Madrid

Julie Mehretu | Metoikos (in between drawings)

11.09.–20.11.2021

carlier | gebauer, Madrid, is pleased to announce Metoikos (in between drawings), a solo exhibition of recent drawings by the American artist Julie Mehretu. This will be her first solo exhibition at the gallery’s new location in Calle de José Marañón 4 in Madrid.

Whether working in painting, drawing, or printmaking, a constant in Julie Mehretu’s work is her insistent probing of the “space between” as a zone of possibility and resistance. From her earliest works, which she described as “story maps with no location,” to the bold graphic quality of her architectural drawings to the expressive mark making in her most recent work, drawing has played a significant role in the evolution of Mehretu’s practice. A medium marked by the interplay between spontaneity and control, rational thinking and intuition, the rhythms of drawing articulate a precarious space where a sense of place slips away in favor of a “sonic, pulsing system of half links, half-consciousness, [and]half-wit.” Drawing forms a kind of concretion of the new, bits of the past, place, data, mark, detritus—in Mehretu’s words, a “physical, sensorial image that is a time-based, emergent experience.”

Installation Views

  • Julie Mehretu, Metoikos (in between drawings), exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Madrid, 2021.
    Photo: Roberto Herrero.

  • Julie Mehretu, Metoikos (in between drawings), exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Madrid, 2021
    Photo: Roberto Herrero

  • Julie Mehretu, Metoikos (in between drawings), exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Madrid, 2021
    Photo: Roberto Herrero

  • Julie Mehretu, Metoikos (in between drawings), exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Madrid, 2021
    Photo: Roberto Herrero

  • Julie Mehretu, Metoikos (in between drawings), exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Madrid, 2021
    Photo: Roberto Herrero

  • Julie Mehretu, Metoikos (in between drawings), exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Madrid, 2021
    Photo: Roberto Herrero

  • Julie Mehretu, Metoikos (in between drawings), exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Madrid, 2021
    Photo: Roberto Herrero

  • Julie Mehretu, Metoikos (in between drawings), exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Madrid, 2021
    Photo: Roberto Herrero