Gallery One, Chicago
For our second show of 2016, Western Exhibitions unearths a grouping of never-seen-before drawings by Robyn O’Neil. The impetus for this show came from a tweet by O’Neil in January 2015 that read “Just realized my favorite show I’ve ever had is everything we kept in the flatfile during I WANT BLOOD”. The “Lost Show” is sandwiched in between two drawings. One is straight from her studio, representing her current direction. The other is a drawings she made in 2000 while in grad school, and it clearly presages everything she’s made since.
This “lost show” will consist of a group of transitional drawings made after the completion of her magnum opus Hell, a large triptych featuring the last appearance of her mysterious sweatsuit-clad men who have populated her epic and emotional drawings from the prior 12 years, and before she embarked on the series of moody, colorful (for her), almost abstract, landscape pastel drawings debuted at Western Exhibitions in 2013. The drawings in this second show at Western Exhibitions portray expressionistic scenes populated by ominous clouds and land masses, disembodied floating heads, monks, ears, mysterious female figures, faceless busts and other enigmatic characters.
Robyn O’Neil has had solo museum exhibitions at the Des Moines Art Center; the Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin; the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; and the Frey Art Museum in Seattle. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the US and internationally including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; American University Museum in Washington, DC; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tampa, Florida. Her work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. O’Neil has participated in gallery shows in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Shanghai, NYC, Los Angles, Miami, Chicago, and Seattle. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an Irish Film Board Award for a film written and art directed by her entitled “WE, THE MASSES” which was conceived at Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School. O’Neil lives and works in Los Angeles.