Artist Statement
I am a conceptual artist making paintings, mixed media sculptures, prints and other objects. My practice is an investigation into the inundation of imagery we are all collectively bombarded by, and how it reflects the eclectic absurdity I experience in our contemporary culture.
My work is made in distinct series, creating a crazy quilt of pictorial eclecticism that obscures our ability to make sense of the image, acting as a metaphor for the confusion and shifting dichotomies in social interactions.
Digital images speak to our technologically driven world and reflect the temporal paradox in pop culture whereby the past is brought to the present, the present to the past. I digitally appropriate art historical images with those from film and popular culture, juxtaposed with psychedelic and floral patterns and mix them all together. Francois Boucher and Gerhard Richter, Jean-Honore Fragonard, Gene Davis, Bridget Riley, Nicholas Krushenick and Jean-Antoine Watteau, among others - the rococo and abstraction, op art and pop art, anime and realism, and the psychedelic all come together, layered, spliced and distorted. I appreciate the Rococo for its extravagance and theatricality, as it appeals to my love of kitsch. Paintings, prints and sculptures, collaged with cakes, printed skate decks and fake fur create an extravagant hodge-podge of seemingly disparate imagery and materials that evoke the psychosexual.
Film imagery is another element important to my work. I grew up comforted by the classic Hollywood films and actors I reference in my work. As a gay adolescent, I escaped into film and identified with the women in what are considered "womens films". Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, and femme fatales, Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth...idealized much like the goddesses in Rococo painting. I love them all, and sometimes view my practice as a drag display operating within this time I live in while embracing nostalgia and romanticism for their tender and universal sensibilities.
Stuart Netsky
Biography
1955 Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1974 - 1977 Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, B.S. in Design
1984 - 1986 Philadelphia College of Art, PA, M.A. in Sculpture/Art Education
1988 - 1990 Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, PA, MFA in Sculpture
1998 - 2010 Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1997 - Present Adjunct Assistant Professor, Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA
1986 - 2002 Adjunct Assistant Professor, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2023 Walking Backward to the Future, Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2015 Sirens, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2013 A Leopard Doesn’t Change Her Spots, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2007 Smoke and Mirrors, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2006 Stuart Netsky New Paintings, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Imitation of Life, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2003 Now Voyager, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2002 Beyond the Forest, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA
2000 Richard Anderson Fine Arts, New York, NY
1999 About Painting, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
Mile-Long Drawing, Grand Arts, Kansas City, Missouri
1997 Central Fine Arts, New York, NY
1995 Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
Lipton/Owens, New York, NY
1994 Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
1993 Stuart Netsky: Time Flies, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Stuart Netsky: Office Focus Exhibition, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
Day Without Art, Window on Broad Street, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1992 Shams, (collaboration with Virgil Marti), The Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia, PA
Challenge Exhibition #5, Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia, PA
1991 New Work, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
1990 Ash Trays and Candy Dishes, M.F.A. Show, Temple Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1989 Appropriate, Christina McCabe, New York, NY
1988 Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
Space 2B, Gas Station, 2nd Street and Avenue B, New York, NY
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2023 Recent Acquisitions of Photography, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
2022 Don't Feed the Art, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
2020 Fully Saturated, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
2016 Circa 1995, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2015 Art Miami, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2014 Art Miami, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2013 Art Miami, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2004 Vanity and Industry, Hicks Art Center Gallery, Newtown, PA
2003 Mind Over Matter: Reworking Women’s Work, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
Show, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Influence, Anxiety, and Gratitude, List Visual Arts Center, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA
2002 Transcendent & Unrepentant, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2001 Sight/Site: Objects Subject to Change, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
2000 Reenactment/Rapprochement, Chester Springs Studio, Chester Springs, PA
Man-Made, Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia, PA
Walter/McBean Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
1999 Sticker Shock, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
Full Scale, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1998 Twenty Philadelphia Artists, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
Pop Abstraction, Museum of American Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1997 Patterns of Excess, Beaver College Art Gallery, Glenside, PA
1996 New Acquisitions, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Johnstown, PA
Brenda and Other Stories, Walsall Museum and Art Galley, Walsall, England
Model Home, Clocktower Gallery, New York, NY
1995 Faggots: A Communique from North America, Fundacion Rojas, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
1994 Stonewall Show, White Columns, New York, NY
Fourteen at Fifty-Five, 55 Mercer Street Gallery, New York, NY
10” x 10” x 10” (An Exhibition of Three Dimensional Multiples), TZ’ Art & Co., New York, NY
1993 Southern Exposure at Project Artaud, (Shams, collaboration with Virgil Marti), San Francisco, CA
Outside Possibilities ‘93, The Rushmore Festival, Woodbury, NY
A Few Fey Things, (collaboration with Virgil Marti), White Columns, New York, NY
Fiber Fireworks, Gallery at the Gershman YM & YWHA, Philadelphia, PA
Works on Paper, Beaver College Gallery, Glenside, PA
The Artist as Activist, Milton Rhodes Gallery, Sawtooth Center for Visual Art, Winston-Salem, NC
Currents ’93: Dress Codes, (Shams, collaboration with Virgil Marti), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
1992 Not Working in L.A., Nomadic Site, Pasadena, CA
The Temporal Image, and A Farewell to Frills (collaboration with Virgil Marti), Momenta Art at the S.S. White Building, Philadelphia, PA
Works on Paper, Beaver College Gallery, Glenside, PA
GALA ’92, Gay and Lesbian Artists at Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA
Utopia/Dystopia, 67th Annual Competition: Prints, The Print Club, Philadelphia, PA
Energy Made Visible, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
1991 Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
Good Housekeeping: Paintings and Sculpture for Living, Levy Gallery for the Arts, Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Juvenilia: The Art of Future Past, Levy Gallery for the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA
1990 GALA ’90, Gay and Lesbian Artists at Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA
Material Concepts, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art at Levy Gallery for the Arts, Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA
Studio Show, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
The Print Club, Philadelphia, PA
Substitutions, Momenta, Philadelphia
Nexus Steps Over Jesse Helms into the ‘90’s, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
1989 Heart On/Heart Off, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
Second Thought, Momenta, Philadelphia, PA.
The Night Show, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
1988 Installations, Momenta, Philadelphia, PA
Eight Artists, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
1987 size isn’t everything, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia, PA
1984 Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
GRANTS
1995 Pew Fellowship in the Arts
SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS:
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Scranton, PA
Johnson and Johnson, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Woodmere Art Museum, Chestnut Hill, PA
The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, New Jersey
In 2016 Stuart Netsky was commissioned to create a work for The Family Court House, Philadelphia, PA