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Mar 6–Apr 17, 1988

Christina RambergA Retrospective: 1968-1988

Christina Ramberg, Cabbage Head (side 1), 1968.

  • Christina Ramberg, Cabbage Head (side 1), 1968.

  • Christina Ramberg, Cabbage Head (side 1), 1968.

  • Christina Ramberg, Hearing, 1981.

  • Christina Ramberg, Waiting Lady, 1972.

  • Christina Ramberg, Japanese Showcase, 1984.

  • Christina Ramberg, Glamour Guide, 1973.

  • Christina Ramberg, Black Widow, 1971.

  • Christina Ramberg, Tall Tickler, 1974.

  • Christina Ramberg, Strung (For Bombois), 1975.

  • Christina Ramberg, Chairbacks, 1976.

  • Christina Ramberg, Hermetic Indecision, 1977.

  • Christina Ramberg, Vertical Amnesia, 1980.

  • Christina Ramberg, Muscular Alternative, 1979.

  • Christina Ramberg, Sedimentary Disturbance, 1980.

  • Christina Ramberg, Apron / Core, 1982.

  • Christina Ramberg, Untitled #129, 1987.

  • Christina Ramberg, Untitled #130, 1987.

  • Christina Ramberg, Hand, 1971.

  • Christina Ramberg, Shady Lacy, 1971.

  • Christina Ramberg, Skirted Vessel, 1982.

  • Christina Ramberg, Cabbage Head (side 2), 1968.

  • Christina Ramberg, Untitled, 1980.

  • Christina Ramberg, Wired, 1975.

  • Christina Ramberg, Lola La Lure, 1969.

  • Christina Ramberg, Shadow Panel, 1972.

  • Christina Ramberg, Rose’s Woe, 1969.

  • Christina Ramberg, Sore Head, 1969.

  • Christina Ramberg, Hair, 1968.

  • Christina Ramberg, Corset Urns, 1970.

  • Christina Ramberg, A Cross Breeding, 1978.

  • Christina Ramberg, O.H. #2, 1976.

  • Christina Ramberg, Untitled, 1974.

  • Christina Ramberg, Istrian River Lady, 1974.

  • Christina Ramberg, Untitled #3, 1981.

  • Christina Ramberg, Untitled #1, 1981.

  • Christina Ramberg, Black N Blue Jacket, 1981.

  • Christina Ramberg, No Regrets, 1980.

  • Christina Ramberg, Dull Quilt, 1968.

  • Christina Ramberg, Pearl Rainbow, 1969.

  • Christina Ramberg, Wrapped Ticklers, 1974.

  • A mid-career retrospective of Chicago artist Christina Ramberg. Ramberg’s paintings of the late sixties and seventies deal with the traditional notions of beauty and their relationship to our bodies. Her pictures focus on heads, torsos, arms, and legs?bodily fragmants, never whole figures?and the “requirements for beauty” necessitated in each. These “requirements” involve the seemingly unnatural and illogical rituals and processes to which women subject themselves in order to attain an acceptable level of attractiveness. The paintings often feature female torsos wrapped and tied in exotic bands of cloth. Sometimes a hand will be pictured as well, gracefully completing a critical tuck or fold. Thus the paintings may seem painfully sinister, amusingly ridiculous, or sadomasochistic, depending on the viewer’s identification with them. In all of the paintings, traditional notions of beauty, attractiveness and fashion?and the social constraints and restrictions of each?are provocatively questioned.

    Ramberg will also exhibit several more recent “untitled” paintings, which deal with more universal notions of space, tension, support and structure. In these paintings, it is as if the flesh and fabric of the earlier works has been stripped away, leaving more geometric and monochromatic lines and forms which allude to skeletal torsos, or vessels, or architecture. The probing, less obsessive techinique in these paintings signifies Rambergs’s desire to go beyond the literal trappings of her earlier work to broader, less personal imagery. Christina Ramberg is regarded as one of the more important and persistant of the “Imagists,” a loosely associated group of Chicago artists who made themselves and Chicago world-renowned for their flambouyant styles and witty, often caustic and perverse use of language and the human figure.

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