Recent Press:
Francesca Wade, “At the Swiss Institute Rosemary Mayer,” London Review of Books, January 6, 2022.
Samantha Friedman, “Seventeen Ways Art Inspired Us This Year,” MoMA Magazine, December 28, 2021.
Johanna Fateman, “Johanna Fateman’s highlights of 2021,” Top Ten, Artforum, December 2021.
Nicole Rudick, “Rosemary Mayer's Tethered Histories,”
The New York Review of Books, December 9, 2021
Ian Wallace, “Rosemary Mayer,” Artforum Critics’
Picks, Artforum, November 2021.
Candice Chu, “Rosemary Mayer: Ways of Attaching,”
ArtSeen, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2021.
Greater New York 2021
MoMA PS1
October 7, 2021 - April 18, 2022
Greater New York, MoMA PS1’s signature survey of artists living and working in the New York City area, returns for its fifth edition from October 7, 2021 to April 18, 2022. Delayed one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this iteration offers an intimate portrayal of New York by creating proximity between key—yet often under-examined—histories of art-making and emerging practices. Featuring the work of 47 artists and collectives, Greater New York offers new insights and opens up geographic and historical boundaries by pinpointing both specific and expanded narratives of the local in a city that provokes a multitude of perspectives. Continue reading about this exciting exhibition here. Rosemary Mayer: Ways of Attaching
The Swiss Institute, NYC
September 9, 2021 - January 9, 2022
Rosemary Mayer, Untitled (8.26.71), 1971, Colored pencil and colored marker on paper, 14 x 11 in
"Pleasures and Possible Celebrations": Rosemary Mayer's Temporary Monuments, 1977-1981
Gordon Robichaux, NYC
May 2 - June 20, 2021
41 Union Square West #925 and #907 (Entrance 22 East 17th St.)
In conjunction with the exhibition, Gordon Robichaux commissioned a text from the artist’s niece Marie Warsh, in which she considers the work and ideas in depth. To read this text and learn more about Rosemary's upcoming New York solo show, visit Gordon Robichaux's site here.
Rosemary Mayer, Some Days In April (Marie), 1978, Pen and pencil on paper, 26 x 20 in.
DOWNTOWN 2021
January 4 - February 20, 2021 La MaMa Galleria | 47 Great Jones St.
Presented by La MaMa Galleria
Curated by Sam Gordon
DOWNTOWN 2021 takes its name from the film Downtown 81, which portrayed a day in the New York City of 1981 in all its glory. Forty years later, the exhibition acts as a sequel to the film, taking inspiration from downtown as an idea, a state of mind, and a generative space—rather than just a geographic location—and extending its scope beyond Manhattan to galleries in Brooklyn and Queens...
Visit La MaMa Galleria's DOWNTOWN 2021 page for more info, images, and to view the show's great online components co-presented with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) and Wendy's Subway.
Zoom Talk Organized by Chert Lüdde
Join us online for a conversation between
MARIE WARSH
co-manager of the Estate of Rosemary Mayer
&
JASON DODGE
artist
Saturday 19th December 2020, 17h00 Berlin /11h00 AM NYC
Rosemary Mayer, Study for Hroswitha, 1972, Colored pencil and graphite on paper, 8.5 × 11 in.
Current Show, Rods Bent Into Bows - Fabric Sculptures and Drawings 1972-1973, Chert Lüdde, Berlin
On view from September 4th - December 19, 2020
For installation images and related text, please visit Chert Lüdde.
Upcoming Solo Exhibition, Chert Lüdde, Berlin
Rods Bent Into Bows, a solo exhibition of sculptures and drawings by Rosemary Mayer will open at Chert Lüdde in September 2020. In preparation, new research is being done on many of these never been shown works.
Untitled (Bent Rods), 1972, Colored pencil and graphite on paper, 11 × 8 1/2 in.
Release of the second edition of Excerpts from the 1971 Journal of Rosemary Mayer (Soberscove, 2020)
The expanded edition includes more than double the journal writing of the first edition as well as a new introduction and an appendix that lists all the movies and books Rosemary mentions reading or watching in her journal. Read more about this new publication here or purchase it directly from Soberscove Press.
A New Essay on Rosemary Mayer’s “Shekinah” and “Bat Kol”
Noam Parness, Assistant Curator at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, writes on these two works (neither installed since the 70s) in their thoughtful essay, Voluminous Absence: Rosemary Mayer’s “Shekinah” and “Bat Kol”, in PROTOCOLS, Issue #7: SIX + GENDERS. Parness writes, Mayer’s sculptures suggest that divinity and femininity are not simply found in what we see, but what we might hear or feel. What might be recognized only in the absence of forms — presences created between forms, but not of them.
Shekinah, 1973-4. Fabric, string, copper, wood, and cord, 84 x 204 x 144 in.
Gordon Robichaux, NY at Parker Gallery, LA, Group Show
A Page From My Intimate Journal (Part II)March 15 – June 14, 2020
Featuring: Wilder Alison, Leilah Babirye, Matt Connors, Jenni Crain, Stephanie Crawford, Florence Derive, Daphne Fitzpatrick, Gillian Garcia, Daniel Marcellus Givens, Janice Guy, Otis Houston Jr., Miles Huston, KIOSK / Marco ter Haar Romeny, Clifford Prince King, Elisabeth Kley, Wayne Koestenbaum, Siobhan Liddell, Rosemary Mayer, McDermott & McGough, Reverend Joyce McDonald, Matt Paweski, Signe Olson, Sanou Oumar, Kerry Schuss, Dean Spunt, Tabboo!, Ken Tisa, Boris Torres, Frederick Weston
Rosemary Mayer, Connections, 1978, Colored pencil, graphite on paper, 26 × 40 in.
"Bizarre Silks, Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts, etc." an exhibition by artist Nick Mauss
Mauss has chosen two fabric sculptures for this exhibit, including the acclaimed Galla Placidia, which has not been exhibited since the 1970s and never shown in Europe. We are also working with Mauss and artist Amanda Friedman on reenacting Mayer’s Ghosts, sculptural installations from the early 1980s that no longer exist. Based on close study of the documentation of Ghosts, these new installations will incorporate the forms, ideas, and materials of her earlier work while connecting to the place and time of the exhibition.
Hours, 1981. Wood, gilding, ribbons, and paper. Group of four sculptures, each ca. 84 x 84 x 84 in. Installed at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. April 5-26, 1981.
Expanded edition of Excerpts from the 1971 Journal of Rosemary Mayer
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been working with Soberscove Press (Chicago, IL) on an expanded edition of the Excerpts from the 1971 Journal of Rosemary Mayer, which will be released in spring 2020. The first edition was published as a limited edition by Object Relations as part of Rosemary’s show at Southfirst Gallery in 2016. The expanded edition includes more than double the journal writing of the first edition as well as a new introduction and an appendix that lists all the movies and books Rosemary mentions reading or watching in her journal.Art-Rite Publication by Primary Information
Rosemary’s 1977 issue of Art-Rite is included in a new publication by Primary Information, which collected and compiled all of the issues of the influential alternative art magazine that existed 1973-1978. Art-Rite gave many artists their own issues; Rosemary called hers “Surroundings.” It incorporates photographs of urban commuters, tarot cards, abstract floral drawings, reproductions of the work of Jacopo da Pontormo, and a lyrical essay that considers the relationship between art and society The project relates to many of her other works, particularly other artists books that were created around this time.Chert Lüdde, Berlin, Group Show
Rosemary's work is included in Far Back Must Go Who Wants To Do A Big Jump at Chert Lüdde on view from November 16th, 2019 - February 1st, 2020.Summer 2019 Group Show
Rosemary has three works in “By Your Own Hand,” a group show curated by Heidi Norton at Camayuhs, an artist-run space in Atlanta, GA.
From the exhibition essay by Shannon Stratton:
“It is hard not to see a twenty-artist exhibition as a celebration, particularly when there is so much material exuberance, humor and physicality in the work, and By Our Own Hands builds its foundation on that. A nod to Faith Wilding’s 1977 publication of the same name, that was originally intended to accompany the unrealized exhibition, “Southern California Women’s Art Movement from 1970-1976,” the 2019 edition celebrates a range of career stages through the
lens of the hand. Artists in this group show their hand, so to speak, both through tangible acts of craft and symbolic gestures – with a range of materials from glass, clay and textile to carved rock and wax.”
Icy, Dark Broke, 1983. Watercolor and colored pencil on paper. 30 x 22 in.
“The choice of Mayer’s Icy, Dark, Broke, a colored pencil and watercolor on paper drawing, feels like haunting annotation to the exhibition as a whole. “Broke” goes in and out of meaning – economically, physically and morally. This language disturbs an exhibition whose binding is the hand as a powerful symbol of agency. It conjures up images of both the empty hand as a sign of bankruptcy and need, and the powerful hand – pulling, snapping, breaking something from its root or wholeness. It’s a powerful and somber reminder of both ends of the spectrum – both the hand’s weakness and its domination and its carelessness and its need.”
Museum of Modern Art Acquisition
In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art acquired some of Rosemary’s artist books and drawings from the 1970s, all of which can be viewed on MoMA’s website here.
Screenshot from the page on MoMA's website featuring Rosemary Mayer's acquired drawings and artist books.
The works include important examples of Rosemary’s most well-known bodies of work: fabric sculptures and ephemeral installations with balloons. Together they reveal her interest in documentation and in simultaneously working in a variety of media. The drawings illustrate real and imaginary fabric sculptures. The books, which you can flip through on the MoMA’s website, provide a monument to these temporary projects through a combination of drawing, photographs, and text.