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The Rejectionists

Collaborative Benefit Exhibition with The Drawing Center

Exhibition:

Nov 3 – 8, 2023

Pace Gallery
540 West 25th Street
New York

Cocktail Reception:

Thursday, Nov 2, 6 – 9 PM

(opens in a new window) Click to Purchase Tickets

Auction:

Online: October 25– November 8

Works on view and available for in-person bidding: November 3 – 8

The Drawing Center, in collaboration with Pace Gallery, is pleased to announce details of a special fall benefit exhibition, on view at Pace’s New York flagship from November 3 to 8.

A curated project titled The Rejectionists, the exhibition will be organized around the challenge presented by two 20th century masterpieces from the collection of Arne and Milly Glimcher: a 1950 Corps de dame drawing by Jean Dubuffet and a 1961 drawing by Agnes Martin. All works in the The Rejectionists, save the Dubuffet and Martin, will be available for sale through an online silent auction hosted by The Drawing Center during the run of the exhibition. Proceeds will support The Drawing Center's programs, with participating artists receiving a percentage of the artwork sales.

The exhibition is co-curated by The Drawing Center’s Executive Director, Laura Hoptman—with Claire Gilman, Chief Curator of The Drawing Center—and Pace CEO Marc Glimcher. The Drawing Center and Pace have worked collaboratively to select contemporary artists whose drawings comment upon or complement one of the two works anchoring the show.

The Rejectionists will be hung as a continuum, with the Dubuffet and the Martin as two poles—or brackets—for the rest of the works on view. In the most obvious sense, the Dubuffet and the Martin drawings are stylistic opposites: figurative versus abstract, expressionistic versus geometric and minimal. But, in fact, both artists shared a similar disdain for received ideas and the mainstream cultural discourse of their times. Their visions were distinct, but their attitudes were both squarely rejectionist, with Dubuffet cultivating a parallel career as a wine merchant and Martin famously advising her fellow artists to “paint with your back to the world.” The full list of artists participating in the exhibition will be revealed in due course.

Fundraising efforts for The Drawing Center will also include a ticketed cocktail party held on November 2 from 6–9 p.m. amid the exhibition on the seventh floor of Pace’s New York gallery. To purchase tickets to the event, visit (opens in a new window) https://drawingcenter.org/programs/2023-benefit-auction.

Participating Artists

The list is subject to further additions and follows below:

Marina Adams

Hangama Amiri

John Armleder

Anonymous

Saif Azzuz

Yto Barrada

Ellen Berkenblit

María Berrío

Robert Bittenbender

Lucy Bull

David Byrne

Catherine Chalmers

Mel Chin

Sedrick Chisom

William Christenberry

George Condo

Mary Corse

Brian DeGraw

Tara Donovan

Torkwase Dyson

Jeronimo Elespe

Rochelle Feinstein

Jackie Ferrara

Denzil Forrester

Maureen Gallace

Daniel Gibson

Sonia Gomes

Alexander Gorlizki

Mary Heilmann

Karl Holmqvist

Sheree Hovsepian

Patrick Dean Hubbell

Sara Issakharian

Oliver Lee Jackson

Xylor Jane

Virginia Jaramillo

Alfred Jensen

Rashid Johnson

Joan Jonas

Nina Katchadourian

Guillermo Kuitca

Megan Lang

Lee Ufan

Sol LeWitt

Maya Lin

Duane Linklater

Alan Lynch

David Lynch

Kylie Manning

Eddie Martinez

Sabrina Mendoza Malave

RJ Messineo

Sam Moyer

Catherine Murphy

Yoshitomo Nara

Robert Nava

LeRoy Neiman

Aliza Nisenbaum

Thomas Nozkowski

Paulina Olowska

Jorge Pardo

Park Seo-Bo

Marina Perez Simão

Liliana Porter

John Rivas

Maja Ruznic

Lucas Samaras

Curtis Talwst Santiago

Juliana dos Santos

Ilana Savdie

Hala Schoukair

Arlene Shechet

Josh Smith

Joan Snyder

Saul Steinberg

Mika Tajima

Mickalene Thomas

Richard Tuttle

Jack Tworkov

Uman

Frank Walter

Funds raised through the benefit auction will provide critical support for The Drawing Center's ambitious schedule of exhibitions, publications, education initiatives, and public programs. Founded in 1977 by the late curator Martha Beck, The Drawing Center—an exhibition space in downtown Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood—explores the medium of drawing as primary, dynamic, and relevant to contemporary culture, the future of art, and creative thought. Its activities are both multidisciplinary and broadly historical, and include exhibitions, publications, and educational and public programs.

Beck, a former curator of contemporary art in the department of drawings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, started The Drawing Center to exhibit art by living artists in their own neighborhood, as well as to advance a medium that she viewed as broadly overlooked. First housed in a ground-floor warehouse space at 137 Greene Street, The Drawing Center moved to its present location, around the corner at 35 Wooster Street in 1987. Since its inception, The Drawing Center’s exhibitions have emphasized a wide range of artistic traditions and taken a uniquely interdisciplinary approach.

Laura Hoptman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center, says:
“The Drawing Center is excited to collaborate with Marc Glimcher and Pace on what we think will be a provocative curatorial experiment that features an exciting range of international artists who draw. I look forward to hanging a show that will truly be a conversation between artistic generations—in the language of drawing, of course.”

Marc Glimcher, CEO of Pace Gallery, says:
“When Laura approached me with the idea to work on a joint exhibition, we started talking about Pace artists that might spark an idea in all the artists that support The Drawing Center. We kept going back and forth between Dubuffet and Agnes Martin, and then decided what those two artists shared was their rejection of the norms of art making. We thought it would be interesting to base the show not on the form of the artists’ work, but the structure of their thinking—the way both artists sought to reformulate the practice of art making. The response from the artists has been amazing, and we look forward to presenting this intriguing show together.”

Further details about The Drawing Center’s 2023 benefit exhibition, auction, and cocktail reception will be announced in the coming weeks.

Pace’s upcoming collaboration with The Drawing Center aligns with its ongoing efforts to establish meaningful, mutually supportive relationships with other arts organizations and institutions. The gallery hosted a global telethon fundraiser—featuring a lineup of newly commissioned performances—to celebrate Performa’s fifteenth anniversary in 2020. This year, Pace co-presented a multifaceted fundraiser on behalf of the Nina Simone Childhood Home Preservation Project, partnering with Sotheby’s and the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.