About the Gallery Artists Represented Exhibition Archives Gallery Home Marsha Mateyka Gallery Exhibition Archive Nancy Wolf ____________________________ "Landscapes of Unease" A Forty Year Survey of Drawing ____________________________ November 9 - December 21, 2013 reception for the artist: Saturday, November 9, 4-6pm Washington Post Review Press Release   Selected Works Underpass, 1972 etching and silkscreen 24 x 18 inches The Past Remembered , 1978 pencil 11 x 15 inches Streets of the Prophets, 1980 carbon pencil 45 x 33 inches Angel on Eldridge Street, 1981 pencil 27 x 22 inches The Architect's Dilemma, 1981 pencil 10.75 x 7.75 inches The Boiler, 1984 carbon pencil 12 x 15 inches Whom Do We Follow, 1985 egg tempera, conte pencil 24 x 19.75 inches Who Are We, 1985 pencil 12 x 15 inches Ideal City, 1987 pencil 21 x 13 inches Perfect Order, 1988 pencil 22 x 33 inches Billboard Dreams, 1989 pencil 22 x 30 inches The Past has no Future, 1990 pencil and carbon 30 x 22.5 inches New Realities, 1990 pencil 22 x 15 inches Pilgrimage, 1993 acrylic on canvas 35 x 50 inches Implosion, 1994 gouache and pencil 56 x 45.25 inches Pivot of the Four Quarters, 1994 gouache and colored pencil 28.25 x 28.25 inches Turbulent Landscape, 2000 pencil 29 x 38 inches Remains of the Day, 2002 pencil 42 x 32 inches Gazing from a Mountain Pavillion (after Li Shida), 2003 pencil 23.25 x 14 inches From Hutong to Highrise, 2005 pencil on paper 24 x 16 inches Deconstruction-Reconstruction, 2005 pencil on paper 32 x 24 inches Game Board, 2008 gouache and colored pencil 22 x 30 inches High Line / Low Line, 2013 pencil 39 x 31 inches Available for purchase at the gallery, Nancy Wolf: Hidden Cities, Hidden Longings, by Karen A. Franck, a monograph covering 25 years of work, published by Academy Editions, 1996. (Only a limited number of copies remain.)                                                            Available works by Nancy Wolf Review Galleries The Washington Post, p E9 Sunday, December 8, 2013 by Mark Jenkins Nancy Wolf appreciates the clean lines and simple forms of Bauhaus-style architecture. But she’s an artist, not an architect, so she has to ask: Where do people and tradition feature in the International Style’s attempt to cleanse cities of their historic character? It’s a question she has been asking for 40 years as “Nancy Wolf: Landscapes of Unease” demonstrates.  The Marsha Mateyka Gallery retrospective begins with 1972’s  “The Underpass”, in which gaps in an immaculate grid reveal unruly pedestrians below.  It ends with 2013’s “High Line/Low Line”, in which centuries of architectural features promenade on Manhattan’s railway-turned-park, past blank high-rise facades. During the period these detailed drawings were made, Wolf lived mostly in New York, but also in Washington’s “new Southwest” and Nigeria, and she traveled extensively in Asia.  All those places are reflected in her work, as are baroque Italy and Le Corbusier’s severe plans for France.  “Perfect Order” shows a city divided into zones so rigidly that it’s even more absurd than the architect’s scheme to replace Paris with a series of identical tower blocks. Often, Wolf seems bemused or playful, as when she contrasts traditional Nigerian geometric motifs with modernist and industrial structures.  But sometimes she’s regretful or  even  angry:  “The Past Has No Future”  shows  a  leaning  New York  skyscraper that’s supported by the facades of the many 19th century beauties demolished to make room for it. Among the most trenchant drawings are those that depict a rapidly changing China. Traditional buildings and layouts, as well as the landscapes of venerable Chinese painting, are displaced by culturally unrooted edifices such as Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV headquarters in Beijing. “Reconstruction/Deconstruction” places the CCTV oddity amid a vast archaeological dig, like the one that yielded the Terra Cotta Warriors. Wolf works mostly in pencil, rendering both modernist lines and classical curves with extraordinary precision. But occasionally she incorporates color, using gouache, acrylic and colored pencil.  The astonishingly complex “Pilgrimage” contrasts old and new, specific and general: Pilgrims wander elevated causeways above skyscrapers outlined in bright hues against black, on a quest toward architectural variety rather that monomaniacal modernism. “LANDSCAPES OF UNEASE”: Nancy Wolf’s “Pilgrimage” (1993, acrylic on canvas) contrasts old and new, as well as specific and general. Nancy Wolf: Landscapes of Unease On view through December 21 at Marsha Mateyka Gallery, 2012 R Street, NW, 202 328-0088, www.marshamateykagallery.com Back to Top