David Humphrey
New York City-based David Humphrey will turn Lux’s 2010/2011 Season on its head with paintings that employ landscape, figuration and iconography in an incisive commentary on American consumer culture and conformity.
A Senior Critic at Yale School of Art, Humphrey creates canvases in which a cavalcade of surreal, kitsch images and exuberant, Play Doh-like hues provide a humorous and sometimes biting narrative of middle-class malaise. A dedicated collector of amateur paintings that he finds online, in thrift and antique stores, and at flea markets and yard sales, Humphrey loosely paraphrases anonymous efforts with his own renditions of landscapes, still-lifes and portraits in which elements of the original artworks have been mutated and exaggerated to yield intensely layered images in terms of color, shape, ideas and discourse. Many of Humphrey’s pieces depict historical giants such as Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower (both amateur painters), who join the artist’s lineup of kitsch subject matter: kittens, poodles, ice cream cones, clowns, Christmas trees and puffs of snow.
Humphrey received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MA in liberal studies from New York University. His first show was with the McKee Gallery in 1984, and he has since been exhibiting nationally and internationally. Humphrey’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Carnegie Institute, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two New York Foundation Grants and the Rome Prize. He wrote a column for Art Issues from 1989-2002 and has written extensively on art for exhibition catalogs and art periodicals, including Art in America and Flash. An anthology of his writing, Blind Handshake, was released in 2009 by Periscope Publishing. Humphrey was appointed senior critic at Yale School of Art in 2007.
- 2007
- Fred Amaya Gallery, Miami, FL
- 2006
- New Paintings, Solomon Projects, Atlanta, GA
- Frederic Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL
- Snowman in Love, Triple Candie, NY
- 2005
- Oven Stuffer Roaster, Morsel, Brooklyn, NY
- 2004
- Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York, NY
- 2002
- Both Less and More, paintings and sculpture, Littlejohn Contemporary, New York, NY
- Lace, Bubbles, Milk, Pittsburgh Filmakers' New Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA
- Holiday Melt, Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL
- Holiday Melt, Solomon Projects, Atlanta, GA
- 2001
- Holiday Melt, Saks Fifth Avenue Project Art, Palm Beach, FL
- University of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
- 2000
- McKee Gallery, New York, NY
- 1999
- Sculptures, Deven Golden Fine Art Ltd, New York, NY
- Me and My Friends, The Phillip Feldman Gallery, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR
- 1998
- Love Teams, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL (catalogue)
- Works on Paper, Roy G Biv Gallery, Columbus, OH
- 1997
- SHaG, team paintings by A. Sillman, D. Humphrey and E. Greene, Postmasters, New York, NY
- Sculptures, Deven Golden Fine Art Ltd, New York, NY
- 1996
- Nancy Solomon Gallery, Atlanta, GA
- David Humphrey: Paintings and Drawings 1987-1994, Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA (catalogue)
- Head: Recent Paintings, I Space, Chicago, IL
- 1995
- David Humphrey: Paintings and Drawings 1987-1994, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (catalogue)
- Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA
- 1993
- McKee Gallery, New York, NY
- 1992
- Patricia Shea Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
- 1991
- Bergstrom-Mahler Museum, Neenah, WI (catalogue)
- Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA McKee Gallery, New York, NY
- 1990
- Krygier/Landau Contemporay Art, Santa Monica, CA
- David McKee Gallery, New York, NY
Group Exhibitions thru 1990
- 2010
- New Paintings, Solomon Projects, Atlanta, GA
- 2007
- Mr President, University Art Museum, SUNY Albany, NY
- Neointegrity, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY
- 2006
- Complicit, University of Virginia Art Museum, Richmond, VA
- Normal, Linda Warren Gallery, Chicago, IL
- 2005
- Jeff Gauntt & David Humphrey, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY
- Life and Limb, Feigen Contemporary, New York, NY
- 2004
- When I Think of You I Touch Myself, New York Academy of Art, New York, NY
- 2003
- New Prints, McKee Gallery, New York, NY
- 4 x 4, Artist's Union, St. Petersburg, Russia
- Pop thru Out, Araio Gallery, Choongchungnma, Korea (catalogue) The Burbs, DFN Gallery, New York, NY (catalogue)
- 2002
- Pasted On, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL
- Super Natural Playground, Gallerie Marella, Milan, Italy (catalogue)
- 177th Annual, National Academy of Design Musuem, New York, NY (catalogue)
- Hair Stories, Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York, NY
- Words in Deeds, PICA, Portland, OR
- Someone's Been Telling Lies, Forde Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
- Luscious Too, Zolla/Lieberman, Chicago, IL
- 2001
- Fhuh..., Fishtank Gallery, New York, NY
- Self Made Men, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY
- 2000
- Objects that Flicker, Solomon Projects, Atlanta, GA
- Exit Art, New York, NY Rapture, Janet Phelps, New York, NY
- The Figure, Another Side of Modernism, Snug Harbor Art Center, Staten Island, NY (catalogue)
- Collaborations, Bucknell University Art Gallery, Lewisburg, PA
- Toys, Kagan Martos Gallery, New York, NY
- 1999
- Drawing in the Present Tense, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY
- Body Parts, Pewabic Pottery, Detroit, MI
- 1998
- The Mind Is a Beast, The Work Space, New York, NY
- Road Show, DFN Gallery, New York, NY
- 1997
- La Tradicion, Performance Painting, Exit Art, New York, NY
- Lubiana Biennial, Lubiana, Slovenia (catalogue)
- Drawn & Quartered, Karen McCready Fine Art, New York, NY
- Hair-Do, Curated by Nancy Brett, The Work Space, New York, NY
- 1996
- Thing, Deven Golden Fine Art, New York, NY
- Photographism (in painting), Pratt Galleries, New York, NY
- Face, One Great Jones, New York, NY (catalogue)
- Some Friends In My Apartment, Barbara Pollack, New York, NY
- Psycho-Morphing, Caren Golden Fine Art, New York, NY
- True Bliss, LACE, Los Angeles, CA (catalogue)
- 1995
- Crystal Blue Persuasion, Feature, New York, NY
- Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC (catalogue)
- Internal/External, Foster Goldstrom Gallery, New York, NY (catalogue)
- More Than Real, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL
- On Target, Horodner Romley Gallery, New York, NY
- Arresting Images, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL
- 1994
- Digressions, Caren Golden Fine Art, New York, NY
- Flooding Camera, The Work Space, New York, NY
- Family Values, Russet Lederman Productions
- 1993
- Art in the Age of Information, Wood Street Galleries and 808 Penn Modern, Pittsburgh, PA (catalogue)
- Pittsburgh Collects, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
- Appraising the Preternatural, Patricia Shea Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
- Psychological Impact, Northampton Community College, Bethlehem, PA
- Robert Morrison Gallery, New York, NY
- Personal Imagery, Chicago/New York, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, NY
- 43rd Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (catalogue)
- 1992
- Dysfunction in the Family Album, Diane Brown Gallery, New York, NY
- Underthings, Bliss, Pasadena, CA
- (Drawing) Pictures, Four Walls at P.S. 1, Long Island City, NY
- Hair, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
- 1991
- Personal Portrait, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY
- Mute, Solo Gallery, New York, NY
- Expressive Visions and Exquisite Images: Two Aspects of Art of the 80's From The Richard Brown Baker Collection, Meadowbrook Art Gallery, Oakland University, CA(catalogue)
- Landscape as Stage, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
- 1990
- Prints & Monotypes, Pelavin Editions, New York, NY
- Faces, Marc Richards Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
- The Unique Print: 70's into the 90's, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA (catalogue)