PARIS.- Marian Goodman Gallery is presenting its first exhibition of works by Julie Mehretu. This is Julie Mehretus first solo exhibition in France.
The exhibition includes sixteen drawings on paper all in black graphite on white grounds and eleven works on canvas in ink, graphite and acrylic. The show also includes a new series of five etchings. Mind Breath and Beat Drawings allows us to follow a thread in Mehretus working process from the intimate and spontaneous lexicon developed on paper as the foundation for larger works on canvas.
This Paris exhibition follows last summers debut of four monumental paintings in dOCUMENTA (13) collectively titled Mogamma, an Arabic word which refers to a large government building in Cairos Tahrir Square. The building was constructed in a brand of 1940s Modernism found all over the western world that symbolized the centralized government, however the word mogamma also refers to an interfaith site that shares both a mosque, synagogue and a church.
I think architecture reflects the machinations of politics and thats why I am interested in it as a metaphor for those institutions. I dont think of architectural language as just a metaphor about space, but about spaces of power, about ideas of power. 3