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MODERN ART MUSEUM OF FORT WORTH PRESENTS
The FOCUS exhibition series is organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Curator Andrea Karnes for the Museum’s Director’s Council, a group that supports acquisitions at the Museum. Each of these solo exhibitions contains from one to six works by a living international contemporary artist. FOCUS exhibitions are open to the public and are included in general Museum admission: $10 for adults; $4 for seniors (60+) and students with identification; free for children 12 and under; free for Modern members.
FOCUS: JEFF ELROD
In 1996, Elrod began to rough out drawings on a computer screen using a simple, vector-based graphics program. The process of using a mouse to create colors, shapes, and broken lines is a breakthrough for him. Because he came out of a tradition of hard-edge painting and employed a kind of mechanical line in his work, he immediately noticed a formal similarity between the mark making done on a computer and what he was doing in his own paintings. The crisp, clean lines resembled what he had already been making with tape, and he responded to the method of using a computer mouse as a way to create templates for large paintings. Doing so allowed him to watch the smooth, detached drawings unfold as he made them with the light of the screen, rather than making notes with a pencil and paper.
Elrod refers to his computer imagery as “frictionless drawings.” When he is satisfied with a particular drawing, he transfers it onto canvas by tracing the forms and masking out certain sections with tape to create lines and shapes. The act of using a computer file and then translating the image into paint by hand literally puts friction back into the frictionless drawing. Elrod has described this process as “analog” painting, creating “handmade copies of digital originals.” The artist is attracted to this type of slippage and play between—how the hand and eyes work with a computer screen and a mouse, and how that differs from the immediacy of putting paint on canvas. Transferring the information from one medium to another also impacts the space; the canvases take on a hybrid quality in which flatness and depth coexist, or become compressed and more difficult to detect. His finished works, then, can be seen as sophisticated, subversive meditations that propel abstract painting into the twenty-first century.
Removing the tape to reveal the lines and forms becomes the moment of magic, and though they make reference to the realm of computer graphics that Elrod uses, ultimately the works are about painting. “I’m not into drawing on the computer and then sending out to have a print made of it. I’m into figuring out how to put the drawing onto a canvas so that it becomes a part of the painting history dialogue, and not part of a computer, or digital art dialogue. I have to think of how I’m going to make a painting, so using a computer drawing simplifies that process. . . . I guess I’d say I’m lazy, in a thoughtful way.”
Elrod’s work has recently appeared in Bitstreams BitStreams at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2001; Glee: Painting Now at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary ArtContemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, 2000, and The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Florida, 2001; and Abstract Painting, Once Removed at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, 1998. His paintings are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland. Born in Irving, Texas, the artist currently lives and works in Marfa, Texas, and New York City. FOCUS: Jeff Elrod marks his first solo exhibition in an American museum.
Biography
EDUCATION
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
The Director’s Council
The Director’s Council FOCUS series features three solo exhibitions organized annually by Curator Andrea Karnes. Each exhibition opens with an exclusive cocktail reception for Council members, an opportunity to meet the featured artist and discuss his or her work. One work by each artist will be chosen to be part of the final Council selections. At the season’s Purchase Meeting, the Council selects one work to enter the Modern’s collection. This format creates an in-depth understanding of the Modern’s acquisitions process and provides a spirited and popular series of events. The annual dues, $525, include all the benefits of a Family membership and invitations to exclusive Director’s Council events.
LOCATION
Museum Gallery Hours
CAFÉ MODERN
General Admission Prices (includes special exhibition)
The Museum is closed Monday and holidays including New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas. |
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