Exhibition Information Date:  April 6 - August 10, 2003 Place:  Gallery 7 Date:  September 20 - November 9, 2003 Place:  Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art Address:  Lake Worth, Florida Date:  January 24 - March 28, 2004 Place:  Albright-Knox Art Gallery Address:  Buffalo, New York Date:  May 27 - August 8, 2004 Place:  CalArts Gallery at REDCAT Address:  Los Angeles, California View all associated images View this exhibition in the Walker Calendar
		Image: Installation view of Julie Mehretu: Drawing into Painting, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis , 2003 Julie Mehretu, Dispersion 2002, ink, acrylic on canvas, Collection Nicolas and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, New York Photo: Cameron Wittig

Julie Mehretu's biography reads a bit like an atlas. She was born in Ethiopia, raised in Michigan, educated in Senegal and Rhode Island, and now lives in New York. It is no surprise, then, that her work incorporates the dynamic visual vocabulary of maps, urban-planning grids, and architectural forms as it alternates between historical narratives and fictional landscapes. One of the artists featured in the Walker's 2001 exhibition Painting at the Edge of the World, Mehretu creates beautifully layered paintings that combine abstract forms with the familiar, such as the Roman Coliseum and floor plans from international airports. This exhibition features nine newly commissioned, large-scale paintings and concludes her yearlong artist residency at the Walker.

Mehretu combines a personal language of signs and symbols with architectural imagery to create her elaborate semi-abstractions. Simultaneously engaged with the formal concerns of color and line and the social concerns of power, history, globalism, and personal narrative, she is interested in "the multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity." The underlying structure of her work consists of socially charged public spaces--government buildings, museums, stadiums, schools, and airports--drawn in the form of maps and diagrams. She inscribes her own narrative into these decontextualized, highly controlled spaces through the layering of personal markings. Mehretu achieves an effect of compositional maelstrom, as elements advance and recede within the graphically ambiguous spaces. With paintings that blur the line between figuration and abstraction while constantly referencing the world around us, she creates perfect metaphors for the increasingly interconnected and complex character of the 21st century.

Mehretu was the recipient of the 2001 Penny McCall Award. Her work has been included in Greater New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York (2000), and she has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including one at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2000). Most recently, her work has appeared in Free Style at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2001); The Americans at the Barbican Gallery in London (2001); the Busan Biennale in Korea (2002); the 8th Baltic Triennial in Vilnius, Lithuania (2002); and Drawing Now: Eight Propositions (2002) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

JULIE MEHRETU: DRAWING INTO PAINTING IS MADE POSSIBLE BY GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM THE VOYAGEUR FOUNDATION FUND OF THE MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION.

Permanence Collection, Part 2: Kira Obolensky http://blogs.walkerart.org/ecp/2008/05/14/permanence-collection-part-2-kira/ Walker blogs, Education and Community Programs: General

Walker, Walker everywhere http://blogs.walkerart.org/offcenter/2009/03/02/walker-walker-everywhere/ Walker blogs, Off Center: General

Artist-In-Residence: Minneapolis and St. Paul are East African Cities http://tceastafrica.walkerart.org Check out Julie Mehretu's online project: tcEastAfrica.walkerart.org. The hundreds of photographs and sound recordings created by the residency participants have become part of the Hennepin History Museum's permanent collection.

Exhibition Catalogue https://shop.walkerart.org/secure/gift_shop_book_detail.asp?id=2&p_id=701 This fully illustrated catalogue features Julie Mehretu's newest paintings and an in-depth interview with the artist.