Artist and Curator in Conversation: Susan Rothenberg and Michael Auping 

This conversation was part of a series of public programs celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the MATRIX Program.
Michael Auping, inaugural curator of the MATRIX Program at BAM/PFA, once described MATRIX as a process of inquiry, a space to question, learn, and establish value within the new. Susan Rothenberg, one of the first artists exhibited in MATRIX (in 1978), embraced a similar experimental attitude when she employed the figure of a horse to explore the essence of painting.
Fifteen years after painting her first horse, Rothenberg moved from her native New York to a ranch in New Mexico where she still lives and works. Drawing on a wealth of associations and using imagery from daily life, she continues to examine the meaning and mechanics of painting. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, and is held in collections in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Michael Auping is chief curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Across his thirty-year career at museums in California, Florida, New York, and Texas, he has organized important exhibitions and publications of the work of artists including Philip Guston, Anselm Kiefer, Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Jess, Robert Bechtle, and Bruce Nauman, and a major mid-career survey of Susan Rothenbergs paintings and drawings.