Maurice Tuchman Curates 'High & Inside' at Marlborough Chelsea, Bruce Pearson Shows at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts

Veteran curator Maurice Tuchman, formerly of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, organized the group exhibition 'High & Inside' at Marlborough Chelsea, closing June 7, 2003. The show features nine artists who emerged in the 1990s, exploring mapping, scheming, surveilling, and plotting through post-conceptual approaches that integrate cerebral and optical elements. Artists include Brad Hampton, Beth Campbell, Mark Lombardi, Steven Charles, Lisa Corinne Davis, John J. O’Connor, Fred Tomaselli, and Daniel Zeller. Catalogue essayist Judd Tully notes their work balances microscopic and telescopic perspectives, transforming systems into abstraction rather than revisiting 1960s systems art. Concurrently, Bruce Pearson presents 'Paintings & Drawings' at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts until June 14, 2003, deconstructing language from mass media through computer-generated typographic distortions carved in Styrofoam and painted in fluorescent hues. Pearson gained attention in a 1998 Museum of Modern Art project room exhibition with Tomaselli and is part of the Williamsburg scene alongside artists exhibited at Pierogi gallery. His work reinvents abstract painting by making semiotics sensual, drawing comparisons to Jasper Johns' engagement with type as physical presence. Both exhibitions emphasize form over language or systems, positioning semiotic and systemic elements as personal, arbitrary gestures akin to New York School abstraction.