Deb Sokolow’s partially fictional text-driven drawings and collages come from serious research and comical yet critical speculation into the details of shadowy histories, organizational brainwashing, the trope of the male genius, and the blemished tendencies of male heads of state. Her drawings incorporate the voice of an unnamed narrator of questionable authority who recounts seemingly humorous, harmless anecdotes on a number of famous men, while also suggesting that a more sinister mix of machismo, narcissism, and insecurity is at play. Lines between fact and fiction blur, and the tone shifts from objectivity to admiration and sarcasm. The viewer is left to decipher how much is true and to determine when, if ever, a narrator can be trusted. In a review for Hyperallergic, John Yau writes:

Sokolow’s interest in the well-known illusionist David Copperfield, who once made the Statue of Liberty briefly disappear, an act which purportedly interested Putin, reminds us that everything we see, especially in politics, may in fact be an illusion, a form of deception, a cover-up—all of which appeals to anyone who has ever entertained a conspiracy theory. For all the deadpan humor running through Sokolow’s work, along with a sharply attuned fascination with human foibles, one also senses her utter amazement: can people really be serious about these things? Are they really that important? If you find the answers disturbing, you are not alone.

Hand-drawn texts in graphite and erasure marks on the surface of each drawing function as a visual record of the narrator’s indecisive thought process in working to present each anecdote. The texts are paired with abstract shapes and diagrammatic visuals which reference the historically male-dominated movements of modern architecture, color field painting, and minimalism. Many of these visuals appear to be reproduced with a printmaking process, but they are hand-rendered with colored pencils and crayons and function as a conceptual compliment to the texts in that they also contain uncertainties with regard to the fabrication of content. Sokolow’s interests in storytelling and unreliable narration take inspiration from contemporary politics and its competing narratives on events and individuals as well as the playfulness with form and humour found in postmodern literature and authors such as Jorge Borges, Thomas Pynchon, Helen Oyeyemi, and Ali Smith.

Deb Sokolow is an artist and writer. She currently has drawings on view in Manifesto: Art X Agency at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and her recent show at Western Exhibitions was reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail  Her drawings and artists’ books have been included in the 4th Athens Biennale in Greece and in other group exhibitions at The Drawing Center in New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen in Germany; Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands; and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Solo exhibitions include the Abrons Art Center in New York; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City; Institute of Visual Arts in Milwaukee; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, in which Sokolow’s 2013 MATRIX exhibition, Some Concerns About the Candidate, was reviewed in the New York Times. Her work has been reproduced for Creative Time’s Comics project; the 2017 Best American Comics;  for Swedish art magazine, Paletten; in Vitamin D2, a survey on contemporary drawing; and in a several-page spread in the fall 2018 issue of BOMB Magazine  Her work is in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in Indiana; and the Thomas J Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Sokolow is a recipient of an Artadia award and residencies at Art Omi and Nordic Artists’ Centre in Norway. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. She is represented by Western Exhibitions and lives and works in Chicago.