Solo Exhibition | Jackson Hole, WY
Altamira Fine Art is pleased to present a new show for Billy Schenck, opening July 2, 2018 at our Jackson Hole location.
If, as Jackson Pollock said, "Every good painter paints what he is," then Billy Schenck is a man of fiery juxtaposition. Consider the characters he communes with in his latest foray, a Teton travelogue: there's Edith Sargent, serenading settlers in the buff atop a horse blanket; there's Jaws, now retired in Jackson Lake yet no less rapacious; and there's the only-in-the-Tetons pony express-turned-UPS guy, scaling Mount Moran to deliver a saddle.
As the quixotic cast list suggests, a wryness pervades Schenck's new paintings: cowboys cower at the sight of wolves; cowgirls wield rifles as romance; and paradise is twofaced. By his brush, real life lacks the crisp clarity of his Pop palette; everything exists in complicated counterpoint.
Born in the Midwest, Schenck chose to plant himself and his practice in the American West. Fusing Photo-Realism and Pop Art, he works in the rich, frictional terrain of Western fictions, where cowboys riding off into the sunset are actually-curtain lifted-galloping off the satirical stage of modern heroism. To their demise or their redemption? Only Schenck knows.
Meet the Artist at the show reception Thursday, July 5th from 5:30-7:30pm.
Pre-sales available. Call (307) 739-4700 for details.
Artist Biography
Billy Schenck has been known internationally for the past four decades as one of the originators of the contemporary "Pop" western movement.
Early in his career, Schenck became known for utilizing cinematic imagery, reproduced in a flattened, reductivist style, where colors are displayed side-by-side rather than blended or shadowed. His art incorporates techniques from Photo-Realism and Pop Art to both praise and mimic classic western images. His work is characterized by hot colors, surreal juxtapositions and patterning which explore clashes between wilderness and civilization, the individual and community, nature and culture, freedom and restriction.
In the mid-1970's, the work exemplified in his paintings drew him west, where he split his time between Wyoming and Arizona. He now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work can be found in numerous major collections throughout the world, including the Smithsonian Institution, Denver Art Museum, The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Booth Western Art Museum, Tucson Museum of Art, and many more. Schenck’s work has been the subject of four museum retrospectives, including The West as It Never Was, at the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art.
The 2013 illustrated book, Schenck in the 21st Century: The Myth of the Hero and the Truth of America, by Amy Abrams, features paintings, caption drawings and caption paintings produced by Schenck from 2000-2012. A book of his serigraphs, Bill Schenck: Serigraphs 1971-1996, was published in 2010 in conjunction with a touring retrospective of the same title.
Selected museum collections include:
The Autry National Center
Booth Western Art Museum
Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Whitney Western Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
Desert Caballeros Western Museum
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art
Scottsdale Center for the Arts
Smithsonian Institution
Tucson Museum of Art