1301PE is pleased to announce the major exhibition entitled Ugly Beauty, by the preeminent abstract painter Judy Ledgerwood.
Ledgerwood insists the priority of first-person viewing when it comes to painting, or more broadly - that all art can only be known through the medium of it's inception and execution. She works within the conventions of history set forth by Painting with a capital "P" within a genealogy easily traceable to Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt. Ledgerwood's paintings elaborate on modernist authoritarian conceits with a language that uses repetitive vernacular forms, which immediately recall the decorative arts, interior design, and fashion: domains in which women have historically been the voices of authority. More expressly, Ledgerwood's language of painting utilizes the decorative to create form as opposed to ornamenting it, she challenges traditional readings of the decorative and opens the umbrella of modernist painting. But even more importantly, Ledgerwood's abstract painting builds on the language of modernism using decorative motifs and color both objectively and subjectively which is interesting now because it's everything we love and hate about painting. Ugly Beauty is the only way around the banality of beauty and the oppression and frank falseness of an idealized vision with no room for fragility or strength.
Judy Ledgerwood lives and works in Chicago. Recent one person exhibitions and projects include The Renaissance Soceity at the University of Chicago, Rhona Hoffman, Chicago and Feigen, New York. Selected group exhibitions include Tracy Williams, Ltd., New York , MoCA, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Art Institute Chicago.
