Julie Mehretu: Grey Area September 27, 2010

The term "grey area" speaks to a condition of indeterminacy, a liminal state in which something is not clearly defined or perhaps impossible to define. Julie Mehretu (b. 1970, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) adapts such an enigmatic circumstance as a tool to engage the viewer in her complex compositions of meticulously drawn mechanical renderings, spontaneous gestural markings, and colorful interjections. The paintings in this exhibition were produced as the 15th commission of Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Inspired in part by Berlin, the city in which Mehretu created the works, the paintings evoke the psychogeography of a place and the effects of the built environment on individuals, while at the same time contemplating the past and the surviving traces of lived history.