Donald Baechler @ Cheim & Read, New York

Donald Baechler
Cheim & Read, New York
Through December 23, 2017

DONALD BAECHLER

View, 2017

Acrylic and fabric collage on canvas

60 x 60 in,152.4 x 152.4 cm

Courtesy Donald Baechler and Cheim & Read, New York

Cheim & Read presents an exhibition of new work by Donald Baechler, which is accompanied by a catalogue with essay by Phoebe Hoban. This is the artist’s seventh solo show at the gallery, where he also co-curated the group exhibition, I Won’t Grow Up, in 2008. With this show, Donald Baechler continues his explorations of heavily outlined, iconic imagery set against richly textured, layered fields. In many of the new paintings, the field is composed of fabric collage, overlaid with striations and blots of pastel-colored acrylic paint. The forms are thick and solidly rendered; floating untethered within its borders. There is an awkwardness and alienation that infuses his figures, which include sickly looking, moon-headed men; a handcuffed prisoner guided by a police officer’s hand; and a pair of armless, Brancusi-inspired lovers locked in a kiss.

Donald Baechler

Exhibition Catalogue published by Cheim & Read (201​7​)

Text by ​Phoebe Hoban

​48 pages with ​17​ color plates - Softcover

Image courtesy Donald Baechler and Cheim & Read, New York

Critically, Donald Baechler has been linked to the Neo-Expressionist generation of painters, but he has also been deeply influenced by the Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, and he has listed Cy Twombly, Giotto, and Robert Rauschenberg as the three artists most important to his thinking. Expressive brushwork combined with abstract, formal rigor has defined Baechler’s work from early on, and these paintings, which are deeply embedded in the history of modernist and postwar art, foreground their visual links to artists as different as James Ensor and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

In a sign of the times, however, James Ensor’s grimly masked reveler now bears a nauseated grimace, while the graphic punch of Basquiat’s unruly, graffiti-based paintings is pressurized into self-contained forms outlined in black and often highlighted in white. The cutout quality of these images, painted flatly against a bustling field, present the figure-ground relationship in terms of polar opposites, further enhancing the paintings’ sense of enigmatic estrangement.

Donald Baechler was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1956. He attended the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore (1974–77) and Cooper Union, New York (1977–78). In 1978–79, he spent a year studying at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. While in Germany he became acquainted with Jiri Georg Dokoupil and Walter Dahn.

Donald Baechler’s work is represented in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, all in New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Philadelphia Museum; and The Centre George Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.

Upcoming exhibition at Cheim & Read: Barry MCGEE, January 4 - February 17, 2018

Cheim & Read
547 West 25 Street, New York, NY 10001
www.cheimread.com

Pat Steir Paintings, Cheim & Read, NYC

PAT STEIR

GOLD OVER GREEN, 

RED OVER GOLD,

ORANGE OVER ORANGE

2009-10 Oil on canvas

84 x 84 in 213,4 x 213,4 cm

Image courtesy of Cheim & Read

Pat Steir: Winter Paintings
Cheim & Read, New York
February 17 - March 26, 2011

An exhibition of recent paintings by PAT STEIR will be on view at Cheim & Read gallery in New York. The show is accompanied by a full color catalogue with essays by Kay Larson and Matthew Israel. Steir’s last show with Cheim & Read was in 2007.

PAT STEIR BIOGRAPHY

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1940, Pat Steir received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 1962. Her work has been shown almost continually since graduation. After debuting in a few group shows, including Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, she had her first solo exhibition at Terry Dintenfass Gallery in 1964. 

Though with her early work Steir was loosely allied with Conceptual Art and Minimalism, she is best-recognized for dripped, splashed and poured “waterfall” paintings which she first started in the late 1980s. As Larson explores in her catalogue essay for the show, Steir’s continuous search for the essence of painting guided her to John Cage, who she met in 1980, and Agnes Martin, who she visited in New Mexico every year for 30 years, until Martin’s death in 2004. These two artists provided Steir with enviable mentorship. From Cage, Steir learned the importance of “non-doing,” the role of chance, and the separation of ego. Martin showed her the “magic” of work in which the artist “invest[ed] their spirit into an object.” Both lessons found direction in Steir’s poured-paint paintings: paint, once applied, flows downwards, its serendipitous path routed by its own unpredictable journey. Steir, intentionally removing herself from the action allowing gravity, time and the environment to determine the work’s result. She positions nature and its elemental forces as active participants. In this vein, Steir is also profoundly influenced by Chinese painting traditions and techniques, especially the inky marks of the 8th and 9th century Yi-pin “ink-splashing” painters, and Taoist philosophy’s aspiration for harmonious, unfettered connections between man, nature and the cosmos.

PAT STEIR: WINTER PAINTINGS

Pat Steir’s newest paintings are a continued exploration of this technique. Her canvases are constructed and divided simply and prepared with a dry ground. She determines and mixes the colors – thinning paint with oil – and from there begins a meditative process of pouring, dripping or splashing, patiently waiting as each paint layer reveals itself. The majority of the new works present canvases halved by painted panels of saturated, jewel-like color – glowing lapis lazuli blues, radiating golds, reds, ochres, and deep purple-blacks. The paintings’ two halves interact at the center line, sometimes merging, sometimes exposing their divide. Ephemeral, overlapping fields of paint quietly share in the mystery of their making – Steir’s process of painting begins with a controlled act (a chosen color, a decisive gesture), the result is a collaboration with gravity. The “non-intention” of Cage and introspective spirituality of Martin is evident. As Pat Steir says, “I can’t do it again. I can’t replicate it even if I know what happened. That’s the pleasure of it.”

CHEIM & READ 
547 W 25 NYC USA

www.cheimread.com

David McDermott and Peter McGough, Of Beauty and Being

OF BEAUTY AND BEING, an exhibition of new work by the collaborative artists DAVID MCDERMOTT & PETER MCGOUH is on view at CHEIM & READ, NYC, through February 12, 2011. Their previous show with Cheim & Read was in 2008.

David McDermott and Peter McGough (born 1952 and 1958), are known for their creative appropriation of different historical eras and styles. Faithful to the subjects and techniques of their chosen period, the duo's multi-disciplinary work questions the nature of perception, identity, gender and narrative. Memory and nostalgia play strong roles, subtly subverted by an aura of artificiality and the artists' sly reconstruction of the past.

McDermott & McGough's recent work has looked to cultural tableaus of 1950s and 60s Americana, culling imagery from advertisements, movies and movie stars, comic books and paperback novels. Their current exhibition continues this theme, referencing imagery from 1940s - early 1950s advertisements, geared mostly towards women and a carefully coiffed, artificial world of beauty and desire. In their focus on the archetypal, mid-century American woman, McDermott & McGough construct narrative portraits, still lifes, evocative nudes and cultural and art historical references (one piece, an obvious take on Roy Lichtenstein's Girl with Ball, 1961, is titled Before the Fall, 1955, 2010). 

The images, all photographs, are printed in a tricolor carbon photographic process, a technique perfected and made famous by the photographer Paul Outerbridge in the 1930s and 40s, and used for color advertisements in magazines. Outerbridge, a successful and innovative commercial photographer, as well as an artist, created a scandal with his color photographs of female nudes. McDermott & McGough reference the saturated hues and precise staging of Outerbridge's compositions, as well as his subjects (as in My Song of Love, 1955, 2010 and Haunts My Reverie, 1955, 2010). They also find inspiration in the commercial work of Man Ray and Edward Steichen. The inherent tension between the photographers' commercial and creative careers interest McDermott & McGough. Their advertisements were a direct result of the approach and aesthetic concerns of their artistic output; art then emulated the advertisements. Conceptually, they orient themselves as "advertisers" of a re-imagined past - an idealistic landscape at home in the American subconscious. 

Representing "the struggle of what beauty presents to the individual and the power that it commands," McDermott & McGough recognize the distance between the remote, ultimately "unreal" look of their objectified subject and the contemporary viewer. In Always Reminding Me That We're Apart,1955, 2010, a purple-gloved woman looks at the viewer through her fractured reflection in a compact mirror, reducing her image to a diamond-shaped wedge and further enforcing her remove from the audience - a condition strongly supported by the work's title. The search for one's own identity and existence is modeled by fantasies and daydreams. Desire for beauty is reliant on a pose.

Cheim & Read
547 W 25 NY
USA

www.cheimread.com

Ghada Amer: 100 Words of Love at Cheim & Read, NYC

Ghada Amer: 100 Words of Love 

Cheim & Read, New York
Through February 12, 2011

A new sculpture by GHADA AMER, entitled 100 Words of Love, 2010 is on view at Cheim & Read gallery's dome room. The piece is comprised of one hundred Arabic words for love. Calligraphic inter-twining of letters creates an open, lace-like lattice form around a hollow interior. This work, like other works by the artist, reference domesticity, society, beauty and abstraction, and, consequently, the stereotypical gender roles found within these themes. Ghada Amer also addresses the Western media's portrayal of Arabic society as aggressive and associated with war. Having lived and worked in New York for over twenty years, Ghada Amer straddles both cultures - the Middle East of her youth and modern day America. The tension of this dichotomy sustains her awareness of how we see others and ourselves, and has been a long-standing influence on her work.

Ghada Amer's work is also on view simultaneously at MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha.

Upcoming exhibition at Cheim & Read: Pat Steir: Winter Paintings, 02-17 > 03-26-2011

Cheim & Read
547 W 25 NYC USA
www.cheimread.com

01-07 | 02-12

Hans Hartung: The Last Paintings 1989 at Cheim & Read, NYC

Hans Hartung: The Last Paintings 1989
Cheim & Read, New York
Through December 30, 2010

 

A landmark exhibition of Hans Hartung’s late paintings, dating from 1987-1989 is on view at Cheim & Read gallery in New York. This is the first showing of Hartung’s works in New York since his controversial 1975 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and focuses on the artistic output of his last years of life. The show is accompanied by a full color catalogue with an essay by Joe Fyfe.

HANS HARTUNG, T1989-L14, 1989
Acrylic on canvas
76 3/4 x 51 1/4 in 195 x 130 cm
Courtesy of Cheim & Read, NY

 

HANS HARTUNG (1904-1989) BIOGRAPHY
Hans Hartung was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1904, but is often identified by his artistic activity in Paris and his involvement in the French Art Informel or Tachist movements. His life and work were greatly affected by the political and social upheavals in France and Germany during the Second World War; after fleeing his native Germany (he was considered a “degenerate” artist by the Gestapo) he fought with the French Foreign Legion and lost his right leg on the Alsatian front. His post-war paintings – emotional abstractions which explored varieties of gesture and mark – were considered reactions to his experiences in battle. In fact, the paintings were surprisingly premeditated, carefully copied from sometimes much earlier, spontaneous drawings enlarged to fit the canvas. Originally an economic decision (predetermined compositions guaranteed successful outcomes), Hartung’s exacting realization of his paintings is evidence of the great control, technical aptitude and thoughtfulness with which he approached his work, as well as his understanding of, as Fyfe states in his catalogue essay, “painting as an act of mimesis.”

As a child, Hartung tried to capture the quick flash of lightening in order to contain and comprehend its unpredictable energy. Light, space and shadow proved to be life long themes; nature and the cosmos were influential forces. Photography was a helpful aid – Hartung took over 30,000 photographs, mostly recording patterns of light and dark, which he used as references for his work. Though his paintings were decidedly abstract, with seemingly little foundation in representation or figuration, Hartung spent much of his early career copying works by Rembrandt, Goya and Van Gogh. He felt an artist’s single scribbled line could contain enough expressive energy and information for the whole image – such was the authority of an artist’s individual mark.

Hartung’s career, especially in his home countries of France and Germany, was successful. His shows and awards were numerous; mid-career, in 1960, he won the Venice Biennale’s International Prize. This also coincided with his transition from pre-planned compositions to paintings improvised directly on the canvas. Exploration and experimentation with various and unusual tools ensued, and included lithography rollers, plant fronds, wheelchair wheels and gardening paraphernalia. Hartung also began to experiment with sprayed paint, using a set up similar to an auto-body shop and eventually appropriating garden hoses and sprayers originally developed for disseminating fertilizer.

In 1975, Henry Geldzahler, then the Metropolitan Museum’s curator of contemporary art, organized an exhibition of Hartung’s recent paintings at the museum. Though several contemporary artists, including Frank Stella and James Rosenquist, reported favorably of the show, it was highly misunderstood, and Hartung’s work was not shown again in New York until now.

In the last year of his life (Hartung died in December 1989), he produced 360 paintings – a monumental accomplishment, especially given his restricted physical condition. Confined to his wheelchair, he seemed to focus entirely on his creative output; his late work presents a sense of freedom, innovation and ambition that was connected to his previous work. His spray paint technique facilitated productivity – the sensitivity of the sprayer allowed Hartung to exercise control over the canvas without physical strain. The tool also provided exceptional variations in paint layering and effects, from smooth, transparent blocks of color to saturated, calligraphic drizzles of line. These works hint at the natural world, the qualities of light and shadow, and the infinitude of space, while remaining distinct artistic entities, anticipatory of contemporary concerns. Ultimately, they are witness to Hartung’s continuous, fearless exploration, even with the looming inevitability of his failing health. Hartung stated: “As for me I want to remain free, mind body and spirit. I don’t want neither myself nor anybody else to shut me off it all.”

In an adjacent gallery at Cheim & Read, Abstract Works on Paper 1941-1971 from a Private Collection is exhibited. The dialogue between these works by de Kooning, Mitchell, Kusama, Rothko, Tobey, Twombly among others, and Hartung’s late work provides an interesting counterpoint.

CHEIM & READ
547 W 25 NYC

www.cheimread.com

30-10 -> 30-12-2010