Welcoming the Flowers
Polly Apfelbaum and John Giorno
May 3 - June 22, 2007
Reception: Thursday May 3rd, 6-8 PM


Senior & Shopmaker Gallery is pleased to announce a two-person exhibition with New York sculptor Polly Apfelbaum and the poet and performer John Giorno. The show will feature new woodblock monoprints by Apfelbaum, and Giorno's new portfolio of screenprinted poems in 18 parts, titled Welcoming the Flowers, as well as printed poems on canvas. Produced at Durham Press in Durham, Pennsylvania, their works share a common referent-flowers-as well as an opulent palette and pop sensibility.


View the exhibition


Polly Apfelbaum, Love Park #13, 2007
monoprint, 79 x 79 inches

Apfelbaum (b. 1955) has employed floral motifs since 1990 in her sculptural pieces and installations. In these new works on paper, Apfelbaum covers the sheet with a pattern of individual floral emblems printed from dozens of carved woodblocks, each printed in a single color. The result is undulating field of exuberant, celebratory color reminiscent of Matisse, but also indebted to the seriality and pop detachment of Andy Warhol. The works range in scale from the more diminutive Baby Love series measuring 25 x 25 inches to the monumental and dazzling Love Park images over six feet square. Apfelbaum's work is currently included in Comic Abstraction at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Live Color in Pictures at the Aspen Museum of Art in Colorado.



John Giorno, Welcoming the Flowers, 2006
screenprint, 16 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches

John Giorno (b. 1936), New York poet and performer associated with the counterculture movement and New York School of poetry of the 1960s, and friend to artists such as William Burroughs, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol, revolutionized the way poetry is written, presented, performed and disseminated. His contribution to American literature has involved the attempt to link poetry with other media. Giorno Poetry Systems, begun in 1965, and later Dial-a-Poem, incorporated the use of electronic and multi-media to create new venues and a broad audience for the spoken word. His new screenprints, the chosen medium of his Pop art colleagues and a medium Giorno has employed since the 1970s, explore yet another context for presenting poetry. Selected lines from the poem Welcoming the Flowers are printed in block text in different pale spring colors which belie the poet's alternately romantic and dissonant verse.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, and Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information please contact Laurence Shopmaker or Betsy Senior at 212.213.6767.
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