Raymond Pettibon

Raymond Pettibon is recognized as one of America's most important representational artists. Emerging on the international art scene in the 1980s, Pettibon is best known for his extraordinary output of inkwash drawings and their signature combination of figurative images and short, enigmatic texts. Pettibon first began making such drawings in the late 1970s to adorn the record covers of underground music groups like Black Flag and Sonic Youth; since then his work has also included painting, collage, artist's books, videos and fanzines. The subject matter in his drawings - at times dashed off in comic book style, in other instances painstakingly rendered - is culled from the printed pages of American popular and underground culture: surfing, film noir, Patty Hearst, Gumby, Charles Manson. Framed or pinned directly on the wall like a scattered notebook, the drawings always include texts - sometimes weirdly connected to the imagery but often providing baffling non-sequiturs. Pettibon's many international exhibitions include his first major retrospective at the Kunsthalle Bern (1995). In 1998-2000 a touring exhibition of his work traveled to The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; the Drawing Center, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.