Deborah Buck: New Jewels

Major retrospective of Deborah Buck spanning four decades, with nearly 40 artworks tracing the artist's explorations of narrative, vulnerability, and the roles women are supposed to play. About New Jewels, the first major retrospective of artist Deborah Buck (b. 1957), curated by Summer Guthery, spans four decades of paintings, tracing Buck's explorations of narrative power, vulnerability, absurdity and the roles women are supposed to play. Buck maneuvers these figures through a phantasmagorical, mythic landscape populated by beings that are at once fantastical and startlingly familiar—imaginary yet terrifyingly real. Across Pen + Brush's 5,500-sq-foot, two-floor gallery space, nearly a half-century of Buck's paintings unfold into a world of their own. The earliest works, stark figurative howls from the 1980s, present bodies—nearly all women—contorted against veloured voids. Paintings such as Opera Night (1986), It Really Wasn't THAT Bad (1982), and Mirror Mirror (1983) tightly frame their subjects, closing in on faces rendered in livid pinks and purples, while the full-bodied portraits of Runner Up (1986) and New Jewels (1989) show women in twisted curtsies and cringes, as if to deflect the viewer's relentless gaze. Across all the works in this set, women groan and grimace against their confines. In dialogue with Downtown New York as much as German Expressionism, the painted forms are at once tongue-in-cheek social commentary and psychological explorations. Then the psychological realism cracks, and out flows myth. Buck has long been interested in fairytales, in talking animals. Maybe it's the farm she grew up on, before a mentorship with Clyfford Still resulted in a residency at Skowhegan. Or maybe it's the promise—and threat—of transformation. In the 1990s, her work began to shift towards a fantasticism no-less grounded in reality than the punk portraiture of the previous decade. A radish is held between two netted cages. A phosphorescent egg is trapped in a crinoline in Egg Drop Soup (1998), while an oval is pinched by black diamonds in Corset (1994); even these dips into pure abstraction still possess anthropomorphic wit. Gesture operates as both structure and atmosphere, collapsing distinctions between psychological and physical space. The work feels raw, under the skin, and made-up, costumed. While narrative abounds, these works are first and foremost extremely animated, expressive and energized paintings. Buck's palette and physicality of the paint are designed to demand attention. Backgrounds are atmospheric with brushstrokes, faces tip into masks and then, ultimately, into paint. The exhibition crescendoes in a room of her latest works: large-scale panoramic collages that drag the eye, and the mind, through the looking glass. In each piece, the field is crowded, rife with characters and clues jostling for the viewer's attention; the works are also crowded with textures and layers, consisting of collages built with pieces of Buck's previous works. In One Too Many (2025), a riot of disjointed faces, grasping hands, imaginary creatures, and monstrous flowers spill from a chalice. In The Eyes Have It (2023) patch-worked scenes feature characters, all vaguely feminine, with grotesque, outsized eyes; for once, the viewer is the one being ogled. Across a dedicated gallery, decades of painting fuse together, building an undeniable impression of Buck's singular vision. The lone heroines are isolated in the vanity mirrors of the mind. The animals, the totemic forms, along for the ride. A cacophony of characters, stitched into a collaged jungle. New Jewels will be accompanied by a catalogue featuring essays by Eleanor Heartney and Summer Guthery. Read more Toggle Painting