Debra Drexler

Combustable Matter (Large Scale Contemporary Abstract Painting)

2022

Debra Drexler is an American painter, installation artist, curator and professor. Her work engages in a feminist conversation with the history of action painting, which is informed both by participating in the contemporary resurgence of abstraction coming out of New York, and by living in the Post Colonial Pacific for close to three decades. She has participated in over thirty solo and over 100 group exhibitions in national and international venues. Debra Drexler is represented by Front Room Gallery in New York. Recent solo exhibits include: Van Der Plas Gallery, The Majestic Theater curated by The Dorado Project in Jersey City, White Box-The Annex, Pool Art Fair at the Chelsea Hotel, Blue Mountain Gallery, HP Garcia Gallery and Java Studios Gallery. In addition, Drexler has exhibited in group exhibitions in New York including Front Room Gallery, The Drawing Center, Denise Bibro Gallery, Exit Art, Art Finance Partners, Stephan Stoyanov Gallery and Sideshow Gallery. She was a featured artist in Salon Zucher, The 11 Women of Spirit and currently is featured in a three person show, “Abstract x3,” Schaefer International Gallery, Maui Arts and Cultural Center, Kahului, HI. She maintains studios in Brooklyn, NY and on the island of Oahu in Hawai’i. Debra Drexler's most recent work is highly experimental large-scale abstract painting. In a recent review of a two-person exhibition at Gallery Gary Giordano (Whitehot Magazine) Drexler's work as clearly referencing the long tradition of American abstraction and the established legacy of the New York School. The reviewer, Jonathan Goodman, described the work as a “new non-objectivity” that comes out of the current moment. He states that Drexler's painting “quite accurately describes the spirit of abstract art today, in which painting is struggling to break free of the constraints of time." Debra Drexler is a Professor at the University of Hawaii, where she is Chair of the Drawing and Painting Area. She has had solo exhibitions in Hawai’i at The Honolulu Museum and Maui Arts and Cultural Center. In October, 2015 she co-curated with Liam Davis New New York at the University of Hawai’i Gallery, a survey examining the resurgence of contemporary abstract painting featuring the work of 30 internationally recognized artists. New New York traveled to The Curator Gallery in Chelsea in 2017. She has also curated exhibits in New York including at The Lab of Rogersmith Arts, as well as in Hawai’i and Australia.