“Sirens” a solo show by Stuart Netsky at Bridgette Mayer Gallery

Bridgette Mayer Gallery is pleased to announce our winter exhibition which will feature the work of gallery artist Stuart Netsky. Netsky’s exhibition, entitled “Sirens,” is his first one-man show at the gallery as well as his first solo exhibition in Philadelphia in several years. His new works include a variety of prints, mixed media pieces, paintings and sculptures that incorporate images of sirens, goddesses and pop culture icons. In a new and unique endeavor for the artist, he will additionally be creating an installation in The Vault Room which will feature limited edition table settings, women’s silk scarves, silk pillows and blankets.

Netsky appropriates art historical references and imagery from popular culture and integrates them into his works to emphasize underlying violent and sexual symbolism that exposes the guise and hypocrisy of the excess and superficiality of his subject matter. He describes his new body of work with the following quote by Gertrude Stein: “It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that Siren until she allures us to our death.”

“Stuart Netsky has long been interested in how gender roles and sexual stereotypes are communicated in Hollywood films, fashion, and renowned works of art. In his new work, the focus is on women in various guises-ranging from goddesses in Greek mythology to Hollywood celebrities and icons of modern art. Persephone, Venus DeMilo, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe as well as Modigliani’s elongated muses and Picasso’s Desmoiselles D’Avignon are all venerated and miraculously transformed.” –   Judith Tannenbaum, November 2014

Stuart Netsky has had over a dozen solo exhibitions in Philadelphia and New York since 1990. His first museum survey, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia in 1993, included a multi-part installation referencing the AIDS epidemic and issues of vanity and mortality. Netsky’s work has been in recent shows across the U.S. including “Mind Over Matter: Reworking Women’s Work” (Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM); “Influence, Anxiety and Gratitude” (List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA); and “S(how)” (Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA).