Dante / The Way Of All Flesh
project IN PROGRESS

Dante/The Way of All Flesh is a cycle of paintings that use Dante Alighieri’s Inferno as a point of departure for an extended meditation on the human condition.  The Inferno is ripe for artistic re-interpretation in our post-modern world, where many of the same social issues; war, corrupt politicians, religious hypocrisy & strife, unstable economic markets, disease and natural disasters still plague us.




Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found
brooklyn museum, brooklyn ny

In this solo exhibition in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn-based artist Patricia Cronin presents watercolors illustrating the work of the nineteenth-century American expatriate sculptor Harriet Hosmer.

Hosmer defied expected roles for female artists of her day and yet achieved an uncommon level of success. However, today she is remembered only by a relatively small group of specialists. Inspired by the dearth of thorough scholarship on Hosmer, Cronin has compiled the definitive Hosmer catalogue raisonné (the publication that comprehensively lists an artist’s complete works). In the book, each of Hosmer’s works is represented by a watercolor painted by Cronin. A selection of these watercolors comprises the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

Hosmer’s neoclassical works depict such historical, mythological, and literary figures as Zenobia, Medusa, and Puck. Cronin’s watercolors capture Hosmer’s noble and playful subjects, as well as the luminosity of the marble carvings. In her research, Cronin has found written references to a handful of Hosmer sculptures that do not appear to have ever been photographed. To represent these pieces, Cronin has made watercolors of what she calls “ghosts”—vague, formless, and ethereal images of sculptures that exist undocumented somewhere in the world, but are lost to art history. 

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Memorial to a Marriage
woodlawn cemetary, bronx ny

Deitch Projects presents one of its most intriguing artists’ projects, Memorial To A Marriage, a new sculpture by Patricia Cronin. It will be unveiled on Sunday, November 3rd, 2002 at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. A three year project funded by Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO, it is carved in Carrara marble and designed in the manner of a 19th century mortuary sculpture. This over life-size figurative monument depicts the artist and her partner, the artist Deborah Kass, in a loving embrace.

Combining elements from 19th century American Ideal Sculpture and Italian 17th & 18th century sculpture with new 21st century technologies in stone carving, Cronin updates historically traditional forms with contemporary sexual content. Celebrating in death, her "marriage" which cannot be made legal in life, Cronin subverts this sentimental form and breathes new life into it.

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Luxury Real Estate Paintings
“Looking At America”
Yale University Art Gallery
April 23 – July 28, 2002


In 2000, I created a series of paintings inspired by luxury real estate properties that were offered for sale by Sotheby's International Realty. Each oil painting is very small, no larger than nine by fifteen inches because I wanted to emphasize their intimate, rare quality. The title of each painting is the price and location of the estate.

When I think about them historically, they conjure up images of Dutch seventeenth-century landowners and their houses. Although my 21st century versions have no horizon lines because the vantage point of the source photos are aerial. This requires hiring a plane, a pilot, and a specialized aerial photographer. My feet are on the ground; these properties are otherworldly and beyond reach. In all my work I construct a critical vision of a life and lifestyle that are beyond the means of most Americans, but desired by many.

"Luxury Real Estate Paintings" were also exhibited in Patricia Cronin, The Domain of Perfect Affection, 1993 to 2003 UB Art Gallery, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY.

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Tack Room
white columns, new york ny

White Columns presents a solo project by Patricia Cronin.

“Tack Room” is a replica of an integral part of horse a barn. Cronin’s is filled with books and accoutrements of equine training and care, along with sexually suggestive leather saddles, bridles, whips and suede chaps. Images of horse crazy young girls are hung next to pages from Playboy along with Stud magazine’s "Breed of the Month" centerfolds. “Tack Room “ is filled with objects loaded with multiple meanings, begging the question: how much is sport and how much is erotic? It depends on the lens one looks through.

“Tack Room” went on to travel and was included in: Horse Play at Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT and Patricia Cronin, The Domain of Perfect Affection, 1993 -2003 at the UB Gallery, University at Buffalo, NY.

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Pony Tales
brent sikkema - wooster gardens, new york ny

Brent Sikkema- Wooster Gardens presents Patricia Cronin’s first solo show, “Pony Tales” an exhibition of 50 portraits of specific horses.

Continuing the project of representing her own subjectivity, Cronin goes into territory where few have ventured: representing the female subject without relying on the over-determined image of the female body. Horses, often the center of preadolescent girls’ imaginations, are presented in salon style of 50 portraits, ovals and rectangles. They are inspired by horse magazines whose subscribers are overwhelmingly women and girls, as well as, photos and sketches by the artist taken at stables in Brooklyn and Long Island. Cronin grounds her questions about status, class and female autonomy by combining girlish objects of desire with blue blood class aspirations.

“Pony Tales” went on to travel and was included in group shows: Horse Play at Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT and Here Kitty, Kitty at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA, as well as solo shows Patricia Cronin: The Domain of Perfect Affection at Allcott Gallery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC and Patricia Cronin, The Domain of Perfect Affection, 1993 -2003 at the UB Gallery, University at Buffalo, NY.

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Erotic Watercolors
trial balloon gallery, new york ny

Trial Balloon Gallery presents “The Long Weekend, Ellen Cantor, Patricia Cronin, Marilyn Minter.”

One of Cronin’s favorite paintings, Courbet’s “The Sleep” was the inspiration for her series of erotic watercolors. Cronin wondered, “What do I do if I’m one of those women AND the cultural producer? What does it look like from within that erotic space?” In this series of watercolors, over life size cropped images of two women making love are uniquely depicted from the perspective of one of the lovers. Cronin subverts the lady-like medium of watercolor with these images of lesbian sex.

Works from this series have been extensively exhibited in museums and galleries in the U.S. including; Sonnabend, Casey Kaplan Gallery, Richard Anderson, White Columns, Exit Art, all New York, NY, UB Art Gallery, University at Buffalo, NY, Arthur Roger, New Orleans, LA Haverford College, Haverford, PA, Irvine Art Gallery, University of California, Irvine, CA , South Florida Art Center, Miami, FL Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, TX, Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY and abroad, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome, Italy, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland, and Cobra Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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Erotic Poloroids
david zwirner, new york ny

David Zwirner exhibits “Boys” and “Girls” in the show, “Coming To Power: 25 Years of Sexually X-Plicit Art By Women,” May 1 – June 12, 1993, New York, NY.

Sexual imagery created by and for women has a recent but powerful history. "Coming To Power" pays homage to the first generation of women artists who pioneered a new artistic genre in the mid 60s and early 70s using explicit sexual imagery. Artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Carolee Schneemann, Hannah Wilke and Nancy Spero appropriated this tradition and transformed it into an expression of female freedom and identity. "Coming to Power" also presents the work of a younger generation of female artists. In contrast to the previous generation's more politicized work, the intended impact of the younger artists' work is to elicit sexual excitement as well as express autonomous pleasure, passion and pain. Together both generations engage in a dialogue previously dominated by men and disallowed to women by the taboos in society. The exhibition creates both the historical context for female erotic work, and a contemporary forum for further sexual art by women.

“Boys” and “Girls” were exhibited in Behind The Green Door at Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York, NY in Summer 2010.

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