Gene Hedge @ Lincoln Glenn Gallery, New York - 'Pieces Of The City' Exhibition

Gene Hedge: Pieces Of The City

Lincoln Glenn Gallery, New York

November 13 – December 20, 2025

Lincoln Glenn Gallery presents Gene Hedge: Pieces of The City, a solo exhibition of the artist’s collages, paintings, and constructions from the 1950s through the 1970s. Hedge’s alternative practices reveal a singular way of seeing the world—an approach that infused his work with depth, dimension, and a quiet sense of reverence for form.

This exhibition marks Lincoln Glenn Gallery’s second presentation of Hedge’s work since the artists passing in 2017. Pieces of The City bring to light a remarkable body of paintings and constructions that remained hidden for decades in his SoHo studio—works that encapsulate both the discipline and devotion of an artist who lived entirely for his craft.

Although Gene Hedge initially found success in the vibrant postwar art world, he ultimately turned away from commercial recognition. By the early 1970s, he had withdrawn from the gallery circuit entirely, devoting himself instead to teaching, travel, and the creative achievements of his peers. Living and working in his SoHo loft on Bleecker Street, Gene Hedge chose a life of solitude and pure artistic pursuit. He painted obsessively, not for sale or acclaim, but for the sake of the work itself—an act of quiet defiance in a market-driven era.

Born and raised in Indiana, Gene Hedge served in the military from 1946 to 1947 and used G.I. Bill tuition assistance to study art at Ball State University. Inspired by the writings of László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), he moved to Chicago in 1949 to attend the Institute of Design, founded as the New Bauhaus by Moholy-Nagy in 1937. After graduating, Gene Hedge relocated to New York in 1956, where he began working industrial paper used in highway construction—transforming the material into organic abstractions that bridge art, nature, and technology.

In 1965, Gene Hedge radically reimagined his process by experimenting with acrylic paint. He poured pigment directly onto canvas, coaxing it into biomorphic shapes with a squeegee to create rhythmic compositions that balance control and chance. These works, often produced in sets, explore infinite variations of a single visual idea—each canvas an intimate meditation on movement, repetition, and restraint.

Hedge’s works are represented in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and other major institutions.

Gene Hedge: Pieces Of The City is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Clanci Jo Conover.

LINCOLN GLENN GALLERY

542 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011

www.lincolnglenn.com

Louise Nevelson @ Pace Gallery, NYC - "Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance" Exhibition

Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance

Pace Gallery, New York

January 17 – March 1, 2025

Portrait of Louise Nevelson 

© The Estate of Pedro E. Guerrero

Celebrating its 62-year history with LOUISE NEVELSON (1899–1988), Pace presents Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance, a major exhibition of Nevelson’s late works, curated by gallery founder Arne Glimcher, at its 540 West 25th Street location in New York. This show places Louise Nevelson’s iconic monochromatic sculptures in black and white in dialogue with her collages—including several rarely seen and never previously exhibited masterworks—made in the 1970s and 1980s.

Like Piet Mondrian’s, Nevelson’s compositions are based on a strict adherence to vertical and horizontal regularity. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a significant development: Louise Nevelson incorporated the diagonal into her vocabulary. A new, angular energy surfaced in many of the works she produced during this period, breaking the rules by which she traditionally composed her work.

These late works shed new light on her evolving aesthetic, bringing into focus a series of remarkably productive years of her practice in which she experimented with a new vocabulary of robust, muscular, and often minimal forms while staying true to her lifelong investigations of materiality, shape, and shadow.

Rooted in the legacies of Cubism and Constructivism, Louise Nevelson’s artworks were widely celebrated during her lifetime for incorporating unexpected combinations of materials and forms. As part of her distinctive approach to abstraction, the artist often explored the myriad possibilities of collage—a technique she transposed into sculpture by means of compartmentalized elements and forms liberated from everyday meaning. Nevelson’s use of the collage aesthetic was formalist. Her art of scavenging and her affinity for the materiality of wood are linked to her personal life and her remarkable story.

Since Louise Nevelson’s death there has been a series of radical re-appraisals of her work, especially as new frameworks and dialogues in art history have emerged in recent years. The gallery’s presentation in New York coincides with a global upswell of interest in her work, which is underscored by a forthcoming retrospective of the artist organized by the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, opening to the public this fall. In April, ahead of the Pompidou-Metz's show, solo exhibitions of Nevelson's work will open at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and at Pace's Seoul gallery.

Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: 

Drag, Color, Join, Face 

By Julia Bryan- Wilson

Yale University Press, 2023

This past year, Louise Nevelson was honored in memoriam at the Art Students League’s annual gala in New York—the artist was an alumna of the institution—and in 2022, a sprawling exhibition of her work, Louise Nevelson: Persistence—curated by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Columbia University professor and author of Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (Yale University Press, 2023)—was presented as an official collateral event of the 59th Venice Biennale, and her work was also included in the main exhibition curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Pace presented its first solo show of work by Louise Nevelson in 1961 in Boston, and it has represented the artist—with whom the gallery’s Founder and Chairman Arne Glimcher maintained a decades-long friendship—since 1963. Early in their relationship, Nevelson took the young Glimcher under her wing, introducing him to all of the most important Abstract Expressionist artists and bringing him into the fold of the New York art world. Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, Arne Glimcher helped Louise Nevelson achieve a new level of international recognition, supporting her in the production of numerous large-scale public commissions around the United States and the world. Opening at the beginning of Pace’s 65th anniversary year, this Louise Nevelson exhibition reflects the artist’s enduring and deeply personal relationship with Arne Glimcher, and her indelible place in the gallery's history and its ethos today.

Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance showcases two of Nevelson’s rare white-painted wood sculptures—Study for the Chapel of the Good Shepherd and the never-before-exhibited Dawn’s Light, both created circa 1975—among her signature black-painted wood sculptures, including the large-scale freestanding composition Cascade- Perpendiculars XXX (1980–1982). Louise Nevelson specifically spoke about the relationship of her black and white works to the perceptual thresholds of dawn and dusk, the liminal, transitional, and indiscernible moments between day and night. Harkening back to her famed large-scale, all-white sculptural installation Dawn’s Wedding Feast (1959)— which was presented at the Museum of Modern Art as a single installation before being split into separate parts— Dawn’s Light speaks to the ways that Nevelson’s later expressions were guided by the project of transformation and transfiguration that energized her practice for more than four decades.

The gallery’s presentation also features Artillery Landscape (ca.1985), a single sculpture consisting of a group of individual floor-based elements, which was exhibited for the first time as part of Louise Nevelson. Persistence in Venice in 2022. Never before seen in the United States, this sculptural installation comprises reclaimed wooden artillery boxes found, reconstructed, and painted black by Nevelson in the last few years of her life. The hinged box- like elements of Artillery Landscape refer back to Nevelson’s psychologically charged Dream House series of the early 1970s, yet the title of the work derives from the origin of the boxes themselves, scavenged and repurposed artillery containers for artillery. Of her interest in reclaimed materials, Louise Nevelson once said, “I wanted to show that wood picked up on the street can turn to gold.”

Highlights in the exhibition include three wall-mounted works from the Mirror Shadows series of magisterial wall reliefs, one of the last bodies of work that Louise Nevelson produced and among her most innovative. Alongside these important late sculptures, a selection of Nevelson’s collages attest to her intensely personal and private mode of expression, which she kept mostly secret during her lifetime. In the economy of Nevelson’s studio, the collage works emerged simultaneously with her monochromatic sculptures as extensions of the same creative gesture. Providing a new avenue for explorations of color, light, shadow, reflection, and line, these works incorporate combinations of metallic foil, cardboard, sandpaper, tape, wood, spray paint, printed paper, and newspaper. Tearing and re- combining traces of the past to produce a raw, unfiltered beauty, Louise Nevelson developed an aesthetic of fragmentation and reassembly in her collages that animated the spirit of all her work.

LOUISE NEVELSON

Louise Nevelson (b. 1899, Kiev; d. 1988, New York), a leading sculptor of the 20th century, pioneered site-specific and installation art. She is best known for her monumental sculptures composed of discarded furniture and wooden elements found near her New York City studio. Louise Nevelson arranged these elements into nested, box-like structures, she would then paint them in monochromatic black, white, or gold—transforming disparate elements into a unified structure. She also experimented with bronze, terracotta, and Plexiglas, eventually moving into the realm of collage, works on paper, and public art. With her compositions, Louise Nevelson explored the relational possibilities of sculpture, summing up the objectification of the external world into a personal landscape. Although her practice is situated in lineage with Cubism and Constructivism, her sense of space and interest in the transcendence of the object reveal an affinity with Abstract Expressionism.

Louise Nevelson has been the subject of over 70 one-artist exhibitions, including over ten traveling exhibitions, held at institutions worldwide including The Jewish Museum, New York (1965, 2007); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1967, 1970, 1980, 1987, 1998, 2018); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1973, 2017); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1986); and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1997). 

Recent exhibitions include Louise Nevelson In L.A.: Tamarind Workshop Lithographs From the 1960s, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2015); Reflections: Louise Nevelson, 1967, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts (2017); The Fourth Dimension, San José Museum of Art, California (2017); The Face in the Moon, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018); Louise Nevelson, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2019–2020); Louise Nevelson: Sculptor of Shadows / Skyggernes Skulptør, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark (2020–2021); Louise Nevelson: Dawn to Dusk, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine (2023–2024); and The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (2023–2024). 

Louise Nevelson’s work is held in over 140 public collections worldwide including The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; The Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Tate, London, among many others.

PACE GALLERY, NEW YORK

540 West 25th Street, New York City

www.pacegallery.com

Louise Nevelson @ Locks Gallery, Philadelphia - "House of Nevelson" - Exhibition of sculptures and collages

Louise Nevelson 

House of Nevelson 

Locks Gallery, Philadelphia 

May 3 – June 28, 2024 

Locks Gallery presents House of Nevelson, an exhibition of sculptures and collages by the renowned LOUISE NEVELSON (1899–1988).

Louise Nevelson’s processes of assemblage have often been understood as her endless search for home. She famously said, “My whole life is one big collage” and “the way I think is collage.” A Russian immigrant who migrated from Kyiv to Maine, and later Maine to New York, Louise Nevelson described herself and her migration on similar terms as the scavenged materials she used to build her sculptures and environments. “Most of us have to be transplanted, like a tree, before we blossom,” she said in her famous conversation with her studio assistant Diana MacKown in 1976. In what was disregarded as excess or waste, Louise Nevelson saw greater potential. She collected scrap materials and stored them in her home, sometimes for years, waiting to brew them in their appropriate concoctions. Viewing her life in this way, and as one with her art, Louise Nevelson went about living if she were a collage, transforming the chaos of the unfamiliar into an order which she viewed as her own.

Though she is most remembered for her environments of wooden assemblages – skeletal and romantic architectures in themselves – Nevelson’s collages are where she embellished her quest to transform the detritus of life: setting the table, dressing herself, giving life to dust as she would to wood. House became home when she decorated her enclosures, imbuing them with yet further potentiality. Untitled (1983) can be read as a kind of self-portrait: a quilt of mismatched fabrics (like those Louise Nevelson would wear) is preserved with all its imperfections revealed, the stains and tears of its many lives exposed. The venerable quilt, loose in its bonds, is affixed to mat board with metal staples – a forceful yet tender attempt to repair what has already begun to decay. Perhaps more than her monochromatic sculptures, Nevelson’s unpainted collages give riddles and clues about their origins. Some evoke on a more intimate scale the embodied inhabitation of her wooden environments, while others reveal the insides of her found materials Untitled (1976) features an unfolded cardboard carton laid flat, displaying its aged interior. In 1976, Louise Nevelson said, “The nature of creation is that you have to go inside and dig out . . . [it] is not a performing glory on the outside, it’s a painful, difficult search within.” In her collages, perhaps even more than her monumental sculptures, we see Louise Nevelson coming home to a place that is, though not yet fully known, deep within herself.

“Every human being wants a home. It may be a palace, or it may be a hut; it’s a home. And so it’s as close to us as our skin…” – Louise Nevelson, 1980

LOUISE NEVELSON was born in Kyiv, Russia (present-day Ukraine) in 1899 and emigrated to the U.S. at age five. She later moved to New York and studied at The Art Students League of New York, painted with Hans Hoffman in Germany, and worked as an assistant for Diego Rivera. She was the featured artist in the United States Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1962 and 1976. During her lifetime she was the subject of two retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1967; 1980) and a traveling international retrospective in 1973. In 1978, New York City created the Louise Nevelson Plaza, the first public space in the city named after an artist. Nevelson’s work is held widely in public and private collections around the world.

LOCKS GALLERY

600 Washington Square South, Philadelphia, PA 19106

www.locksgallery.com

Jaume Plensa @ Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris - Exposition "Miroirs (collages)"

Jaume Plensa: Miroirs (collages)

Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris

18 janvier - 9 mars 2024

JAUME PLENSA

Miroir II, 2023

Technique mixte, collage sur papier, 163 x 85 cm.

© Studio Plensa. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co

Les grands sculpteurs sont souvent aussi de grands dessinateurs. En général, ils sont peu enclins à la couleur. Chez Plensa, le dessin est une pratique constante, un ressourcement.

Au printemps 2023, Jaume Plensa a réalisé pour le Liceu, l’opéra de Barcelone, la mise en scène, les costumes et les décors de « Macbeth » de Verdi. Les premiers dessins de cette exposition sont issus de ce travail. Le texte (parfois illisible) que l’artiste incorpore à ses dessins-collages provient de la pièce de Shakespeare. Une série de petits portraits s’intitule « Witches » ; ce sont les trois sorcières qui prédisent à Macbeth son avenir.

Pour la série suivante, « Miroirs », l’artiste s’est inspiré d’un poème de Baudelaire, « Les Litanies de Satan » :

« Ô Prince de l’exil, à qui l’on a fait tort,

Et qui, vaincu, toujours te redresses plus fort »

C’est ce texte qui court autour des figures prises dans ces miroirs.

Même quand il se contente de travailler sur papier, le sculpteur n’est jamais loin. On le voit constamment taraudé par le désir de donner au papier une épaisseur par le gaufrage, le froissage, le collage de plusieurs feuilles, l’ajout de peinture acrylique. Peu à peu, il donne un corps à ses images.

Jaume Plensa dans son atelier, Barcelone, 2020 

Photograhie © Inés Baucells

JAUME PLENSA est né en 1955 à Barcelone, où il a étudié à l’école de la Llotja, École supérieure de design et d'art, et à l’École des Beaux-arts de Sant Jordi. Depuis 1980, année de sa première exposition à Barcelone, il a vécu et travaillé à Berlin, à Bruxelles, en Angleterre, en France, aux États-Unis et il est aujourd’hui installé à Barcelone. Plusieurs expositions ont récemment été consacrées à Jaume Plensa telles que La part du sacré au BAM de Mons (Belgique), Poesia del Silencio à la Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera de Barcelone (Espagne) et Invisível e Indizível au Musée Oscar Niemeyer de Curitiba (Brésil). Une monographie consacrée à ses dessins est parue chez Skira en 2022.

GALERIE LELONG & Co.

38 avenue Matignon, 75008 Paris

www.galerie-lelong.com

Ellsworth Kelly @ Peder Lund, Oslo - "Postcards"

Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards

Peder Lund, Oslo

September 30 – 16 December 2023

Peder Lund takes part in the centennial celebration of the inimitable American artist ELLSWORTH KELLY (1923-2015). With the exhibition “Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards”, Peder Lund presents an exclusive selection of the artist’s beloved and important production of postcard collages.

On what would have been the artist’s 100th birthday, a year-long celebration showcases the artist’s indelible legacy. This collaborative event includes exhibitions at several museums and galleries across the U.S. and Europe. Peder Lund hosts a unique presentation in concert with the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation and its president Jack Shear, as the artist estate’s representative gallery in Scandinavia.

Ellsworth Kelly is considered to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His abstract paintings, sculptures, and prints are masterworks in the exploration of line, form, and color. Presented at Peder Lund, for the first time in Scandinavia, are twenty- two of Kelly's delightful postcard collages — private studies that brim with anarchic humor, surrealistic juxtapositions, and formal virtuosity. Some of these miniature masterpieces served as exploratory musings by the artist while others were used as preparation for larger works in other media. From 1949 to 2005, Kelly made just over 400 postcard works. These show a playful, unbounded space of creative freedom for the artist and provide an important insight into the way Kelly saw, experienced, and translated the world in his art.

As part of the Ellsworth Kelly Centennial Celebration program, major solo exhibitions are being dedicated to the artist by renowned institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Glenstone Museum, Potomac; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago.

ELLSWORTH KELLY ’s works are owned by many of the major artistic institutions of Western Europe and America, including the Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and many others. Additionally, he created numerous important artworks for public spaces. During his lifetime, Kelly was honored with several awards, including the Praemium Imperiale award for painting, which he received in 2000 from the Japan Art Association, the title of Commandeur des Arts des Lettres, which he received in 2009 by the French government and, in 2013, the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Barack Obama.

PEDER LUND GALLERY

Tjuvholmen allé 27, 0252 Oslo

pederlund.no

Tjebbe Beekman @ GRIMM Gallery, NYC - Tetris

Tjebbe Beekman: Tetris

GRIMM Gallery, New York

Through 12 November 2022

TJEBBE BEEKMAN

Massacre of the Innocents, 2022

© Tjebbe Beekman, courtesy GRIMM

TJEBBE BEEKMAN

Massacre of the Innocents, 2022 - Detail

© Tjebbe Beekman, courtesy GRIMM

GRIMM presents Tetris a new solo exhibition by TJEBBE BEEKMAN. This is the artist’s second solo presentation in New York and the first in the gallery’s new Tribeca location.

Increasingly fragmented, polarized, and ever chaotic, Tjebbe Beekman’s new body of work is a personal reflection of contemporary society and a method of coping with the existential events of today through his contemporaries of the past. Titled after the 1980’s arcade game, his new paintings mimic the navigating tasks of the 'Tetris' exercise and are structured with imagery referencing art history as their anchoring subject matter. Each work consists of various levels of material - thick impasto with collaged elements, rope, and sand, combined with the use of acrylic paint -resulting in this new series referencing past artists' contributions to the painterly medium. Far from cynical, Tjebbe Beekman pays homage to the continuum of artistic and technical development which the medium of painting provides: balancing composition, color, depth, and perspective through the lenses of those who have preceded him.

Just as the various elements in the game of 'Tetris' connect, so do Tjebbe Beekman’s textured references, interlocking visual, historic, and structural information in an abundance of composition. In the game, as the speed increases in the stacking of blocks, gaps form where holes between concrete information are left at a loss, similarly to the ways in which we glean information from various media sources at a rapid and disjointed rate today. The viewer may need time to digest each work, as it evokes the un-ending stream of media and information we sift through on a daily basis.

Tjebbe Beekman’s previous work has aimed to focus on the dismantling of contemporary society through a psychoanalytic lens into his own fascination with the genres of history, architecture, and dystopia, as well as his own mediation with the world’s current existential events. With this new body of work referencing both old and modern masters, Beekman develops environments through the embodiment of those who have served as pillars of the artistic field before him. Nodding to historic iconographic painting, like in Massacre of the Innocents, 2022, Beekman continues to break the mold of what is expected of the medium to create new innovation and celebrate the act of creating in its entirety.

TJEBBE BEEKMAN

Tjebbe Beekman (b. 1972 in Leiden, NL) attended the KABK: Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (NL) from 1993 to 1997, followed by the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (NL) from 2003 to 2004. Awards and nominations include the Theo Wolvecamp Prize (NL), Buning Brongers Prize (NL), and the Royal Painting Prize (NL). Tjebbe Beekman’s recent exhibitions include: Mondrian Moves, Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); The Roaring Twenties, Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen (NL); Symbiosis: Virtues, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL); Reflections beyond the Surface, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); Symbiosis, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); Listen to your eyes, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); Collected, Capital C, Amsterdam (NL); Where is the Madness You Promised Me, Hudson Valley Museum of Modern Art, Peekskill, NY (US); Discover the Modern, Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Top Floor, Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Van Cobra tot Boorolie, Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (NL); Out of office, Singer Museum, Laren (NL); Freedom – The Fifty Key Dutch Artworks Since 1968, curated by Hans den Hartog Jager, Museum De Fundatie, Zwolle (NL); and De meest eigentijdse schilderijen tentoonstelling, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht (NL).

Tjebbe Beekman’s work can be found in various public, private and institutional collections including Aedes Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); ABN Amro Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam (NL); Straus Family Collection, New York, NY (US); THE EKARD COLLECTION; Collection De Heus-Zomer, Barneveld (NL); The Hort Family Collection, New York, NY (US); ING Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); Sanders Collection (NL); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL) and Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (NL).

GRIMM 

54 White Street, New York, NY 10013

www.grimmgallery.com

Krista Franklin @ DePaul Art Museum, Chicago - Solo(s)

Krista Franklin: Solo(s)

DePaul Art Museum, Chicago

September 8, 2022 - February 19, 2023

KRISTA FRANKLIN

Out of Love But Maybe There’s Still Some Romance, 2019

Ink, watercolor, pencil, pen, and collage on handmade paper. 

Photo: Latitude

Chicago-based artist KRISTA FRANKLIN (American, b. 1970) presents “Solo(s),” an exhibition that draws on the artist’s vast range of materials and references. Franklin’s work intersects poetry, popular culture and the dynamic histories of the African Diaspora.

A surrealist at heart, Krista Franklin’s works on display include books, poetry, collages, handmade paper, installations, murals, performances, sound works and sculptures. “The word ‘solo’ often refers to the performance of a single musician,” curator Ionit Behar said. “Here, it highlights the artist’s commitment to collaboration with fellow artists, writers and musicians.”

Krista Franklin creates collages from the text and images of vintage magazines and other printed matter she collects. The DePaul Art Museum created a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue for “Solo(s)” featuring documentation of the artist’s ongoing collage work, handmade paper, book and record covers, and installations alongside her poetry and other writings.

Exhibition organized by the DePaul Art Museum

Curated by Ionit Behar, associate curator of DePaul Art Museum

DePaul Art Museum - DPAM

DePaul University’s Lincoln Park Campus

935 W. Fullerton Ave., Chicago, IL 60614

artmuseum.depaul.edu

Iva Gueorguieva @ Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach - Pompeii Gray

Iva Gueorguieva: Pompeii Gray

GAVLAK Palm Beach

October 26 – November 20, 2022

GAVLAK presents Pompeii Gray, the gallery’s first solo presentation of the work of Los Angeles-based artist Iva Gueorguieva. The exhibition showcases three sculptures alongside seven new, ambitiously scaled works in acrylic and collage that mark Iva Gueorguieva’s return to the stretched canvas after a three-year immersion in the making of unstretched and at times double-sided tapestry paintings. The genesis of the Pompeii Gray works was her sudden decision to paint over a massive, colorful abstract painting from 2017 with white gesso and washes of gray. Iva Gueorguieva’s new paintings are works in low relief: layers of muslin, gauze, and pigment combine to blur the difference between the raw edges of strips of fabric and the illusionism of a painted line. Variegated layers of gray form a miasmatic haze that hangs over strata of bright colors and agitated lines that churn beneath the surface to reveal flashes of figures, human and animal. Like the bodies uncovered in the centuries-long process of excavating Pompeii from its blanket of volcanic ash, Iva Gueorguieva’s compositions invite speculation about the relationships of the creatures embedded in the dense layers to one another. Though originally compelled to strip her work from the stretchers, Iva Gueorguieva’s act of generative destruction ultimately inspired her to reconceptualize the canvas as a site of possibility and discovery, like the framed sieve of an archaeologist sifting through the layers of history. 

 

To behold And She Cried for the Weekend (2021) is to experience the pleasure of uncovering fragments—buoyant breasts, splayed limbs, and rangy digits—that appear to combine in a scene of conjugal bliss. This sensation is quickly eclipsed by the unsettling possibility that the human figures rendered in anxious, wiry line as a writhing, undifferentiated mass are engaged in violent rather than orgiastic activity. Fingers that initially seemed arched in erotic tension over the belly of a lover now appear to be clawing through layers of gray and bruise-purple viscera. A Slow Congress Under Heavy Gauze (2021) similarly binds the carnal with the moribund; pink and blue aurorae shimmer beneath a shroud of gray to highlight a couple locked in eager congress. Yet the ashen palette and the gauzy texture produced by layers of muslin swaddling the surface of the work mummify this scene of passion and render our curious prying perverse. Wrapped in Animals and Fears (2021) corrupts even the sweet contentment of relaxing with an animal companion, as the stiff figure of a hollow-eyed hooved creature splays in a suffocating posture over where the neck of a vaguely human figure ought to be.

 

The exhibition also features three sculptures from Iva Gueorguieva’s “Talisman Debris” series, which informed her initial impulses to abandon the constraints of canvas stretchers, as well as the omnivorous approach to different media manifest in her latest work. Iva Gueorguieva salvaged hunks of concrete and twists of rebar from a Tampa demolition site and from these humble fragments fashioned compositions that exude a surprising, buoyant liveliness. Vanished Animal 3 (2015) lofts bright tatters of intaglio prints on fabric on a twisted steel scaffold, balanced precariously on a concrete island in a manner suggestive of migration and ruination. Inspired by her own family’s immigration histories, in this series Iva Gueorguieva alludes to the natural and manmade disasters that prompt us to leave life as we knew it behind. In considering the human and animal subjects of Pompeii fated to share their last breaths and long afterlives together amongst the ruins, Iva Gueorguieva envisages the interpersonal exchanges we perform in the thick of unfathomable disaster. The tender gestures of people frozen at the moments of their demise take on a particular sharpness in the contemporary context of a global plague that compels individuals to sacrifice physical closeness as an act of collective care. The companions who cling together within these compositions are at least not alone, and the beauty of their bonds is undiminished even in their wretchedness.

 

Iva Gueorguieva (b. 1974, Bulgaria) lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Her recent solo exhibitions include presentations for UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles (2021; 2020); Frederic Snitzer Gallery, Miami (2018; 2016) and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York (2016; 2015; 2014). Her work featured prominently in recent group exhibitions including L.A. Louver, Venice, California (2022; 2018); David Lewis Gallery (2020); and Sophia Contemporary, London (2018; 2017).  

GAVLAK Palm Beach

340 Royal Poinciana Way, Suite M334, Palm Beach, FL 33480

www.gavlakgallery.com

______________

Angel Otero @ Hauser & Wirth, NYC - Swimming Where Time Was

Angel Otero. Swimming Where Time Was

Hauser & Wirth New York

10 November – 23 December 2022

Angel Otero

One Hundred Dreams From Now, 2022

Oil paint and oil paint skins collaged on canvas

241.3 x 241.3 x 3.8 cm / 95 x 95 x 1 1/2 in

245.4 x 245.4 x 7.6 cm / 96 5/8 x 96 5/8 x 3 in (framed)

© Angel Otero. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Angel Otero

Concerto, 2022

Oil paint and oil paint skins collaged on canvas

241.3 x 241.3 x 3.8 cm / 95 x 95 x 1 1/2 in

245.7 x 245.4 x 7.6 cm / 96 3/4 x 96 5/8 x 3 in (framed)

© Angel Otero. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Angel Otero presents his first major solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, ‘Swimming Where Time Was.’ Filling the 5th floor of the gallery’s 22nd street location, this new body of work marks a turning point in the artist’s career, revealing a new sensibility that has emerged over the last few years. These vibrant large-scale canvases merge the figurative and abstract sides of Angel Otero’s innovative technical practice, advancing the artist’s exploration of oil paint as a medium and a conduit for self-reflection and analysis. Using his personal history to make sense of the current moment, these new works intensify the artist’s uncanny ability to convey memory and history through materiality.

Angel Otero’s signature approach to visual storytelling synthesizes magical realism and abstraction, the observed and the imagined, and the past and the present through a labor-intensive process of laying down, peeling and collaging oil paint. Drawing from his memories of growing up in Puerto Rico and the gestural mark-making of artists whose work he first discovered in books as a child––Picasso, de Kooning, Mitchell and Pollock, for example––Angel Otero has invented a visual realm that evokes the enchanting and sometimes strange ways in which everyday objects become personified through the lens of memory.

While a few of the new works are predominantly abstract in nature, like ‘One Hundred Dreams From Now’ (2022), numerous compositions also represent quotidian objects that Angel Otero has imbued with surreal qualities–– blurring the line between gesture and allusion, documentation and recollection to evoke a dreamlike state of consciousness. In the work titled ‘Concerto’ (2022), an upright piano from Angel Otero’s studio, a former church in upstate New York, sits against an undulating crimson background.

The instrument is surrounded by objects that have become staples of Angel Otero’s visual language––paint buckets, an old table lamp, an aluminum cooking pot and dentures soaking in a drinking glass. Meanwhile, a school of goldfish––another recurrent motif––rains down upon the piano’s keys in a hypnagogic melodic performance. Below, the floor is covered by ceramic tiles decorated with a pattern inspired by traditional tiles from sixteenth- century Spain. Found throughout homes in Puerto Rico, the tiles reflect both the artist’s personal recollections and the collective memory of colonialism in Puerto Rico.

Angel Otero

Behind Curtains, 2022

Oil paint and oil paint skins collaged on canvas

241.3 x 241.3 x 3.8 cm / 95 x 95 x 1 1/2 in

245.7 x 245.4 x 7.6 cm / 96 3/4 x 96 5/8 x 3 in (framed)

© Angel Otero. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Angel Otero

Mi Acuario, 2022

Oil paint and oil paint skins collaged on canvas

241.3 x 360.7 x 3.8 cm / 95 x 142 x 1 1/2 in

245.7 x 366.1 x 7.6 cm / 96 3/4 x 144 1/8 x 3 in (framed)

© Angel Otero. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

In the painting ‘Behind Curtains’ (2022), the viewer is positioned just outside an arched doorway that frames an inviting yet disorienting space: A sheer curtain of crocheted lace obscures the details of a room rich with bright colors and textures, while the diagonal composition of a wooden sculpture made from old furniture levitates above the floor. The curtain’s floral patten reappears on a bedspread in the painting ‘Mi Acuario’ (2022), in which bright blue and yellow sea kelp have taken over the room like an overgrown garden, transforming it into a fantastical, human-sized fish tank.

In a reversal of the typical painting process, Angel Otero begins each new work by painting the foreground scene on plexiglass first and then working backward, in layers, so the background, frequently inspired by historical abstract masterpieces, is painted last. He then builds in a layer of fabric to hold the entire structure together before scraping it off and fixing it onto canvas. Afterward, Angel Otero continues to add to the surface, collaging images of items like pots and pans, window shutters, bingo tickets and folded paper fans from a repository of previously made works to create an entirely new, multilayered composition. In this way, the artist merges process and intent: through the skilled layering and mixing of fragments from different sources, he effectively emulates the ways in which our memories of the past, imprecise and frequently distorted, are pieced together to construct our present.

ANGEL OTERO was born in 1981 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, where he resided until moving in 2004 to obtain his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He currently splits his time between New York and Puerto Rico. Angel Otero was recently the subject of major solo exhibitions in 2017 at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY, and in 2016 at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. In 2009, Otero was included in the exhibition ‘Constellations’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, shortly after receiving his MFA. Angel Otero’s work is in numerous public and private collections including the Berezdivin Collection, Puerto Rico; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx NY; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago IL; Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City MO; Long Museum, Shanghai, China; Margulies Collection, Miami FL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park KS; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh NC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; UBS Art Collection, Chicago IL; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond VA.

HAUSER & WIRTH NEW YORK

542 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011

www.hauserwirth.com

Anita Steckel @ Ortuzar Projects Gallery, NYC - My Town

Anita Steckel: My Town

Ortuzar Projects, New York

May 17 – July 16, 2022

Ortuzar Projects presents Anita Steckel: My Town, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York since 2013. An artist, teacher, feminist, and satirist, Anita Steckel (b. 1930, Brooklyn; d. 2012, New York) experimented liberally across media—from pencil and oil to collage, photomontage, silkscreen, Xerox, assemblage sculpture, and poetry—in an exploration of the sexism of Western art history and the prudishness of postwar American society. The exhibition presents her best known works from the late 1960s through the early 70s, which address taboo notions of female pleasure and eroticism, as well as her lesser-known, earlier drawings and paintings.

A lifelong New Yorker, much of Anita Steckel’s work reflects on women’s experience of modernity set within the urban landscape. Drawing upon popular culture, politics, and her own biography, Steckel developed her uniquely sardonic voice amongst the thriving downtown scene of the 1950s and 60s in close dialogue with fellow collagists such as Allen Ginsberg, Ray Johnson, Stan VanDerBeek, and Sari Dienes. In an intimate series of works from the 1960s, Anita Steckel explores the division between the public-facing roles women were expected to perform and the rich complexity of their interior lives. In The Big Rip-Up (1964) she overpaints a black-and-white photograph of herself as a teenager, her youthful yet deliberate gaze out towards the viewer subsumed by a copulating crowd of nude bodies and contorted faces rendered in graphite, her right eye bloodshot and crying a technicolor stream of tears. In a series of works on paper, which were included in her first solo exhibition in 1961, she creates Rorschach tests by folding papers blotted with brown ink, out of which she draws ghoulish expressions. In oil paintings made in the second half of the decade, outlines of women’s profiles are filled with kaleidoscopic arrays of nude forms, whose bodies swirl across the canvas like thoughts going through one’s head. Appearing both claustrophobic and anxious, sensuous and seemingly carefree, Anita Steckel’s women give form to the tension between the only burgeoning women’s liberation movement and the still pervasive constraints of patriarchy.

In Giant Women on New York (c. 1969–74), female colossus tower over spaces typically ruled by social decorum. While initially painted, Steckel later adorned these work with her own face in an innovative use of photomontage and self representation. The works vary from bitingly political–such as in Murder by Church Sanctioned Illegal Abortion, in which she is crucified within what appears to be Saint Patrick’s Cathedral–and humorous, such as in another simply titled Subway, in which she sits topless between two men, masturbating herself with one hand and the man to her right with the other. Inspired by her regular exposure to flashers on the subway as a teen, these playful yet divisive works were met with great fanfare when first shown at the Kozmopolitan Gallery in 1969. In her next body of work, the monumental New York Skyline series (1970–80), silkscreened views of the city are overpainted with dancing and distraught bodies, a sphinx, and fluid-spurting penises and breasts, giving form to the vivid libidinal landscape that resides within the visible architectural one.

When Anita Steckel showed these works in a 1972 solo exhibition at Rockland Community College, pointedly titled The Feminist Art of Sexual Politics, she was met with impassioned debate around her work’s perceived eroticism, with calls from local politicians to close the show on the grounds of obscenity. Spurring support from the university community, critics, curators, and fellow artists who argued that the shock value of her images was a fundamental part of their artistic merit and intellectual power, Steckel rallied female colleagues—including Louise Bourgeois, Judith Bernstein, Martha Edelheit, Juanita McNeely, Joan Semmel, and Hannah Wilke—to form the Fight Censorship group to protest institutional double standards. “If the erect penis is not wholesome enough to go into museums,” Steckel wrote in the group’s manifesto, “it should not be considered wholesome enough to go into women.” With her work collected by many notable second wave feminists (including Gloria Steinem, Flo Kennedy, Honor Moore and Ti Grace Atkinson), Steckel nonetheless complicated the prevailing push toward’s women’s autonomy from men, instead placing the emphasis on women’s ownership of their own pleasure, regardless of whether men are involved. A pioneering but long overlooked figure, Anita Steckel’s early work provides insight into her nuanced perspective and exemplary draftsmanship, which remain foundational to her more sensational and incisive feminist critiques.

ANITA STECKEL studied at Cooper Union and Alfred University, as well as the Art Students League of New York, where she taught from 1984 until her death. Since 1970 she lived at Westbeth Artists’ Housing in the West Village. She was recently the subject of solo exhibitions at the Stanford Art Gallery, Stanford (2022), curated by art historians Rachel Middleman and Richard Meyer, and at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (2021). Previous exhibitions include Legal Gender: The Irreverent Art of Anita Steckel, Jacki Headley Art Gallery, California State University, Chico and Verge Center for the Arts, Sacramento (2018); Anita of New York, The Suzanne Geiss Company, New York (2013); Anita Steckel and Friends, Westbeth Gallery, New York (2012); and Mom Art: 1963–1965, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York (2008). Her work featured in the recent institutional exhibitions Maskulinitäten, Bonner Kunstverein, Germany (2019); Cock, Paper, Scissors, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles (2016); Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics, Dallas Contemporary (2016); and Identity Crisis: Authenticity, Attribution and Appropriation, The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY (2011). She was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2005), a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1983), and a MacDowell Fellowship (1966). Her work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania; Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Kansas; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; and Verbund Collection, Vienna, among others.

ORTUZAR PROJECTS

9 White Street, New York, NY 10013

www.ortuzarprojects.com

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Billie Zangewa @ Lehmann Maupin, London & Seoul - Running Water & Flesh and Blood

Billie Zangewa: Flesh and Blood

Lehmann Maupin, Seoul

November 18, 2021 – January 15, 2022

Billie Zangewa: Running Water

Lehmann Maupin, London

November 10, 2021 – January 8, 2022

Lehmann Maupin presents Flesh and Blood and Running Water, two concurrent exhibitions featuring new work by Johannesburg-based artist BILLIE ZANGEWA, which are presented across the gallery’s Seoul and London locations. Best known for her intricate collages composed of hand-stitched fragments of raw silk, Billie Zangewa creates figurative compositions that explore identity and challenge the historical stereotype, objectification, and exploitation of the black female form. For her second presentation with the gallery, Billie Zangewa has created two bodies of work inspired by a new-found appreciation for family, labor, and ritual that resulted from living and working in isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Flesh and Blood features work focused on the artist’s close community of family and friends, while Running Water examines the day-to-day acts of work, parenting, and self-care. The exhibition titles are inspired by lyrics from the Neville Brothers’ song Sons and Daughters (1990), which the artist heard on Radio Nova, a French radio station based in Paris.

Beginning her career in the fashion and advertising industries, Billie Zangewa employs her understanding of textiles to portray personal and universal experiences through domestic interiors, urban landscapes, and portraiture. Her earliest works were embroideries on found fabrics depicting remembered botanical scenes and animals from Botswana, but she soon transitioned to creating cityscapes, focusing on her personal relationships and experience as a woman in the city of Johannesburg. After the birth of her son, Billie Zangewa began creating her well-known domestic interiors to explore her shift in focus from self-examination and femininity to motherhood and the home. Often referencing scenes or experiences from everyday life, Billie Zangewa has stated that she is interested in depicting the work done by women that keeps society running smoothly but which is often overlooked, undervalued, or ignored.

For her Seoul presentation, Flesh and Blood, Billie Zangewa explores the significance of the relationships with friends and family who have provided critical support and encouragement that has grounded her over the past two years. With the onset of Covid-19 and the social limitations that followed, the importance of family was magnified as people chose to stay close (for safety and regulatory reasons) to their familial networks. Her son, a recurring subject in her work, takes center stage in these collages. In a series of portraits, Billie Zangewa depicts the people who make up both his genetic and chosen family in scenes that range from a fragmented tree of immediate family members, to a gathering of a close-knit group of extended family and friends for the celebration of his 8th birthday.

In London, Billie Zangewa presents Running Water, a collection of pieces that visualize the shifts in parenting, work, and daily rituals that have occurred as a result of the pandemic. These collages build on the themes from Flesh and Blood by investigating the seemingly mundane aspects of the artist’s daily life―including meditation in the garden, working on the patio, sitting in bed to comfort her son, and even the simple act of putting on and removing her shoes each day. In Whatever it Takes, the artist illustrates this ritual in a still life of her sneakers placed at the kitchen/back door, the toes of the shoes partially obscured by a kitchen cupboard that is cut off by the rough edge of the work. “I have been wearing these Adidas since I bought them at Lillywhites in Piccadilly Circus about 10 years ago, when I lived in London,” Billie Zangewa explains, “Every day that I am working, I begin by putting on these shoes, which give me support as I stand quite a bit. It is very quickly becoming time to get new shoes as they don’t quite offer the same support they once did, but I have an emotional attachment to them and all that we’ve been through together, [and] it’s hard for me to let go.” This work functions as a representation of the labor, support, routine, and comfort that work shoes are often symbolically imbued with, as well as connoting the artist’s rigorous commitment to continuing to make work amidst the challenges that arise as part of day-to-day life.

Together, Flesh and Blood and Running Water act as dual markers of this unique time and the radical changes resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. These exhibitions offer two perspectives on domestic life—the communal and the intimate. The works featured illustrate the importance of family, friends, and routine, particularly during this difficult and deeply emotional period. In these two new bodies of work, Billie Zangewa reflects on the past two years, placing special emphasis on relationships that have become stronger and her candid view of domestic life in its altered state. These works offer an opportunity for the viewer to reflect on their own life, particularly changes in our habits, relationships, and day-to-day life. Billie Zangewa’s message is one of hope, and an offering of love for oneself, one’s family and friends, and the wider human community.

These two gallery presentations coincide with Billie Zangewa’s first major solo museum exhibition in the United States, Billie Zangewa: Thread for a Web Begun, guest curated by Dexter Wimberly at the Museum of African Diaspora (October 20, 2021 - February 28, 2022). The exhibition features work from the past 15 years, in addition to new work produced specifically for the show. Although many of the scenes depicted in Billie Zangewa’s layered silk collages are autobiographical, her work contains a relatability that goes beyond her personal journey as an artist. Billie Zangewa’s labor-intensive processes recall the historic implications of “women’s work” but remain a steadfastly contemporary interpretation of lived experiences. “I use fabric and sewing, which traditionally is a female pastime, to empower myself,” Billie Zangewa states, “I tell my personal story, how it’s happening on the home front, and show the intimate life of a woman, which usually we’re not encouraged to do.” Zangewa views telling her own story in her own voice as a kind of personal empowerment, especially as this has historically been very difficult for women in general, and for women of color in particular, with many obstacles to overcome.

BILLIE ZANGEWA received her BFA from Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa in 1995. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized by Galerie Templon, Paris, France (2020); Afronova Gallery, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2017); Johann Levy Gallery, Paris, France (2008); and Gerard Sekoto Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2005). Recent group exhibitions featuring her work include Alpha Crucis, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway (2020); I Am ... Contemporary Women Artists of Africa, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C. (2019); Second Life, Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, Morocco (2018); Pulling at Threads, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa (2018); Making Africa, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM (2018) and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2017); The Half-Life of Love, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA (2017); A Constellation, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, NY (2016); Making Africa, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Barcelona Spain, and Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands (2016); Women’s Work, Iziko National Gallery of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa (2016); Body Talk, Wiels, Brussels, Belgium; Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden and Frac Lorraine, Metz, France (2015); Making Africa, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain and Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany (2015); How Far How Near, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2014); and The Progress of Love, Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2012).

Billie Zangewa’s work is in several public and private collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom. In 2018, Billie Zangewa was selected as the Featured Artist for the FNB Art Joburg Fair.

LEHMANN MAUPIN, LONDON

1 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, SW7 2JE London

LEHMANN MAUPIN, SEOUL

74-18, Yulgok-ro 3-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul

www.lehmannmaupin.com

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Louise Nevelson Collages @ Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles - Collages 1957 – 1982

Louise Nevelson

Collages 1957 – 1982

Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles 

September 17 - October 30, 2021

Kayne Griffin presents an exhibition of work by LOUISE NEVELSON (1899-1988) titled Collages 1957 – 1982. This exhibition, Nevelson’s first at Kayne Griffin, presents a selection of her collage works, an integral yet rarely shown component of her practice.

Louise Nevelson, an artist known for her monochrome, found-object sculptures, also created smaller scale collage works. These collages provide an in-depth look into her methodology, study, and practice. The selection of nine collages in this exhibition highlights her initial experimentation with the medium in the late-1950s as well as the continuation and development of the practice through the later years of her life.

The early collages exemplify Nevelson’s use of found objects. The artist would walk around her studio neighborhood in New York and collect fragments of objects she found on the street. In four of the earliest works, on view from the years 1957 – 1959, Louise Nevelson uses a combination of cardboard, paint, wire, foil, newspaper, and wood. By reclaiming these materials, Louise Nevelson wanted to bring the discarded back to life and repurpose it within a new environment. She became known for developing a practice using mostly muted and monochrome palettes in her sculptural works which she would paint black, white, or gold to create a sense of continuity among the array of assembled elements. However, in her collage works, Louise Nevelson focuses and often centers within her compositions colored objects, such as the bright orange found in Untitled (1959). This draws the viewers eye deeper into the work , creating an effect of surface tension similar to low-relief sculpture.

Her collages from the 1960s and 1970s take on a more minimal and reductive approach. Louise Nevelson converges the found materials to a focal point skewed off-center, layering shapes and scraps in decreasing sizes and form. Untitled (1982), breaks away from the warm tones and monochromatic materiality and introduces an ornate assemblage of patterned fabrics and objects that are interwoven together. They remain flatter and closer to the background black surface, a contrast to the dimension given to her 1960s and 1970s collages. These collages highlight her innovative use of everyday objects.

As Louise Nevelson explains, “I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind. My world is the world of reality; my world is the world of creation, that is the world of reality.”

LOUISE NEVELSON (b. 1899, Kiev; d. 1988, New York) has been the subject of one-artist exhibitions at numerous institutions including The Jewish Museum, New York (1965, 2007); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1967, 1970, 1980, 1987, 1998); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1973); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1973); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1986); Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (1994); Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris (1997); Fondazione Roma Museo (2013). She represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1962, and her work was again included in the Biennale in 1976. Nevelson’s art has also been featured in prominent group exhibitions including Sixteen Americans, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1959–60); The Art of Assemblage, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1961); and Documenta (1964, 1968). Today her work is held in over ninety public collections worldwide including many of the most prominent museums worldwide.

KAYNE GRIFFIN

1201 S La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019

www.kaynegriffin.com

Corita Kent @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC – "heroes and sheroes" Exhibition

Corita Kent: heroes and sheroes

Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

July 8 – August 13, 2021

Andrew Kreps Gallery presents heroes and sheroes, an exhibition of artworks by CORITA KENT at 22 Cortlandt Alley. Centered on Corita Kent’s series of the same title made between 1968 and 1969, the exhibition marks the first time heroes and sheroes has been exhibited in New York in its entirety.

In the summer of 1965, following the Watts Uprising in Los Angeles, Corita Kent reproduced the front page of the Los Angeles Times within her work my people. While in previous years, Corita Kent had appropriated text from consumer and mass culture, my people is the first example of Kent using appropriation as a direct response to the socially charged events of her time. The paper’s headlines were rotated and partially obscured by a swath of red, in which Corita Kent handwrote a text attributed to Maurice Ouellet, a priest and civil rights activist who participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches earlier that year. Ouellet’s words form a rebuttal to the paper’s racially charged headlines describing the Uprising as a “Blood Hungry Mob.”  In response, Ouellet’s quote reads: “Youth is a time of rebellion. Rather than squelch the rebellion, we might better enlist the rebels to join that greatest rebel of his time-Christ himself.” 

In the years following, Corita Kent continued to create singular compositions, in which bold and colorful text promoted messages of faith, acceptance, and love. Simultaneously, Kent rose to national prominence as a public figure - she was named Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year in 1966 and featured on the December cover of Newsweek in 1967. With this exposure came increased scrutiny of Kent’s outspokenness as the conservative Archdiocese of Los Angeles mounted intense pressure on both Kent and her order, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, over the changes they were making under the directives of Vatican II. In the summer of 1968, Kent would take a sabbatical from Immaculate Heart College, subsequently leaving the order and seeking dispensation from her vows.

This would mark a key turning point in Carita Kent’s work, as she began heroes and sheroes later that same year. Reflecting on the social and political movements of the time, much like my people before it, heroes and sheroes demonstrates not only Kent’s advocacy but also her acute awareness of how these events were framed and disseminated through mass media. Collaging images appropriated from newspapers and magazines with poetry, song lyrics, quotations from figures within the religious left (such as Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine), and Carita Kent’s own writings, heroes and sheroes addresses issues such as the civil rights, labor, and anti-war movements, nuclear disarmament, and the political assassinations that defined the 1960s. Works like the cry that will be heard reflect the urgency of the moment, imploring the viewer to “give a damn about your fellow man.” Other works, notably american sampler, position themselves as acerbic critique. Utilizing the colors red, white, and blue, Kent riffs on the tradition of the “sampler”, a piece of embroidery used to demonstrate a variety of needlework techniques. Here, Corita Kent’s sampler repeats the words AMERICAN, ASSASSINATION, VIOLENCE, and VIETNAM in stacked lines that resemble the stripes of the flag, using shifts in color to highlight different combinations of words such as SIN, I, and NATION. Prompting the viewer to consider their own individual and moral responsibility, the work’s last line poses the question “WHY” next to the answer: “WHY NOT.”

Filling the main gallery at 22 Cortlandt Alley, the twenty-nine prints comprising heroes and sheroes reflect the enduring spirit that gave rise to Corita Kent’s nickname—“Joyous Revolutionary.” The series simultaneously highlights the potential of new life, a belief in the power of collective action, and the joy that exists in the everyday. Shying away from optimism, Kent instead emphasized the importance of hope in works like a passion for the possible, employing the image of an energetic crowd of demonstrators, arms extended upwards in peace signs. Positioned above the photograph is a text from activist and clergyman William Sloane Coffin, which still resonates over fifty years after its making: “...hope demands that we take a dim view of the present because we hold a bright view of the future; and HOPE AROUSES AS NOTHING ELSE CAN AROUSE A PASSION FOR THE POSSIBLE.”

CORITA KENT (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. Earlier this year, Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to designate Corita Kent’s former studio at 5518 Franklin Avenue as a Historic-Cultural Monument. Corita Kent’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; SFMOMA, San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; mumok, Vienna; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Frac Ile-de-France, Paris; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, among others. Notable exhibitions include: Corita Kent: Get With The Action, Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft (2019); Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (2015); Someday is Now, Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (2013); People Like Us: Prints from the 1960s by Sister Corita, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2007).

This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles.

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY

22 Cortlandt Alley, New York, NY 10013

www.andrewkreps.com

David Driskell @ High Museum of Art, Atlanta - Icons of Nature and History

David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History 

High Museum of Art, Atlanta 

Through 9 May 2021 

DAVID C. DRISKELL (American, 1931–2020) 

Self-Portrait, 1953 

Oil on board 

Collection of the Estate of David C. Driskell, Maryland 

© Estate of David C. Driskell. 

Courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York 

Photograph by Luc Demers 

The High Museum of Art presents the exhibition “David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History,” celebrating the breadth of the renowned American artist’s oeuvre and marking the first major survey of his work since his death in April 2020. David C. Driskell (1931-2020) is recognized for his painting and printmaking practices, often characterized by the use of collage, which combined the Black American experience with his keen observations of the American landscape and the imagery and aesthetic innovations of the African diaspora. In partnership with Portland Museum of Art, Maine, the exhibition brings approximately 60 artworks together to present highlights of David C. Driskell’s career. After the High (Feb. 6-May 9, 2021) the exhibition will travel to the Portland Museum of Art (June 19-Sept. 12, 2021) and The Phillips Collection (Oct. 6, 2021-Jan. 9, 2022).

“Beyond David’s prolific career as an international artist and scholar, he was a dear friend of the Museum, in fact a life trustee.  Without question, his work, as well as his generosity of spirit and intellect, have been transformational for the field,” said Rand Suffolk, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director. “We are honored to celebrate his incredible legacy through this exhibition.” Mark Bessire, the Judy and Leonard Lauder director of the Portland Museum of Art, added, “This exhibition is a unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of David’s widespread influence. The contemporary significance of subjects that David explored throughout his career are more salient than ever, and we are looking forward to highlighting this remarkable American artist.”

The High has a long history of collaboration with David C. Driskell, who in addition to his work as an artist was one of the world’s leading authorities on the history of African American art. In 1977, the High hosted Driskell’s landmark exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art.” In 2005, the Museum established the David C. Driskell Prize, the first national award to honor and celebrate contributions to the field of African American art, including distinctions for both artists and scholars. The most recent recipient is artist Jamal Cyrus, with past honorees including Amy Sherald, Naima J. Keith, Mark Bradford, Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, Rashid Johnson and Valerie Cassel Oliver. Funds raised through the prize’s annual dinner have supported the acquisition of 48 works by African American artists for the High’s collection.

“What remains steadfast in Driskell’s work is a commitment to his ‘icons,’ which elevate the mind and the spirit above that which exists in the physical world,” said guest curator Julie McGee, associate professor of Africana studies and art history at the University of Delaware. “Among the many gifts Driskell bequeaths to us is the delight of seeing the world through his eyes, and it is a journey of immeasurable beauty and grace.”

Added Michael Rooks, the High’s Wieland Family curator of modern and contemporary art, “Driskell’s command of vibrant color and line, and his attentiveness to what he called ‘the symbolic presence of form,’ endowed his subjects with a kind of frisson like that of an electrical charge, which made his work esthetically vigorous, bold and spirited.”

“Icons of Nature and History” is the first posthumous survey of Driskell’s work, spanning seven decades of his artistry, from the 1950s to the 2000s, with works drawn from museums, private collections and the artist’s estate. The exhibition includes key works from the High’s collection, including one of Driskell’s self-portraits. In addition, the exhibition follows the course of his career, from Howard University and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture to Talladega College and his studio in Falmouth, Maine, and features recurring motifs such as still lifes, pine trees, aspects of the natural world, African masks, and iconographies drawn from his Christian and Southern roots and the Black experience. Works in the exhibition, including paintings, drawings and prints, will reveal Driskell’s mastery of materials and his indefatigable spirit of invention, which led to the development of a hybrid technique he called “collage-painting.”

DAVID C. DRISKELL (1931-2020)

A Georgia native, David C. Driskell graduated from Howard University in 1955 and received a Master of Fine Arts from The Catholic University of America in 1962. In 1953, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. A lifelong educator, Driskell honed his teaching repertoire at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) between 1955 and 1976, teaching at Talladega College, Howard University and Fisk University. From 1977 through 1998, he taught at the University of Maryland, College Park, which is now the home of the David C. Driskell Center, an exhibition space and research institute that houses Driskell’s archive. In addition to a growing collection of African American art, it serves as a study center for the history of African American art and art of the African diaspora. While Driskell built a distinguished career as a scholar, he simultaneously maintained an active and distinguished artistic practice, regularly presenting his work in both solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries including the High, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, The Phillips Collection, Tate Modern (London), DC Moore Gallery and Kunsthal KAde (Amsterdam).

Exhibition Catalogue

“David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History” is accompanied by an expansive and fully illustrated catalog of approximately 224 pages, published by Rizzoli Skira. The book will feature a lead essay by Julie L. McGee with contributions by Renée Maurer, Sarah Workneh and Katie Sonnenborn, Shaun Leonardo, Keith Morrison, Jessica May, Thelma Golden, Lowery Stokes Sims, Richard Powell, and Michael Rooks. It also includes a selection of David Driskell's writings, edited by Richard Powell, and a timeline assembled by Monet Timmons.

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART

1280 Peachtree Street, N.E., Atlanta, GA 30309

www.high.org

Douglas Melini @ SOCO Gallery, Charlotte - Into the Woods - Paintings and Collages Exhibition

Douglas Melini: Into the Woods 

SOCO Gallery, Charlotte 

March 11 – April 24, 2020

DOUGLAS MELINI

Image courtesy of Douglas Melini and SOCO Gallery

SOCO Gallery presents “Into the Woods”, an exhibition of new works by artist DOUGLAS MELINI. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery. 

Influenced by an unlikely combination of Minimalism, pattern, and decoration, Douglas Melini investigates color, space, and the “abstract and pictorial nature of making an image”. He challenges how the audience views his works by opening up the visual space and distorting horizon lines. Adhering to the Bauhaus maxim “form follows function”, his artwork creates a pause for the viewer, allowing and encouraging a moment of contemplation.

For his exhibition, “Into the Woods”, Douglas Melini has created six paintings and twelve collage pieces. Inspired by the history of the lush tree and mushrooms grown in New Jersey Pine Barrens, the collages celebrate the cyclical and symbiotic relationships within the forest. The mushrooms, sourced from a dizzying array of field guides, are personified and presented larger than life. The vibrant and transparent watercolor connects the mushrooms to each other and to the surrounding world.

The colorful abstract paintings are constructed with reclaimed wood sourced from tobacco barns in North Carolina and feature layers of oil on linen and a textured build-up of acrylic stain and sealant. The natural material contrasts with the foraged wood to create two vastly different ways of interpreting visual spaces, one natural and one assembled. This theatrical juxtaposition further captures the viewer’s attention, establishing a portal to another world. Together, the paintings and the mushroom collages create one harmonious, natural biosphere.

DOUGLAS MELINI (b. 1972, American) received his BA from the University of Maryland in 1994 and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 1997. Douglas Melini has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, Oregon (2018); 11R Gallery, New York, New York (2017); Feature Inc., NY, NY (2009-2014); Minus Space, Brooklyn, New York (2009); Ursula Werz, Tubingen, Germany (2005); Rocket Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2004, 1999); and Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, California (1998); among others. In 2008, Douglas Melini was awarded a Painting Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Douglas Melini’s work has been reviewed and featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Time Out New York, and Artcritical, and is included in private and public collections worldwide. He is represented by Van Doren Waxter, NY, NY and SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC. The artist currently lives and works in New Jersey. 

SOCO GALLERY

421 Providence Road, Charlotte, North Carolina 28207

socogallery.com