Debra Drexler (born 1958) is an American painter, installation artist, curator and professor. Her work is informed both by participating in the contemporary resurgence of abstraction coming out of New York, and by living in the Post Colonial Pacific since 1992. She has participated in over 30 solo and over 100 group exhibitions in national and international venues. Drexler is a professor at the University of Hawaii, where she is chair of the Drawing and Painting Area. She maintains studios in Brooklyn, New York, and Kailua, Hawaii. Work Abstract painting Drexler's most recent work is highly experimental large-scale abstract painting. In a recent review of a two-person exhibition (Whitehot Magazine, 2017) Drexler's work as clearly referencing the long tradition of American abstraction and the established legacy of the New York School. The reviewer, Jonathan Goodman, described the work as a “new non-objectivity” that comes out of the current moment. He states that Drexler's painting “quite accurately describes the spirit of abstract art today, in which painting is struggling to break free of the constraints of time." She frequently uses hot pink, a color with heavily gendered associations. Her hot pink brushstrokes reference the “heroic” marks associated with action painting, and feminize them. The luminosity and high key saturation in Drexler's work are created through multiple layers of glazing of pigment mixed with polymer and alkyd media. Some of her color choices reference the post-digital experience with its highly saturated synthetic color. The luminosity and saturation also mirror the unique quality of light and the over-the-top, tropical color interactions in Hawaii. Gauguin’s Zombie “Gauguin’s Zombie” developed over seven years of research and art making between 1998 and 2005, and was exhibited at Honolulu Museum of Art (2002), Maui Arts and Cultural Center (2003) and Box-The Annex (2005). Based on the premise that Paul Gauguin, French painter and visitor to the South Pacific, has returned to life in a fictional exhibition in a fictional museum, this installation explores the complex dynamics between the past and present, the influence of colonialism and cultural identity, and the traditions of the Western and non-Western worlds. The installation included large-scale paintings, woodcarvings, a thatched hut, and fabricated writings such as emails, faxes, press releases, journal entries, and artist's statements. In The Transatlantic Zombie (Rutgers, 2015) Sarah Juliet Lauro, states "Drexler's reworkings of Gauguin's painting are a zombie project as well as a project representing the zombie: