she said:

Cheryl Donegan

May 17-June 7, 2008

Opening Saturday May 17, 5:00-8:00

Exhibition open subsequent Saturdays 12-5 and by appointment

In a 1993 review of her videos in Art in America, Jerry Saltz wrote: “Cheryl Donegan is an impostor and a tease, a come-on artist and a flirt. She plays with herself in public and is unashamed”.

In considering her new body of paintings, and their manner of installation for her upcoming show at he said–she said, this description still applies. To it, add - iconoclastic, defiant, unruly, and most succinctly - bad-ass.

The flimsy and scrappy qualities of her paintings belie the great consideration given to the visual and communicative, both as images and as paintings. In maintaining the trajectory of her work, Donegan’s paintings function performatively, enacting experience in the present tense rather than illustrating past experience.

Cheryl Donegan is a New York-based artist who works in a variety of media, including video, performance, painting, and installation. She has exhibited widely in Europe as well as North America including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Her work may currently be seen in the exhibition Multiplex: Directions in Art 1970 to Now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, until July 28.

Lynne Cooke’s essay for Donegan’s Studio Visit at the Dia Center is here.