Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place

November 7, 2010 - March 6, 2011

In November 2010, Miami Art Museum (MAM) will present Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place, the artist’s first museum show in over a decade and first exhibition in South Florida. The exhibition features a select group of 25 paintings ranging from Rothenberg’s early horse paintings of the mid-1970s to her most recent body of work, and explores a number of central motifs that have occurred throughout her 35-year career. Included in the exhibition are two major paintings from Miami Art Museum’s permanent collection, Folded Buddha (1987–88) and Pin Wheel (1988). Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place, on view November 7, 2010 through March 6, 2011, will be a highlight of Miami Art Museum’s Art Basel Miami Beach 2010 season. 

 
Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place consists of a select group of 25 paintings ranging from the mid-1970s to the present. Even as Rothenberg's images have changed radically over the course of her career, certain tendencies have remained constant, reflecting how the artist sees and reconstructs the world through a series of shifting pictorial structures that create a spinning or torquing spatial scenario. The exhibition explores the evolution of this "frozen motion," as the artist has referred to it, from the early horse paintings such as Cabin Fever (1976), which depicts the simple outline of a horse jumping into action; to her spinning and turning figures of the 1980s and early 1990s, such as Folded Buddha (1987–88) and Pin Wheel (1988); to the action scenes that emerged shortly after she moved to a ranch in Galisteo, New Mexico, such as Dogs Killing Rabbit (1991–92) and Accident #2 (1993–94); to her most recent series of disembodied hands and arms swinging around the space of the paintings like dismembered marionettes.
 

For the past thirty-five years, Susan Rothenberg has been recognized as one of the most important painters in the United States. Her first solo exhibition in New York in 1975, consisting of three large-scale paintings of horses, was heralded for introducing imagery into minimalist abstraction and bringing a new sensitivity to figuration. Peter Schjeldahl, of The New Yorker, called the show "a eureka moment," stating that "the large format of the pictures was a gesture of ambition," and that "the mere reference to something really existing was astonishing." Since then, Rothenberg’s work has been exhibited and collected extensively and is represented in major museums throughout the United States and abroad. 


Exhibition Organization, Support and Tour
Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place was organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas. 
 
Support for the Miami presentation is provided by Funding Arts Network and donations to MAM’s Annual Exhibition Fund. Educational content of this program is made possible with support from Espírito Santo Bank.



The exhibition’s tour includes the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico and Miami Art Museum.      


Images: Susan Rothenberg, Folded Buddha, 1987 – 88. Oil on canvas, 91 ¼ x 111 ¼ inches (232 x 282.6 cm). Collection Miami Art Museum, gift of Mimi and Bud Floback. Susan Rothenberg, Pin Wheel, 1988. 95 x 142¾ inches (241.3 x 363 cm). Collection Miami Art Museum, promised gift of Mimi Floback.