Flash Art uses cookies strictly necessary for the proper functioning of the website, for its legitimate interest to enhance your online experience and to enable or facilitate communication by electronic means. To learn more about cookies please see Terms & conditions

Flash Art
Flash Art
Shop
  • Home
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • Features
    • Archive
    • Conversations
    • FOCUS ON
    • On View
    • PARADIGME
    • Reviews
    • Report
    • Studio Scene
    • The Curist
    • Unpack / Reveal / Unleash
  • STUDIOS
    • Dune
    • Flash Art Mono
    • Archive
      • DIGITAL EDITION
      • Shop
      • Subscription
      • INSTITUTIONAL SUBSCRIPTION
      • Contact
→
Flash Art

332 Fall 2020, Reviews

21 October 2020, 9:00 am CET

Rose Wylie “where i am and was” Aspen Art Museum / Colorado by Caroline Elbaor

by Caroline Elbaor October 21, 2020
1
2
3
Rose Wylie, Girl in Lights, 2015. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. © Rose Wylie.
1
2
3
Rose Wylie, Hullo, Hullo, Following on After the News, 2017. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. © Rose Wylie.
1
2
3
Rose Wylie. Installation view at Aspen Art Museum. Courtesy the artist and Aspen Art Museum.

The story of British artist Rose Wylie’s career has become something close to lore for its unusual trajectory: despite having been making art for decades, it was only in recent years that she began to receive acclaim for her work, becoming something of an overnight star in her early eighties. Now, at age eighty-six, she makes her United States debut with a one-person exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado.

Comprised primarily of fourteen paintings ranging from 1999 to the present day, the exhibition — titled “where i am and was” — cleverly captures the scope of Wylie’s practice through a pared-down presentation in which individual works stand firmly on their own. By condensing the number of paintings on view, the experience of each becomes more intense, leading to a show that is fiercely striking specifically because of its lack of overstimulation.

Wylie is known for her method of drawing upon a wide array of sources (such as newspapers, films, magazines, art history, and advertisements) and from her personal, everyday experiences, which she then weaves into a broader discussion of cultural themes. For example, with Girl in Lights (2015), the artist employs the motif of the reclining female nude — a ubiquitous image in art history — to interrogate the ongoing depiction of women in visual culture at large, thereby tying the popularity of the accumbent naked woman within the art-historical canon to the later prominent image of pin-up models made pervasive in the twentieth century.

This question is again engendered via the 2019 work Serena, one in a series of paintings focused on the celebrated American tennis figure Serena Williams, with whom Wylie is fascinated. Made up of oil on canvas in two parts, the imposing dual-paneled work captures the athlete’s torso in profile while donning a tight one-piece bodysuit known colloquially as a “catsuit.” The painting is based upon a photograph of Williams in a catsuit at the 2018 French Open, which went viral for her fashion choice and sparked a slew of body-shaming comments online.

Serena arguably acts as a response to the negative reaction Williams received for embracing her figure. (When finalizing the painting, Wylie chose to insert an additional strip of canvas between the panels so as to widen the frame to prevent the tennis player from appearing too thin.) As such, one might interpret that Wylie has shifted from challenging the widely accepted, unrealistic image of the female body to staunchly criticizing it.

1
2
3
Rose Wylie, Queen of Pansies (Dots), 2016. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. © Rose Wylie.
1
2
3
Rose Wylie, City Road, 1999. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. © Rose Wylie.
1
2
3
Rose Wylie. Installation view at Aspen Art Museum. Courtesy the artist and Aspen Art Museum.

Though the exhibition technically spans the past twenty-one years, the majority of the paintings were produced during or after 2015, with only a single work, City Road, coming from 1999. Taking its title from the name of a busy thoroughfare in central London, the painting depicts Little Bo Peep atop a hilly landscape, which Wylie used after spotting a portrayal of the fictional shepherdess in a cafe window on City Road. The titular words are scrawled along the bottom of the canvas, next to the French “ses moutons,” meaning “her sheep.”

While the painting contains the artist’s signature devices — the image of the glorified woman, and the incorporation of text within the composition — it is perhaps the weakest in the show, appearing to arrive short of completing a fleshed-out circle of thought. That is not, however, to say it is defective. Rather, City Road plays an interesting role in the exhibition overall, serving as a symbol of Wylie’s earlier work and thereby demonstrating significant growth in her practice in the two decades since.

Also on view are works on paper, sketches, and ephemera, which are housed in vitrines and provide more extensive context for the paintings and background on the artist herself in an already deeply affective show. One leaves with the sense of knowing the artist personally, and having witnessed her thought process at work. By presenting a gathering of paintings that skew heavily toward recent years, but also including City Road along with preparatory drawings and materials, the exhibition, per its title, seems to be less “where i was” than “where i am.” And, given the strength of the work in the show and stardom that followed, one can deduce that where Wylie is might just be exactly where she should be.

Share this article
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Mail
More stories by

Caroline Elbaor

“STEADYSTATE” Zero…, Milan

19 June 2025, 9:00 am CET

Time, in “STEADYSTATE,” doesn’t tick — it lingers, loops, and evaporates. The group exhibition at Zero… in Milan, co-curated with…

Read More

Zurich: Peripheral Presence.

13 June 2025, 9:00 am CET

Moving through Zurich — whether on foot, by bicycle, tram, or car — rarely involves a direct or uninterrupted trajectory.…

Read More

TOWARDS A CYBERSPACIAL URBAN TERRAIN. A Conversation with Rem Koolhaas

11 June 2025, 9:00 am CET

Francesco Bonami: Do you still think that Manhattan is the center of the culture of congestion? Rem Koolhaas: It is…

Read More

The Familiar Strange. Phung-Tien Phan

10 June 2025, 9:00 am CET

I first came across the work of German-Vietnamese artist Phung-Tien Phan during a visit to Project Native Informant during the…

Read More

  • Next

    Liliane Lijn: Reinventing the Archetype

  • Previous

    Desiring Machines: The Exhibition as Automaton in Philippe Parreno’s Work

© 2025 Flash Art

  • Terms & conditions
  • Contact
  • Work with Us