Aurie Ramirez

White Columns presents the first ever solo exhibition of the Oakland-based artist Aurie Ramirez. Since the early 1980s, Ramirez has worked at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA. Creative Growth is a world-renowned workshop and art studio for adult artists with physical, mental and developmental disabilities. (Aurie has a condition that shares many characteristics with autism). Over the past two decades Ramirez has created one of the most idiosyncratic and extraordinary bodies of work – invariably watercolor drawings on paper – that echoes the visionary production of Henry Darger. (Both artists have created psychologically complex imaginary realms inhabited by a recurring cast of characters, scenarios, and narratives). Aurie’s earliest work was inspired by her interest in manifestations of the “popular gothic,” e.g. the Adams Family, or the rock band Kiss; more recently her work has evolved to describe a paradoxical late–nineteenth century, quasi-Victorian, suburban milieu populated by androgynous, mask-wearing dandies, and rainbow-hued waifs. Focusing on works made over the past five years, Ramirez’s White Columns exhibition – the first ever solo exhibition in our main gallery space – is particularly timely, as her work appears to have preempted the art world’s recent fascination with illustrational, folk, vernacular, and fairy-tale-like aesthetics. (Tendencies that can be seen in work of artists as different as Jockum Nordström, LauTextra Owens, Robyn O’Neil, Marcel Dzama, etc.).