Barry Ratoff: OW

Solo exhibition

Greenberg Van Doren Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of mixed media work by New York artist Barry Ratoff. This intimate installation consisting mostly of drawings and photoworks is titled OW and is on view from March 8 through April 7, 2007. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Working in various media, Ratoff links autobiographical content to a highly refined practice that incorporates text pieces, visionary abstraction, and snapshot photoworks. Ratoff’s process begins as a private rumination on life and loss and results into works and images that become universal signifiers of time and memory. In his drawings, lines and strokes become meditative measures, poetically linking image, language and fleeting moments. For the artist, the click of a camera becomes a way of anchoring himself in the present, preserving a specific passing instant, and an image that ultimately becomes a formal keepsake of the past. Ratoff’s drawings and photos work in tandem to become markers, maps to be used as a way of looking back and guides to moving forward.

Barry Ratoff lives and works in New York, NY. Solo exhibitions include Anthony Meier Fine Art, San Francisco, CA and Paul Morris Gallery, NY. Group exhibitions include Andrea Rosen Gallery, NY; Guild & Greyshkul, NY; Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, NY; The Drawing Center, NY; Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY; and White Columns, NY.