Robert Longo

Robert Longo
Monsters

21 September - 26 October 2002

Robert Longo will exhibit new drawings, Monsters, at Metro Pictures from September 21 through October 26. The seven outsized charcoal drawings of massive, thundering waves bear the names of renowned surfing beaches or surfing terms such as: Hell's Gate,Dragon Head, and Black Tube. Rendered in high contrast black and white, the drawings reproduce the moment of a tremendous surge of unleashed force, as the rich expanse of velvety charcoal surfaces parallels the subject's vastness, mystery and intensity. Devoid of people, location and color, the looming crests of exploding power are notably singular portraits of emotional and physical forces. The near abstraction of the waves is strikingly dissimilar to the more familiar representations of the sea as poetic and romantic, or in terms of man against nature.

Robert Longo's studio is in Lower Manhattan, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the German actress Barbara Sukova, and their two sons. An exhibition of his Freud Drawings (exhibited at Metro Pictures in 2001) will be on view at the Krefelder Kunstmuseen, in Krefeld, Germany, in its Haus Lang and Haus Ester during November and then at The Albertina in Vienna. A catalogue will accompany this exhibition. Longo has had retrospective exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunstverein and Deichtorhallen, the Menil Collection in Houston, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hartford Athenaeum, The Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo and Ashikaga City Museum. His work has been included in a myriad of group shows such as Documenta, The Whitney Biennal, and the Venice Bienale. The artist is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Menil Collection in Houston, Musee d\'art Contemporain in Montreal, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Albertina in Vienna.