PEEL is proud to present Libby Black in a solo exhibition at the gallery from September 10th to October
16th. Ms. Black is an established star on the Bay Area art scene; she gained significant notoriety in 2005
for her installation of a Kate Spade store at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, replete
with shoes, shoeboxes, handbags and presentation shelves all composed of paper, acrylic paint, and hot
glue. Since then she has been a perennial fixture in art fairs and in solo and group around the country.
The Show, If Nothing Else Matters, is an ambitious combination of painting, drawing, and sculpture that
uses the iconography of the fashion world to explore intersecting themes of desire v. ownership and
access v. exclusion.
Ms. Black’s latest series of oil paintings, sculptures and graphite drawings grapple with her eternal
dilemma of what it means to fit in, and at what cost. Her work draws from source imagery that may have
an ambiguous meaning. She is conscious of the fantasy created to sell a product or feature a trend,
feeling both drawn to the fantasy and also critical of it. The images conjure a similar mode of desire to
that evoked by the products themselves, illuminating how and why the allure of fashion functions as it
does. However, it’s important to note that the paintings are not disdainful; there is a recognizable love and
fascination in them.
Also on view will be a series of gouaches portraying covers of Lesbian Paperbacks from the 1950s and
1960s. These pulp pleasure tomes bear campy titles, such as That Kind of Girl, illustrating a swinging 60s
version of lesbian camp that was arguably written more for the heterosexual male than the closeted
lesbian.
Black’s impressive home gym sculpture installation, Workout Room, was on view at the San Jose Institute
of Contemporary Art April 10 – June 19, 2010. Her work was also featured in New Art for a New Century:
Recent Acquisitions 2000-2009 at the Orange County Museum of Art. Black has had solo exhibitions at
SPACES, Cleveland, OH; Broad Street Gallery, University of Georgia, Athens, GA; and Charlie James
Gallery, Los Angeles. Other notable exhibitions include the important group survey Artists of Invention: A
Century of CCA at the Oakland Museum of California; Bay Area Now 4, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,
San Francisco; The 2004 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art; The Superfly Effect, Jersey
City Museum, NJ; Art on Paper 2008, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Smoke and Mirrors:
Deception in Contemporary Art, Visual Arts Gallery, University of Alabama at Birmingham; and Belle du
Jour, the inaugural exhibition at Collette Blanchard Gallery, New York, among many, many others.
Black received her MFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco in 2001, and her BFA
from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1999. Her work has been reviewed and featured in Artforum, Art in
America, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Zink Magazine, the New York Times, the Star Ledger, the Los Angeles
Times, Elle Magazine, Origina (Mexico City, Mexico), the New York Sun, Art of the Times, New American
Paintings, Art Basel Miami Beach (2005 & 2006), San Francisco Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle,
the SF Bay Guardian, Artweek, Flaunt, 7x7 Magazine, and several other publications. Her work is in the
permanent collection of the Orange County Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of California, and The
Chaney Family Collection, as well as an impressive number of renowned private collections around the
world.
Ms. Black’s work comes courtesy Marx & Zavaterro, San Francisco and the exhibition was curated by Lea
Weingarten and PEEL.
Contact information
Steven Hempel
PEEL
4411 Montrose Blvd
Houston, TX 77006
713.520.8122
