Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito @ Yancey Richardson, New York - "orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit" Exhibition

Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito

orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit

Yancey Richardson, New York

February 27 – April 12, 2025

Laura Letinsky & John Paul Morabito 

indiapilehamletmemajamina, 2015 

Cotton and wool, 52 x 41 inches

© Laura Letinsky & John Paul Morabito

Courtesy Yancey Richardson

Yancey Richardson presents 

orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit, an exhibition of cotton and wool tapestries made by Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito. The exhibition is on view in the project gallery.

Since 2013, Letinsky and Morabito have worked collaboratively, bringing photography and weaving into dialogue and exploring the cooperative possibilities between the two mediums. Central to their conception of this project was an understanding of the loom as a kind of precursor to the creative capacities eventually unleashed by the computer and the digital age more broadly.

In orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit, Laura Letinsky continues her career-long investigation of photography’s relationship to temporality, specifically through the genre of still-life. While travelling across India in 2014, Letinsky made multiple trips to the Bangalore Flower market where she found streets transformed by remnants from the early morning market. Crushed gladiolas, orchids, roses, marigolds and lilies blended together, creating dense and vivid fields of complex color. In Mumbai, Laura Letinsky made pictures of flower petals left behind on the streets following celebratory wedding nights. With her camera aimed straight  down she created pure abstractions of texture and color.

Weaving together richly hued cotton and wool thread, Morabito translated Letinsky’s digital abstractions into lusciously colored painterly tapestries. In contrast to the sharp delineation of forms so typical of photographic prints, the tapestries present abstract yet tactile visual fields that connect us back to moments viscerally felt. Expressed through a wide range of brilliantly colored threads, the works explore the tensions between beauty, fragility and loss.

In Letinsky and Morabito words: “Last night’s flowers, digitally apprehended, are cast out of an Eden remembered, and brought home to the loom. The shutter’s click is joined by a wooden whirr as the shuttle plies back and forth. Line by line, the digital screen is consumed by lapis blues, acid yellows, and putrescent greens. Those wool threads, loose and tangled, are mired amongst the flowers (redolent with their perfumes and high noon sweat).”

Laura Letinsky was born in 1962 in Winnipeg, Canada. She received her BFA from the University of Manitoba in 1986 and MFA from Yale University’s School of Art in 1991. Since 1994, she has been a Professor in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at FOAM, Amsterdam; PhotoEspaña, Madrid; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Denver Art Museum; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Renaissance Society, Chicago. Public collections featuring Letinsky’s work include the Art Institute of Chicago; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yale University Art Gallery. She has received numerous awards, including the Canada Council International Residency (2014); Richard Driehaus Foundation Award (2003); Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2002) and the Guggenheim Fellowship Award (2000). Publications include To Want for Nothing, ROMAN NVMERALS, 2019; Time’s Assignation, Radius Books, 2018; Ill Form and Void Full, Radius Books, 2014; After All, Damiani, 2010; Hardly More Than Ever, Renaissance Society, 2004 and Venus Inferred, University of Chicago Press, 2000.

John Paul Morabito was born in 1982 in New York, USA. They are Assistant Professor and Head of Textiles at Kent State University School of Art. In 2024, John Paul Morabito was named a United States Artists Fellow for their significant contributions to weaving and contemporary art. Morabito has exhibited at international venues including the Zhejiang Art Museum (Hangzhou City, China); the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (affiliate of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem, NC); the Des Moines Art Center (Des Moines, IA); the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); the Center for Craft (Asheville, NC); and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI). Their work is represented in public and private collections including the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, NC) and the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec (Montréal, Canada). They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. John Paul Morabito is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

YANCEY RICHARDSON

525 West 22nd Street, New York City

www.yanceyrichardson.com

Artist Igshaan Adams @ The Hepworth Wakefield - "Weerhoud" Exhibition

Igshaan Adams: Weerhoud

The Hepworth Wakefield

22 June – 3 November 2024

Igshaan Adams 

Jaime-Lee, Dustin, 2023 

Cotton twine, polypropylene and nylon rope, mohair wool, 

plastic, glass and semi precious stone beads, silver-linked chain 

and tiger tail wire. 198 x 290 cm

© Igshaan Adams

Courtesy of the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects

Photo: Mario Todeschini 

Igshaan Adams 

Jaime-Lee, Dustin (detail) 2023 

© Igshaan Adams

Courtesy of the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects. 

Photo: Mario Todeschini 

The Hepworth Wakefield presents a solo exhibition by South African artist Igshaan Adams. Entitled Weerhoud, meaning ‘Withheld’ in Afrikaans, the exhibition examines the impact of lived experiences and traumas on the human psyche, with a particular emphasis on the healing potential of movement. Adams will present three new commissions created specifically for the exhibition, consisting of two tapestries and one of his largest immersive ‘cloud’ installations to date. These new works are exhibited alongside a selection of existing sculptures and textile pieces. Weerhoud presents an exciting development in Igshaan Adams’ practice, shifting his focus from domestic spaces and landscapes to the body.

Portrait of Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist 

Photo by Mario Todeschini

Igshaan Adams was born in 1982 in Bonteheuwel, a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. He grew up navigating the complexities of identity under apartheid’s racial classification system. His work spans a wide spectrum, encompassing intricate tapestries, expansive floor and wall-based installations, and immersive suspended sculptures. Igshaan Adams’ work focuses on the nuanced remnants of human experiences, examining the impressions – ranging from the barely perceptible to the obvious – left by individuals within their homes, cities, natural environments, and their own bodies. His practice challenges apartheid’s attempt to confine people through racialised spaces, portraying the body as a catalyst for resistance against dominant structures. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award and subsequently featured in numerous exhibitions worldwide, going on to present his work at the 2022 Venice Biennale and the 2023 Bienal de São Paulo.

Igshaan Adams’ new tapestries are derived from an ongoing series of dance workshops in which he collaborates with young dancers from the Garage Dance Ensemble, a dance group based in O’okiep within South Africa’s Northern Cape Province. The dancers are encouraged to intuitively interact with a large canvas placed on top of freshly painted linoleum, leaving behind traces and creating abstract paint marks with their bodies. The resulting ‘paintings’ are then used as inspiration to create tapestries. Igshaan Adams considers the dancers’ bodies and movements as repositories of memories and trauma and is interested in recording in his tapestries a trace of their psyche. He understands ‘movement as a medium through which one can mend internal brokenness, even when clarity or memory is lacking.’ Igshaan Adams views each resulting tapestry as deeply personal to the dancers, often naming them after specific performers. Adorned with beads, chains, stones, shells, ribbons and ropes, some areas are deliberately left unwoven, revealing negative space, further evoking a sense of fragmentation or incompleteness.

Igshaan Adams’ new cloud sculpture offers visitors an immersive experience, allowing them to walk through the cloud as they navigate the exhibition space. This cloud installation will integrate wires, beads, and various found objects, such as shower heads, lampshades, and chairs. Through these elements, he reflects on how past experiences shape our present identities.

Igshaan Adams 

Oorskot, 2016 

Courtesy of the artist. Private collection 

© Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects

Igshaan Adams 

Ouma, 2016 

Courtesy of the artist. Private collection 

© Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects 

Igshaan Adams 

Ameen, 2018 

Courtesy of the artist 

© Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects

Igshaan Adams 

Bent, 2018 

Courtesy of the artist 

© Igshaan Adams 

Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and blank projects

Igshaan Adams: Weerhoud also revisits works created between 2014 and 2019, including some that have been deliberately degraded by time, showing signs of age and fragmentation. Some artworks, including Ameen (2018) have been exposed to the elements and damaged, with scars becoming integral to their composition. Others evoke a feeling of detachment from a larger whole, appearing vulnerable and open to influence. A tapestry titled, Bent (2018) Adams explains is ‘akin to a flower bending towards sunlight to absorb rays more effectively.’ These earlier works, along with the new commissions, ask what spaces, materials, and bodies can encompass; what remains held within us; and how we adjust to our environment, whether it be in positive or negative ways.

Marie-Charlotte Carrier, Curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, said ‘Audiences need to experience Igshaan Adams’s art to fully appreciate the incredible skill and care that goes into creating each very detailed and powerful new work. I am excited to share the artist’s most ambitious work to date at The Hepworth Wakefield this summer and capture Adams’ new artistic focus on the body.’

The exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield is accompanied by a book featuring essays by Curator Marie-Charlotte Carrier, Curator and Writer Nkgopoleng Moloi, Garage Dance Ensemble co-founder Alfred Hinkel, and an interview with Igshaan Adams led by Marie-Charlotte Carrier and Laura Smith, Director of Collections and Exhibitions. 

THE HEPWORTH WAKEFIELD

Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF1 5AW

hepworthwakefield.org

Cindy Sherman @ Sprüth Magers Gallery, Los Angeles - Tapestries

Cindy Sherman: Tapestries

Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles

Through May 1, 2021

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers present the first solo exhibition at the Los Angeles gallery by internationally renowned artist CINDY SHERMAN, who has been associated with Sprüth Magers since the 1980s. In the latest series on view, Cindy Sherman explores her first non-photographic medium in a career spanning over 40 years: Tapestry. Featuring a dozen examples of her new and recent tapestries, the exhibition marks the début of these works as a coherent body of work.

In line with Cindy Sherman’s long-term photographic investigation into the construction of identity and the nature of representation, the images are based on pictures posted on the artist’s personal Instagram account, which she creates using widely available filters and face-altering apps. Impossible to print in large scale due to the low-resolution nature of the original Instagram images, they are transposed into woven textiles, which in turn resonate with the pixelation of the source material: Pixels, here, translate to the warp and weft of thread.

Produced in Belgium—with its long history of weaving and tapestry—and made of cotton, wool, acrylic and polyester, each tapestry invents and introduces an entirely unique character. In keeping with many of her previous works, the artist becomes nearly unrecognizable through changes in hair color, hairdo, eye color, skin tone, facial features and even gender. For example, one work depicts a figure with a blonde beard in front of mountains, water and pink skies, gazing upward with an inquisitive, hopeful look, as if to the heavens; another shows an almost extraterrestrial-looking being with pink hair, purple skin and two sets of flashy eyelashes taking a selfie in front of a prismatic sunset.

In Cindy Sherman’s tapestries, the interplay between character and background is as dynamic as ever. While earlier bodies of work feature distorted, yet still realistic, human figures, here they are increasingly digitally manipulated, resulting in exaggerated traits or the partial dissolution of the body as it begins to merge with its environment. The artist also continuously experiments with the images’ backgrounds, which range from plain white or grey to elaborate digital landscapes, often using Instagram effects. By combining contemporary, digital tools such as Photoshop and Instagram with such a traditional medium as tapestry—often associated with domestic settings and coded as female—Cindy Sherman also gives a nod to art history, gender and societal roles.

Since the late 1970s, Cindy Sherman has been photographing herself in guises inspired by stereotypes and characters from mass media, everyday life and art-historical imagery. Her unique approach reveals the degree to which these stereotypes are entrenched in the cultural and social imagination. Sherman’s influential, complex oeuvre draws upon cinema, realism and the grotesque, and is embedded in a number of postmodern and feminist theories.

CINDY SHERMAN (*1954, Glen Ridge, NJ) lives and works in New York. Her work was recently the subject of a large-scale exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, which followed a major retrospective exhibition in 2019–20 at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and Vancouver Art Gallery. Other recent solo exhibitions include: Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (2018), The Broad, Los Angeles (2016), Dallas Museum of Art (2013), and Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (all 2012). Selected group exhibitions include Hayward Gallery, London (2018), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2016), Tate Modern, London (2015), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012) and MUMOK, Vienna (2011). Cindy Sherman also participated in the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and co-curated a section of the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).

SPRÜTH MAGERS

5900 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036

www.spruethmagers.com

_______________________

Brassaï @ Higher Pictures, NYC - Language of the Wall: The Tapestries, 1968

Brassaï, Language of the Wall: The Tapestries, 1968

Higher Pictures, NYC

Through March 5, 2016

Higher Pictures presents Language of the Wall: The Tapestries, 1968 presenting together for the first time Graffiti I and Nocturne, two of the earliest of seven known tapestries created by BRASSAI. The tapestries, both made in 1968 by the renowned Atelier Yvette Cauquil-Prince, were woven from Brassaï’s collages of his own Graffiti photographs and are exhibited here alongside a selection of gelatin silver prints from the well-known series.

Brassaï began taking photographs of graffiti he saw on walls throughout Paris in the early 1930s and first published a suite of them in a 1933 issue of the surrealist magazine Minotaure (no. 3 – 4), writing there that graffiti had “toppled all the painstakingly devised canons of our aesthetic.” Brassaï wrote about the spontaneous, untrained scrawls and carvings of the graffitists as eternal and formative gestures, imagining children discovering and recreating the human face by gouging two eyeholes into stone or sharing naïve expressions of love through carved hearts and roughly inscribed initials. Though this language would later inspire Jean Dubuffet to make a direct connection between Brassaï’s project and Art Brut, a term Dubuffet coined in the late 1940s to describe what we now call outsider art, Brassaï never aligned himself with the movement.

In 1956, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted the exhibition Language of the Wall: Parisian Graffiti Photographed by Brassaï, featuring over 100 prints from the series selected by Edward Steichen and organized by the artist into visual categories, including: faces; love; war; birds and beasts; wizards and phantoms; and the sign of death. In the exhibition’s press release, Steichen establishes graffiti as “chiefly valuable for the light they throw on the everyday life of the ‘man in the street’ of the period, and for the intimate details of customs and institutions of people in a particular time and place.” It was following MoMA’s exhibition and the subsequent publication of Graffiti de Brassaï in 1961 that Brassaï and Yvette Cauquil-Prince—a master weaver who had already worked with Pablo Picasso and would collaborate with Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Alexander Calder—first discussed translating his photographs into textiles. The process of making Graffiti I and Nocturne would have begun with Brassaï making a collage of prints (each tapestry here comprises more than twenty photographs) that was then used to create a full-scale template, called a cartoon. Placed under or behind the loom, the cartoon provided the weaver with a blueprint for the final piece.

Graffiti I (1968) was Brassaï and Cauquil-Prince’s first tapestry. Measuring nearly 5 feet tall and 10 feet wide, it features what Brassaï called the “bird-woman” (the gelatin silver print is also on view here) in the center of the composition and twinned in miniature in the upper left corner. She is surrounded primarily by images of lovers’ hearts, though a skull and other glyphs appear, all rendered in the grays, browns, and blacks of Paris’ walls. Nocturne, 4 1⁄2 feet tall and 9 feet wide, was completed the same year. The eponymous evening light is captured in vibrant blues and violets; once again, though now facing in the opposite direction, the bird-woman anchors the composition in the center and reappears in the upper left corner. A number of the same hearts from Graffiti I appear around her, joined by a curvilinear female silhouette and a crossbones motif topped with a broadly smiling face in the place of a skull. The Graffiti project charts Brassaï’s transposition of drawing into photograph, and then both into tapestry, ultimately, in the artist’s own words, returning to the wall what he took from it.

Brassaï was born Gyula Halász in Brassó, Transylvania in 1899. In 1924, after studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and the Academy of Fine Arts at Charlottenburg in Berlin, he moved to Paris where he began working as a journalist and, eventually, a photographer. He took the pseudonym of his hometown in 1932 and the next year published his first photobook, the landmark Paris de Nuit. Widely considered one of the most important artists of the interwar period, Brassaï worked actively through the late 1960s; he died in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France in 1984. His work has since been the subject of several major retrospectives, including Brassaï at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and Hayward Gallery, London in 2000 and Brassaï: The Eye of Paris at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC in 1998.

HIGHER PICTURES

980 Madison Avenue, New York, NY

http://higherpictures.com