Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to present William N. Copley, The Patriotism of CPLY and All That, on view 18 October - 21 November, 2012 at 293 Tenth Avenue, New York. Referencing the historic exhibition by the same title at Iolas Gallery in 1976, this exhibition of Copley’s Patriotic works is emblematic of the social satire and political humor found throughout the artist’s oeuvre. In the paintings on view, which span over a quarter century of CPLY’s career, the artist marshals the visual language of American patriotism to cre... Read more

Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to present William N. Copley, The Patriotism of CPLY and All That, on view 18 October – 21 November, 2012 at 293 Tenth Avenue, New York. Referencing the historic exhibition by the same title at Iolas Gallery in 1976, this exhibition of Copley’s Patriotic works is emblematic of the social satire and political humor found throughout the artist’s oeuvre.

In the paintings on view, which span over a quarter century of CPLY’s career, the artist marshals the visual language of American patriotism to create riotous works full of wit and colorful pomp. A field of stars and stripes vignette a comely reclining nude, the Washington Monument becomes a bathroom stall tableau for CPLY’s own symbolic scrawls, firecrackers and unlit matches embrace in a kiss.

As a painter, writer, gallerist, and publisher, the artist blazed a singular path through numerous territories of post-war art, along the way charting a vital link between the European Surrealist and the American Pop Art movements. CPLY believed that “what [Surrealism] was always meant to be in terms of painting (more so perhaps than even Breton realized) was an opening of doors to the poetic possible through which contemporary art was going to penetrate." CPLY expanded on this idea of poetic penetration in the realms of contemporary art through his Patriotic paintings.