This is the first survey exhibition of the work of American artist Rosemary Mayer (1943- 2014), a founding member of the now legendary A.I.R. Gallery, the first cooperative gallery for women in the United States. After beginnings in conceptual painting and drawing, Mayer embarked on a series of textile sculptures in the early 1970s, inspired in part by her fascination with Italian Mannerist painting. In 1982, she published her translation of the diary of Mannerist artist Jacopo da Pontormo, along with a catalog of her works. The textile sculptures, as well as later sculptures in wood, attest to Mayer's interest in creating works undermined by their very construction (through inherent instability, extreme tension of synthetic fabrics, and the like). In her titles, she referenced historical female figures such as Hypsipyle from Greek mythology or Galla Placidia, regent of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The exhibition focuses on Mayer's sculptural methods such as draping, knotting, stretching, and attaching, and embeds them in the artist's drawing and conceptual work through the 1980s.
