Amy Cutler RATIONS 2002 Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York, and James K. Patterson, M.D.

Amy Cutler's gouache drawings reference sources ranging from the artist's own memories to medieval history, Indian miniature paintings, Boy Scout manuals, and fairy tales. Her images conjure a surreal world densely populated with giant cake-eating rabbits, umbrella-wielding medieval jousters, melting snowmen, swimming pigs, dancing women with chairs attached to their heads, and other characters. These finely drawn figures illustrate a series of open-ended narratives that are as equally available to a range of interpretations as they are peculiar. Her dreamlike tableaux evoke both the childlike wonder and dark psychological underside of the best tales by the Brothers Grimm.

David Rathman's ink drawings of cowboys examine a particular kind of fable: the settling of the American West. Combining a range of visual references from the 19th-century landscape paintings of Frederic Remington to the Hollywood Westerns of John Ford, his sepia-toned images paired with darkly humorous texts evoke the strange, illogical irony of the writings of Samuel Beckett. His characters stand silhouetted against the Western landscape, spouting strangely existentialist aphorisms such as "No need to shoot straight when you shoot often" or "You don't put a name on something you might have to eat." Rathman's protagonists are high-plains drifters who rewrite aspects of the American mythology of the West with the artist's own brand of desperate black humor.

David Rathman YOU DO HOLD ONTO YOUR MISERY, DON'T YOU? 2002 Courtesy Clementine Gallery, New York

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
New York-based Amy Cutler received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. Her work has been included in a wide range of group exhibitions, such as Selections: Summer 2000 at the Drawing Center, New York. Cutler's work has also been the subject of two solo presentations in 2002 at Leslie Tonkonow Gallery, New York, and most recently at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Minneapolis-based David Rathman received his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly at Galerie Weiland, Berlin, and Where the Boys Are at Clementine Gallery, New York. Rathman is the recipient of awards from the Jerome, Bush, and McKnight Foundations. His work was recently featured in solo exhibitions at Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis, and Clementine Gallery, New York.