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Born 1954 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Drawing for 'Echo' from the 'Monolith' Triptych (1996-1997), 1996
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Asian and Baroque art, visionary architecture, black-and-white photography, the natural sciences and structural engineering are among the layers-within-layers of the palimpsest that is Stephen Talasnik's art. The intricate iconography of his monumental drawings, which are often the size of a wall, acts as a compendium of his thoughts and experiences, in which disparate elements of East and West, ancient and modern, harmoniously coexist, as contradictory thoughts can easily reside within a supple, complex mind.
After studying both architecture and painting, Talasnik realized the potential that drawing held for his personal vision after seeing the famous Drawing Now exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1976. Since that moment, he has devoted himself exclusively to paper, graphite, charcoal and ink, experimenting ceaselessly with his procedures and materials. Talasnik is a probing theorist for whom drawing's metaphysical past is as fascinating as its postmodern future and an inveterate traveler who is equally at home in Tokyo and Vienna, two historic centers of the graphic image, as he is in New York.
Talasnik has had solo exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Van Rooy Galerie, Amsterdam; Dolan Maxwell Gallery, New York; the Morris Gallery of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; and elsewhere. His work is in the permanent collections of the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna; the British Museum, London; the Teylers Museum, Haarlem; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, d.c.; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; the Brooklyn Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; and many other public and private collections. Talasnik's working drawings will be featured in a major solo exhibition at the American Institute of Architects, Washington, D.C., in 1998.
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