Keith Edmier

March 14 - April 12, 2008

535 W 22nd Street

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

KEITH EDMIER
March 14 – April 12, 2008
Opening reception: Friday, March 18, 6-8 pm

Friedrich Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of Keith Edmier. The exhibition will feature the full-scale sculptural reproduction of the kitchen from Edmier's childhood home.
The kitchen, with its Harvest Gold palette, walnut laminated cabinets, "Kitchen Psychadelia" wallpaper, and stone patterned tile are fabricated in detail rather than refurbished. The work was first installed as Bremen Towne, connected with the home's other communal spaces--those shared with the family—at Keith Edmier 1991 – 2007, Edmier's comprehensive survey exhibition at CCS Bard.

"Bremen Towne is a full-scale sculptural reproduction of the interior spaces from the ranch house where I grew up in the southwest Chicago suburb, Tinley Park. It is made to resemble what it would have looked like when I first moved there with my parents in 1971. Essentially, it is a brand new home," explains Edmier. The installation "functions as a curated space. An exhibition of those things, which influenced my early aesthetic development, in the surroundings that helped shape who I am."

Bremen Towne is the largest physical manifestation of the artist's fascination with reclaiming, or at least rethinking, the past through sculpture and installation. This extraordinary installation represents the culmination of Edmier's psychological archeology.

The exhibition also features new sculptures and photo collages. Using elements from the Bremen Towne installation Edmier juxtaposes reproductions of paintings, frames, wallpaper, and carpet with his original family snapshots thus packaging and selling his own memories.

Outside of the kitchen, rendered in his characteristic pink resin, is a sculpture of a lone roll of sod. Edmier recasts and thus personalizes a material essential for the clean lawns of a new housing development like that of Bremen Towne.

This is Keith Edmier's fourth solo exhibition at Friedrich Petzel Gallery. Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1967, Keith Edmier grew up the suburban subdivision of Bremen Towne in Tinley Park, 45 minutes southwest of Chicago. After graduating high school, Edmier pursued a career in special effects in Hollywood. Encouraged by special effects master Rick Baker, Edmier briefly attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. After leaving art school he moved to New York to enter the art world. Edmier's work has been exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and is in the collections the Tate Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Israel Museum. He is the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2001 Biennial Award.

The exhibition will open Friday, March 14, with a reception from 6– 8 p.m., and will be on view through April 12. Friedrich Petzel Gallery is located at 535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011. For further information, please contact the gallery at 212-680-9467 or info@petzel.com