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Artist: Marjorie Strider

Following a critically-acclaimed solo exhibition in its New York spaces, Galerie Gmurzynska now presents in both its Zurich galleries a broadened retrospective exhibition of the understudied Pop art pioneer, Marjorie Strider (1931-2014), who, according to Artforum, “penetrated Pop with a double-edged sword, as both an art-world insider and a feminist outsider.”

Marjorie Strider defied conventions throughout her career; she challenged not only established painterly conventions of the sacrosanct flatness of painting with her volumetric creations, but also challenged the male dominated art scene in New York of the 1960s and 70s by inverting the male gaze central to the Pop art project.

Strider’s works often featured exaggerated curves and proportions, referencing the idealized female figures found in advertising and popular media of the 1960s. In addition to her painted reliefs, Strider also worked in painting, sculpture, and collage. Her work often explored themes of consumerism, sexuality, and mass media culture.

“I’m basically a sculptor, interested in perception. My and other people’s perception of space. I began my artistic life as a painter, became dissatisfified with the flat plane of the canvas and started building out into the room.” – MARJORIE STRIDER, 1976

Galerie Gmurzynska’s presentation on the occasion of the Zurich Art Weekend brings not just her Girlies, but also works from her Foams series into Strider’s conversation with Pop Art and Minimalism, an exchange Strider was central to, along with her peers and friends such as Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Marisol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Claes Oldenburg.

Her Foam series from the 1970s and 1990s was absolutely groundbreaking as one of the earliest uses of polyurethane plastics in art. Her colorful Foams oozed and flowed out of not only household objects, windows, and appropriated Greek vases, but also, they breached architectural landmarks as Strider intervened on museum and university façades such as for the inaugural exhibition of PS1, New York (1976).

The exhibition will be accompanied by two catalogues:

Marjorie Strider: 1931-2014
Marjorie Strider: Foam Lady

“Strider’s lifelong dedication to examining, testing, and breaking the two dimensional surface and the containing frame led her to make build-outs, use urethane foam and epoxy resin, and explore themes such as the border and the box, neither of which, in her worldview, can contain its contents. Movement, change, and multiple viewpoints are central to Strider’s work throughout her career.” – JOHN YAU, “INDEPENDENT SPIRIT,” 2011