Maureen Gallace: Clear Day

The first survey of paintings by American artist Maureen Gallace, Clear Day features nearly 70 works spanning the artist's career. For more than 25 years, Maureen Gallace (b. 1960) has painted genre scenes drawn from the American landscape and still life traditions. Her small canvases and panels most commonly depict rural pastorals and coastlines, typically featuring nondescript barns or cottages amid dunes and foliage that evoke a nostalgic New England. Recalling holiday cards and vacation snapshots, Gallace’s paintings quietly disturb the reassuring sentimentality of such pictures. Often lacking doors or windows, her houses may seem locked up, or disquietingly open and vulnerable to the elements. Her lush gardens and yards can be obstructed by fences, and paths lead the viewer astray; infinite vistas over the ocean are stacked and collapsed into shallow compositions. From the outset of her career, Gallace has deployed a range of abstract compositional tools to frustrate the romantic enticements of her subject matter and the painterly seductions of her surfaces, giving rise to a quietly remarkable and contemporary body of work.

Organized by Peter Eleey, Chief Curator, MoMA PS1 with Margaret Aldredge Diamond, Curatorial and Exhibitions Associate, MoMA PS1.

Major support is provided by Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté.

Additional funding is provided by the MoMA PS1 Annual Exhibition Fund.