Robert Longo

The innocence and vulnerability of children is the subject of Robert Longo’s most recent body of work, a selection of which, titled “Children of Nyx”, will be exhibited in Metro Pictures’ upstairs gallery.

Rendered in Longo’s signature black and white charcoal style, the large-scale drawings depict the faces of infants and children, seemingly asleep. Their heads float in fields of dense blackness, a void like that of Longo’s planets and solar systems. The untroubled stillness of the children’s expressions belies the harsh realities and uncertainties of the world ahead and lends them an abstract sculptural quality.

Longo has had retrospective exhibitions at Hamburger Kunstverein and Deichtorhallen, Menil Collection in Houston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hartford Athenaeum and The Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo. Group exhibitions include Documenta, the Whitney Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. Major works are represented in collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Pompidou and the Albertina in Vienna. Monacelli Press is preparing a monograph for Fall 2008, Schirmer/Mosel is publishing a book of “Men in the Cities” photographs, and Hatje Cantz is publishing a book on Longo’s recent body of work.

Gallery Hours are 10am – 6pm, Tues – Sat

Upcoming exhibitions opening November 30: Jim Shaw