For the ADAA Art Show 2015, David Nolan Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the Kentucky-born, Chicago-based artist, Christina Ramberg (1946-1995). Ramberg was loosely associated with the Chicago Imagists, a group that included Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson and Ed Paschke. She is best known for her depictions of corseted female bodies, forced into submission by the bondage-like accoutrements of typical 1950s women's garments. Recalling a memory of her mother getting dressed, putting on what was often referred to as a "merry widow," Ramberg remembered being "stunned by how it transformed her body, how it pushed up her breasts and slenderized down her waist." Our presentation at The Art Show will include a comprehensive selection of paintings and drawings that cross the span of Ramberg's tragically short career.
Work by Christina Ramberg can be found in a number of museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 1988 a mid-career retrospective of her work was staged at The Renaissance Society and more recently her work has been the subject of renewed focus with solo exhibitions at the ICA Boston, and as part of the Glasgow International. Last year, her work was included in the Liverpool Biennial, A Needle Walks into a Haystack, and in What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present at the RISD Museum.
