AURIE RAMIREZ
Curated by Matthew Higgs, White Columns, New York
in association with Creative Growrth Art Center, Oakland, CA
January 20 - February 24, 2007
Jack Hanley Gallery is proud to present the first Los Angeles exhibition of the Oakland-based artist Aurie Ramirez. Since the early 1980s, Aurie Ramirez has worked at the Creative Growrth Art Center in Oakland, California. Creative Growrth is a world-renowned workshop and art studio for adult artists with physical, mental, and developmental disabilities. Aurie has a condition that shares many characteristics with Autism. Notably she both speaks and writes in a language of her own devising. Over the past two decades Ramirez has created a highly idiosyncratic and extraordinary body of work - invariably watercolor drawings on paper - that echoes the visionary production of an artist such as Henry Darger. Both artists have created psychologically complex imaginary realms inhabited by a recurring cast of characters, scenarios, and narratives. From the outset Aurie's work has been inspired by her interest in manifestations of the "popular gothic," e.g. the Adam's Family, or the rock band Kiss. Focusing on works made over the past five years, Ramirez's exhibition in Los Angeles will feature discrete groups of watercolor drawings that explore her ongoing, recurring, and fundamental interests.
Aurie Ramirez (b. 1962) lives and works in Oakland, California. Her work was the subject of a widely praised solo show at Whitle Columns, New York in 2005, and a solo presentation at White Columns' stand at the 2005 NADA art fair in Miami. Her work was recently included in 'Mid Life Crisis,' curated by Tara Subkoff for Salander O'Reilly Gallery, New York, In 2003 Aurie's work was shown alongside Anthony Burdin, Tomma Abts, Jason Meadows, and Judith Scott, amongst others in Black Rainbow, Lucky Tackle Gallery, Oakland, 2003 (curated by Anne Collier). She has shown in numerous group shows at the Creative Growth Gallery, Oakland, and in other exhbitions of work by Creative Growth artists at Southern Exposure, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (both San Francisco), amonst others.