MARLENE MCCARTY
Adjunct Instructor

"Marlene Olive - June 21, 1975," graphite & ballpoint pen on paper, one of six, 10 x 13 ft, 2003; installation view, Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York
(click on image for larger view)

Marlene McCarty's artwork and other professional activities often concern themselves with social action. In the late 1980's and early '90's, McCarty was a member of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury. During that time she was also a partner in a New York design studio called Bureau, whose mandate was to produce politically engaged work as well as commercial work. McCarty's personal artwork during this time involved "explorations of sexuality and obscenity via textual renderings on canvas." For the last decade, she has collected news accounts of teenage girls who have killed someone, usually a family member, often their mothers. Referring to public accounts and newspaper photographs, she assembles large-scale portraits, painstakingly rendering their likenesses in graphite and ballpoint pen. She notes, "The drawings...continue my exploration of sexuality and identity."

McCarty's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. In 1990 she participated in the Venice Biennale APERTO with Gran Fury. In 2003, six of her mural-size drawings were exhibited in the 2003 Istanbul Biennale. Since1990, McCarty's work has been featured in exhibitions in New York at Metro Pictures, American Fine Arts and Bronwyn Keenan Gallery. She has also participated in exhibitions in Europe at the Reine Sophia Museum, the Vienna Succession and the Neue Kunsthalle St. Gallen. McCarty is presently represented by the Brent Sikkema Gallery in New York.

In 2002-2003 McCarty received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She has been a visiting and adjunct professor at many institutions, including New York University, Yale University and the Rhode Island School of Design. McCarty teaches drawing at the Cooper Union School of Art.

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