We've been clocking Ethiopian-born painter Julie Mehretu since her graduate school days at RISD, but really took notice when she broke through in the Studio Museum in Harlem's landmark Freestyle exhibition in 2001. Now Julie has mounted her first solo exhibition in a European venue with Black City at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, also known as MUSAC.
Black City comprises a summary of the artist's recent work (2003 to the present) and includes some 20 canvases of various size. The current work extends Julie's signature technique and subject matter; paintings executed with a draftswoman's hands and an architect's eye. The work operates in layers, drawing on her personal history as a kind of latter-day nomad (born in Addis Ababa, schooled in Dakar and Providence, currently working in New York City). She deals with tropes of urban planning, particularly interested in those structures most closely related to politics and power, and layers over these abstract and semi-abstract figures that erupt in violence, struggle, and war. "I think of them as activist paintings in that way," says Julie. Hence the dense surfaces refer to complex civilizations shaped by war and the built environment and to the struggles for change.
Black City remains at MUSAC through 7 January 2007 before traveling to Kunstverein Hannover (Germany) and to Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst (Denmark).
