's ongoing series about cultural loss and the speed of modernization in China.

The Marsha Mateyka Gallery has represented Nancy Wolf since 1984.   Her works are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.





Follies in a Grid, 2010
acrylic on paper
18 x 25 inches / framed 26 x 32.25 inches





Traffic Circle Mandala (Mandala Series), 2008
gouache and pencil on black museum board,
40 x 40 inches / framed 46.25 x 46.25 inches





Secluded Dwellings in Summer Mountains (after Wang Meng), 2003
pencil on paper,
16 x 19 inches / framed 24.75 x 27.75 inches

                                                                                          Available works by Nancy Wolf





William T. Wiley

Drawing is an integral part of the work of West Coast artist William T. Wiley. He is known internationally for his combination of drawing with written text, painting and even sculpture, often in a single work.  In this exhibition, two large drawings from 2007, "War Party" and "Planet Dangerfield" take a line for a walk into comment on politics and culture with humor.   Recently, the artist's career was celebrated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in a fifty year retrospective which opened in 2009 in Washington, DC and then traveled.

William T. Wiley has been represented by the Marsha Mateyka Gallery in 11 solo exhibitions, since 1988.   His works are in major museum collections throughout the country including the National Gallery of Art, Hirshhorn and Smithsonian American Art Museum.





War Party, 2007
mixed media on paper,
44 x 38.75 inches / framed 53 x 47 inches





Planet Dangerfield, 2007
mixed media on paper,
46 x 34 inches / framed 50.5 x 38 inches

                                                                                          Available works by William T. Wiley





Nathan Oliveira

Nathan Oliveira, an acknowledged American Master, whose Estate is now represented by the Marsha Mateyka Gallery, first became known with the Bay Area Figurative painters in the late 1950's.   This group of California artists, which also included Richard Diebenkorn and David Parks, were similar in their interest in combining the method of abstract expressionistic painting with figurative subject matter.   In the current exhibition at the Marsha Mateyka Gallery, two figurative gestural watercolors represent Nathan Oliveira's mastery of both the medium and subject--by "drawing" with water, the artist has created puddles of color which actually conform to the anatomy of the pose.   Touches of charcoal line augment the structure.

The paintings, sculpture, monotypes and watercolors of Nathan Oliveira have been the subject of eight solo exhibitions at the gallery, since 1988.   This artist's works are in museum collections throughout the United States and abroad.





Imi #73, 1989
watercolor and charcoal,
24 x 19 inches / framed 32 x 26.5 inches





Imi #63, 1989
watercolor and charcoal,
19 x 24 inches / framed 26 x 31 inches

                                                                                          Available works by Nathan Oliveira





Jae Ko

Korean born, American artist Jae Ko is well known to Washington audiences for her unique use of paper to create sculpture.  She is rapidly gaining recognition throughout the United States and abroad.   For over three decades, this artist has focused on the sculptural possibilities of commercial grade paper, re-rolled and submitted to the action of water, the stresses of twisting or the forces of gravity.   Last fall, using 400 rolls of brown Kraft paper, Jae Ko created "Force of Nature", a very large, striking, site-specific installation at The Phillips Collection.  In this current exhibition, three works by the artist are unusual in their two dimensional approach.  Manipulating the same materials of paper, glue and ink as she uses in her sculptures, the artist rakes one layer of glue and ink over another to draw the concentric imagery which is characteristic of her sculpture.

Jae Ko's works are in the Hirshhorn Museum and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.





untitled (JKD#1), 2011
glue and calligraphy ink on paper,
12 x 18 inches / framed 18 x 23.25 inches





untitled (JKD#2), 2011
glue and calligraphy ink on paper,
12 x 18 inches / framed 18 x 23.25 inches





untitled (JKD#3), 2011
glue and calligraphy ink on paper,
12 x 18 inches / framed 18 x 23.25 inches



                                                                                          Available works by Jae Ko





Gene Davis

Gene Davis gained international recognition in the early 1960's with his nonobjective, abstract striped imagery--now considered "classic".  A native Washingtonian, the artist was famous as both a Washington Color school painter and Color Field artist, along with Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.  The drawings in the current exhibition, created just before his death in 1985, are not preparatory studies for his paintings but unique works in themselves. The two drawings in felt tipped pen are free hand and show the artist's willingness to experiment within the confines of his vertical stripe imagery.  The large drawing in colored pencil is softer in its tones and is one of only three such works in the artist's oeuvre.

The Marsha Mateyka Gallery has represented the Estate of Gene Davis since 1996 and is an authority on this artist’s work.  Like Nathan Oliveira, Gene Davis's works are in major museum collections throughout the United States and abroad.





untitled (GD1346), 1981
felt tip pen on paper,
15 x 20.12 inches / framed 22.75 x 27.5 inches





untitled (GD1378), 1982
felt tip pen on paper,
15 x 20.12 inches / framed 22.75 x 27.5 inches





untitled (GD3109), 1984
colored pencil on paper,
44.5 x 30 inches / framed 53 x 38.75 inches

                                                                                          Available works by Gene Davis





L.C. Armstrong

New York artist LC Armstrong  creates a coiled line by drawing with a bomb fuse  placed on a painted surface.   She then lights the fuse to burn the line into the surface of the painting which is then encapsulated in resin.  This work titled "Spring Fever" represents an early, purely abstract, exploration in this medium by the artist, who has since used her bomb fuse lines as stems in over-the-top floral extravaganzas.

LC Armstrong's works are in the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.





Spring Fever, 1997
acrylic, bomb fuse and resin on linen on wood,
42 x 36 inches





"Drawing" at Mateyka


The Washington Post
Galleries, C8, Friday, June 3, 2011
by Mark Jenkins


"Drawing: LC Armstrong, Gene Davis, Jae Ko, Nathan Oliveira, William T. Wiley, Nancy Wolf" through June 30 at Marsha Mateyka Gallery, 2012 R St.,NW, 202 328-0088, www.marshamateykagallery.com

There's an Asian quality to the most interesting work in "Drawing: LC Armstrong, Gene Davis, Jae Ko, Nathan Oliveira, William T. Wiley, Nancy Wolf", a group show of current and former artist in the Marsha Mateyka Gallery's stable.  Puckishly, Wolf combines Chinese and Indian motifs with the dominant forms of built America.  Her "Traffic Circle Mandala" is framed by a black and gray urban canyon, while "Secluded Dwellings in summer Mountains" sets a rustic peak (in the style of 14th-century Chinese artist Wang Meng) at center of a snarl of modern highways.

Other pieces, some of which stretch the definition of "drawing", have an Asian-like simplicity.   Three ink or pencil sketches by Davis reduce his monumental stripe paintings to wispy suggestions, and two subtle Oliveria nudes, rendered in charcoal and pinkish-brown watercolor, have the limited palette of a traditional Chinese ink painting.

Although most of this work is on paper, the artists don't restrict themselves to ink and pencil.   Armstrong's "Spring Fever" was made by igniting a bomb fuse, which burned a snaky black pattern into painted linen.  The piece was then coated with synthetic resin, producing a sheen that suggest surfboards and sports cars.   The basic image is simple, but the textures are complex and fascinating.

Korean-born, Tokyo-educated, Washington artist Ko has long worked sculpturally with rolls of paper, which she shapes and colors with glue infused with black calligraphy ink. (Lately, she's experimented with brighter hues.)  Her three untitled pieces in this show are closely linked to that work, but in an almost-flat format.  Paralleling the circular motifs of her three-diimensional style, Ko swirls her black blue-ink mixture on paper, creating patterns that suggest tree rings and the raked gravel of Zen gardens.  The technique gives the drawings a chiseled quality, hinting at depths in just a thin layer of sticky pigment.   The effect is both tactile and intangible, holding the eye for extended contemplation.

Note: This review can be found online at www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/waves-at-matsushima-rich-art-depicting-japanese-islands-along-tohoku-coast/2011/06/01/AGqZpXHH_story.html