Häusler Contemporary Zürich is pleased to present a Viewing Room featuring a selection of art by American painter Judy Ledgerwood. Her intensely colorful works reflect various aspects of art and cultural history in a reference to her conceptual approach as a contemporary practitioner of geometric abstraction.

«While perfection might bring one closer to God, imperfection brings emphasis to human qualities.» Judy Ledgerwood

The vibrant colors and opulent ornamentation in the works of Judy Ledgerwood (*1959, Brazil, Indiana, US; lives in Chicago and Sawyer, Michigan, US) are deeply rooted in painterly tradition. From the outset of her career, Ledgerwood has very consciously positioned herself within art history, challenging its prevailing assumptions and assigned roles. She combines influences from the largely male-dominated realms of color field painting and gestural abstraction with simple, geometric patterns often associated with popular culture and the female-dominated realm of textile design.

The motifs of the quatrefoil and rhombus are particularly recurrent in Ledgerwood’s works on paper and canvas. The fact that she has always used them is not by chance. These shapes had a significant role in Stone Age cultures that worshipped goddesses. In a dynamic gesture, the artist assembles these motifs into irregular geometrizing grids and allows traces of her vibrant colors to drip outside the grid structure in a kind of ironic reference to the «dripping» practiced by American Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s.

In sculptural majolica, Ledgerwood accentuates the different layers of meaning that vases hold. These icons of everyday domestic life are sculptures and relief-bearers as well as the result of a performative process. In the chosen silhouette, the vase also becomes a metaphor for the human body. Several residencies at Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg gave the artist an opportunity to apply her innovative artistic approach to a traditional craft.