Karl Wirsum: The Hard Way: Selections from the 1970s (DEREK ELLER GAL)

This catalogue compiles the drawings, sculptures and paintings created by Karl Wirsum (born 1939) in the 1970s--the artist’s most restless period geographically and artistically, as he moved back and forth from Chicago to Sacramento and experimented with materials, formats and visual languages. With the close of the 1960s and the final Hairy Who exhibition, Wirsum began moving away from conventional art objects and into puppets, display signage, kites and mannequins. His visual language changed too, forsaking curvilinear forms and high-key color paintings for a hard-edged geometric language with fewer colors and a focus on the possibilities of working with the entire human form, not just the bust. The works included here--in over 40 images--range from a series of "cardbroads," full-figured malleable chipboard humanoids held together by grommets; to handcrafted painted wood marionettes; to paintings and drawings of ice skaters possessed of bulbous appendages.