Joyce Pensato is a seventy-year-old woman playing what is generally considered to be a young man’s game. She has come to be known for work which abstracts popular cartoon characters into energetic, mostly black-and-white paintings and drawings. Her collection of most recent work, this time inspired by batman and titled “Batman Returns”, will exhibit at Chelsea’s Friedrich Petzel Gallery from January 12 – February 25, 2012.
Pensato is a New York City based artist born in Brooklyn who for decades went largely unrecognized. Then in 2007, her first show at the Petzel Gallery, “The Eraser”, brought her some attention for images which art critic Jerry Saltz would describe in New York Magazine as “Easter Island-meets-Disney-De Kooning-and-Warhol”.
For “Batman Returns”, Pensato continues her unique combination of pop art, action painting, and abstract expressionism, but now with the addition of color to her palette. She has revived the batman motif after years of periodically working with the iconic image of the caped crusader. In addition to batman, expect to see other characters and several assemblages of toys on display, all of which make up Joyce Pensato’s experience of American cartoon culture.
DZI: The Voice 