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PRESS RELEASE
Robyn O'Neil
This is our ending, this is ourpast.
October 26 - December 15, 2007
Dunn and Brown Contemporary is pleased to announce its debut exhibition with internationally recognized artist Robyn O’Neil. This is our ending, this is our past. is the artist’s first major exhibition since her solo museum exhibition organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston in 2006. Responding to the exhibition space at Dunn and Brown Contemporary, O’Neil has created an impressive grouping of monumental graphite drawings for this exhibition with some works measuring as much as twelve feet long. The exhibition will open with a reception for the artist, Friday, October 26, 6:00 - 8:00PM and continue through December 15, 2007.
After seven years of working on a series of epic drawings about the coming of an apocalypse, Robyn O’Neil is now bringing this narrative to a conclusion. On a grand scale, O’Neil’s painstakingly intricate use of graphite distills the image, assuring the viewer is not distracted from the fantastic landscapes that set the stage for the thousands of little men struggling, fighting, laughing, crying, congregating, and dying. Within this exhibition, This is our ending, this is our past., O’Neil creates a series of scenes where the very last of the little men fall to their demise. As the men in these drawings disappear, it becomes evident that the world O’Neil has created is in a constant state of disharmony. Interruptions in the landscape, fractured moments, man and sea colliding in an aggravating state of suspension, all quietly portray death, decay, and disruption.
O’Neil’s drawings in this exhibition present a sense of tragedy, melancholy, and hurting, leaving the viewer with a feeling that human kind, as it exists in O’Neil’s fantasy world, is doomed. O’Neil does, however, leave the story open to new, intriguing events. In the drawings A Birth in Grief and Ashes, O’Neil provides a glimpse into what could be a new beginning — a landscape within a landscape, the rising of a new world. A mountainous world, perhaps with new inhabitants, emerges from clouds resting above an empty grassy plain. As the artist desires, the surreal narrative slowly and calmly leaves the viewer with an insight into the heart of the story and the artist herself.
Born 1977 in Omaha, Nebraska, Robyn O’Neil received her B.F.A. from Texas A&M, Commerce and her M.F.A. from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. In 2006, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas organized the artist’s first one-person museum survey which traveled to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington. O’Neil has been included in many prestigious group museum exhibitions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has been featured in Vitamin D, A survey of contemporary drawings published by Phaidon Press. In 1999, she was awarded the DeGolyer Grant by the Dallas Museum of Art, and in 2005, she received an Artadia Grant from the Artadia Foundation - The Fund for Art and Dialogue in New York City. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Robyn O’Neil will be present at the opening reception on Friday, October 26, 2007. Dunn and Brown Contemporary is open to the public on Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 am until 5:00 pm and by appointment. Please contact Sarah Stork at the gallery or via email at sstork@dunnandbrown.com for additional information or to request visuals of the exhibition.