Mark di Suvero @ Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Mark di Suvero: Hugs
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
October 6, 2018 - February 28, 2019

Paula Cooper Gallery presents the installation of Mark di Suvero’s monumental steel sculpture Hugs at 220 11th Avenue, New York. Organized on the occasion of the gallery’s fiftieth anniversary, the installation is located down the street from its new primary space at 524 W 26th Street. The presentation honors Mark di Suvero’s long history with the gallery, having first collaborated with Cooper at Park Place Gallery (1965-67) and later at the Paula Cooper Gallery—including the second exhibition in 1968, and most recently in a one-person show in 2018. The sculpture is presented in collaboration with the Moinian Group and Alex Brotmann Art Advisory.

Throughout his sixty-year career, Mark di Suvero has created vibrant and dynamic works, which fuse vitality and improvisation with complex construction. Standing over fifty feet high, the pyramidal structure Hugs, is composed of steel I-beams whose three legs intersect in a central, curved form. Its expansive scale allows viewers to engage physically with the work, inducing a kinesthetic response as one walks under and around to perceive it from shifting vantages. Democratic accessibility and viewer participation have long been driving principles in Mark di Suvero’s artistic practice:

“When one is an artist, one wants to do art that is meaningful to a lot of people. Most art is shown in museums and galleries, which eliminates a whole population. By putting it out on the streets, you open it up to the world … there’s a great thing that happens when you have outdoor works where people are interacting and searching … I like to do interactive work. I really believe that the piece needs to be all the way around you. We see in about 210 degrees, but you feel what there is at the very edge of vision. With sculpture, you can get inside of it. It gives you a different kind of a feeling.” (Mark di Suvero, interviewed by Brienne Walsh: “Orgasmic Space: Q+A With Mark di Suvero,” Art in America, July 1, 2011)

Born in 1933 in Shanghai, China, Mark di Suvero first came to public prominence in 1975 with a display of his work in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris—the first for any living artist—and a major retrospective that same year at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. This exhibition featured his large-scale sculpture in public sites throughout all five boroughs of the city. The artist has had acclaimed international exhibitions in Nice (1991), Venice (1995, on the occasion of the 46th Venice Biennale) and Paris (1997), among others. In 2011, eleven monumental works were installed on Governors Island in New York Harbor. Organized by Storm King Art Center, this marked the largest outdoor exhibition of work in New York City since the 1970s. That same yearMark  di Suvero received the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor given to artists. In May 2013, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented eight monumental sculptures in the city’s historic Crissy Field for a yearlong outdoor exhibition. In September 2016, two monumental works were installed on Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive through a partnership between the Chicago Park District and EXPO CHICAGO; they will remain on view through September 2019. One can also see a number of permanently installed Mark di Suvero sculptures at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York. The artist currently lives and works in Petaluma, CA.

PAULA COOPER GALLERY
524 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.paulacoopergallery.com

Mark di Suvero @ Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC

Mark di Suvero
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
November 3 - December 10, 2016

Paula Cooper Gallery announces an exhibition of work by Mark di Suvero. The exhibit highlights the artist’s continued preeminence in abstract sculpture throughout his near-sixty-year career. The show, on view at 534 West 21st Street, will be up from November 3rd through December 10th, 2016. The opening reception is on Friday, November 4th from 6 to 8pm.

As art historian Barbara Rose stated, “[Mark di Suvero’s] genius lies in his unique ability to fuse the excitement of the momentary … with the gravity of a timeless geometry and the engineered ability and intuitive equilibrium that his hard-won mastery of structural balances makes possible.” His works thrive on the collision of geometric and organic forms through spontaneous experimentation. “I don’t draw detailed plans,” he said. “I start with a vision … and see where it goes.” Di Suvero executes and installs his sculptures himself. Designing and revising throughout every step of construction, he welds, bends, cuts and bolts with illimitable buoyancy. The vast metal sheet plate becomes a blank piece of paper on top of which he crawls to sketch freehand forms with chalk. The industrial crane becomes an extension of the artist’s arm, handled as if he were painting with a massive brush. Activated by this spirited process, the final structures assert a dynamic and irrefutable presence.

Ranging from three to thirteen feet in height, the midsize scale of the works on view accommodates an especially wide range of formal improvisation that highlights the artist’s constructivist foundation and expansive manipulation of line and space. Composed of beams of wood and painted steel, the manifold planes of Untitled (hungblock), 1962, extend with a kinetic yet delicate thrust, while Nextro, 2003, offers an enigmatic staccato of linear and spherical elements. A recent work from 2015 entitled Post-Matisse Pullout draws inspiration from the cut-outs of the French artist, Henri Matisse. The playful potential for imminent change contained in its bowing curvilinear form recalls the mutable paper and thumbtacks used by Matisse for continuous alterations.

Mark di Suvero currently lives and works in New York. His first retrospective was at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975 and was accompanied by a citywide exhibition of large-scale works. The artist has had acclaimed international exhibitions in Nice (1991), Venice (1995, on the occasion of the 46th Venice Biennale) and Paris (1997), among others. In 2011, eleven monumental works were installed on Governors Island in New York Harbor. Organized by Storm King Art Center this marked the largest outdoor exhibition of work in New York since the 1970s. That same year di Suvero received the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor given to artists. From May 2013-2014, SFMOMA presented eight monumental sculptures in the city’s historic Crissy Field for a yearlong outdoor exhibition. In September 2016, two monumental works were installed on Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive through a partnership between the Chicago Park District and EXPO CHICAGO. These works will be on view through 2017. One can also see a number of Mark di Suvero sculptures at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York, permanently installed.

Paula Cooper Gallery
www.paulacoopergallery.com

Mark Di Suvero, Knoedler & Company, NYC - Indoors

Mark Di Suvero: Indoors
Knoedler & Company, New York
May 12 - August 12, 2005

Mark di Suvero (b. 1933), one of today’s most respected and innovative sculptors, have his first exhibition at Knoedler & Company, Mark di Suvero: Indoors, consisting of nine sculptures dating from 2002 through 2005. The works range in size from sixteen inches to over eight feet in height, with moving components that, as John Yau writes in the catalogue essay, “invite the viewer to actively participate with the work, to make it turn, spin, and swing, and rock.” Di Suvero began his experimentation with kinetic compositions as early as 1962: progressing from the “spinning” or “balance” pieces, to the “variable” or “tumbling” works, and finally to the “puzzle” sculptures. The exhibition also includes a selection of recent works on paper.

Mark di Suvero: Indoors is accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication (in hard and soft cover), with a new poem and essay by John Yau. The poem, “Ghost Guest”, is dedicated to the artist and titled after one of the sculptures included in the exhibition. Yau’s essay considers the musicality and poetry in di Suvero’s sculpture, exploring its playfulness, exhilaration, and accessibility.

Concurrent with the Knoedler show, Storm King Art Center, in Mountainville, New York will celebrate its forty-fifth anniversary with the exhibition Richard Bellamy and Mark di Suvero, which will be on view from June 8 – November 13, 2005 and again from April 1 – November 15, 2006. In addition to the permanent installation of four monumental outdoor sculptures by Mark di Suvero, there will be a survey of indoor and outdoor works on loan for the exhibition. Importantly, there will be a special selection of fifty photographs of Mark di Suvero’s work taken by Richard Bellamy between 1975 and 1998. Richard Bellamy (1927-1998) was Mark di Suvero’s longtime dealer and close friend.

Knoedler & Company presents this exhibition in collaboration with Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

KNOEDLER & COMPANY
19 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021
www.knoedlergallery.com