Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers @ MoMA, New York

Hilma af Klint 

What Stands Behind Flowers

MoMA, New York

May 11 - September 27, 2025

Hilma af Klint 

Tulipa sp. (Tulip) 

Sheet 35 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 20, 1920 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.8 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Gagea lutea (Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem), 

Pulmonaria officinalis (Common Lungwort), 

Tussilago farfara (Coltsfoot), 

Draba verna (Common Whitlowgrass), 

Pulsatilla vulgaris (European Pasqueflower) 

Sheet 2 from the portfolio Nature Studies. April 24–30, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 9/16 in. (49.9 × 26.9 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Convallaria majalis (Lily of the Valley), 

Geum rivale (Water Avens), 

Polygala vulgaris (Common Milkwort) 

Sheet 11 from the portfolio Nature Studies. June 10–11, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Luzula campestris (Field Woodrush), Viola hirta (Hairy Violet), 

Viola odorata (Sweet Violet), 

Chrysospleniumalternifolium 

(Alternate-Leaf Golden Saxifrage), 

Equisetumarvense (Field Horsetail), 

Caltha palustris (Marsh Marigold), 

Ranunculus ficaria (Fig Buttercup),  Carex sp. (Sedge) 

Sheet 4 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 9–15, 1919  

Watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 9/16 in. (49.9 × 26.9 cm). 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

The Museum of Modern Art presents an exhibition showcasing MoMA’s recent acquisition of Nature Studies, a portfolio of 46 botanical drawings by the Swedish artist HILMA AF KLINT (1862–1944), which will be on display for the first time. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers explores af Klint’s engagement with the natural world. Created during the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920, the Nature Studies portfolio presents the wonders of Sweden’s flora and showcases the artist’s keen botanical eye. Hilma af Klint combines her renowned approach to abstraction with traditional botanical drawing, juxtaposing detailed renderings of plants discovered in her surroundings with enigmatic abstract diagrams. Examples include a sunflower paired with concentric circles, a narcissus crowned by a pinwheel of primary colors, and tree blossoms accompanied by checkerboards of dots and strokes. Through these forms, af Klint seeks to reveal, in her words, “what stands behind the flowers,” reflecting her belief that studying nature uncovers truths about the human condition. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers is organized by Jodi Hauptman, The Richard Roth Senior Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, with Kolleen Ku, Curatorial Assistant, and Chloe White, Louise Bourgeois Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints. Realized with the participation of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm.

The exhibition focuses on the years 1917 to 1922, contextualizing the MoMA portfolio and highlighting a pivotal shift in af Klint’s practice. In 1917, no longer satisfied with only receiving direction from spiritual guides, Hilma af Klint embarked on a path of self-study, culminating in the Nature Studies drawings. The exhibition opens with this new approach, seen in her adoption of an abstract diagrammatic vocabulary in works like the 1917 Atom series, one of many key loans from the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm. This section also highlights in landscapes and botanical drawing her ongoing dedication to observation. As Hilma af Klint noted, “First, I shall try to penetrate the flowers of the earth; use as a point of departure the plants of the earth.” The second section focuses on the Nature Studies, along with related notebooks that allow visitors to experience af Klint’s reflections on the plants she studied, as well as botanical source materials. The final section presents her ongoing interest in exploring the connection between nature and spirituality, but with a new method. In the 1922 series On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees, Hilma af Klint employs a wet-on-wet watercolor technique, using vibrant color to express the spiritual power of plants.

Hilma af Klint 

Helianthus annuus (Common Sunflower) 

Sheet 27 from the portfolio Nature Studies. September 3, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 3/4 × 10 9/16″ (50.2 × 26.8 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint

Prunus padus (European Bird Cherry), 

Prunus avium (Sweet Cherry), 

Prunus cerasus (Sour Cherry), 

Prunus domestica (European Plum) 

Sheet 7 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 27–June 3, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint

Tilia × europaea (Common Linden) 

Sheet 22 from the portfolio Nature Studies. July 29, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

“While we often think of artists of the early 20th century as focused on new technologies—and the hustle and bustle of modern life—for many, the natural world was a crucial touchstone. MoMA’s Nature Studies reveal af Klint as an artist uniquely attuned to nature. We hope that attunement—her demonstration of careful observation and discovery of all that stands behind the flowers—encourages our audience to look closely and see their own surroundings, whether here in the city or beyond, in new ways,” says Jodi Hauptman.

Hilma af Klint

Nos. 6–14b from the series Group 2. February 5–12, 1919 

Watercolor, graphite, and metallic paint on paper, 

14 3/16 × 19 11/16 in. (36 × 50 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 448)

Hilma af Klint

No. 8 from The Atom Series. January 13, 1917 

Watercolor, graphite, and metallic paint on paper, 

10 5/8 × 9 13/16 in. (27 × 25 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 360)

Hilma af Klint 

Birch from the series On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees. 1922 

Watercolor on paper, 6 11/16 × 9 13/16 in. (17 × 25 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 639)

The exhibition reveals, for the first time, the extent of af Klint’s plant knowledge and the ways her botanical experience shaped her artistic vision. Through research for this exhibition, seven previously unknown drawings by Hilma af Klint of mushroom species, commissioned by the renowned Swedish mycologist M. A. Lindblad, were discovered in the archives at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. They are loaned to MoMA, and shown in the US for the first time, to demonstrate af Klint’s commitment to close observation of the natural world and her drawing within a scientific context. The discovery was made through the research collaboration of Dr. Lena Struwe, director of the Chrysler Herbarium at Rutgers University and professor at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, a contributor to the exhibition and its catalogue; and Dr. Johannes Lundberg, curator in the Department of Botany at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who identified this previously unknown group of drawings. Further, as a crucial element of the exhibition’s research, MoMA associate conservator Laura Neufeld conducted the firstever technical analysis of af Klint’s methods and materials on paper.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and a limited-edition facsimile. 

Cover of Hilma af Klint: 

What Stands Behind the Flowers 

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, 

New York, 2025

The lavishly illustrated catalogue, Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, presents the 46 drawings alongside contextualizing artworks and translations of the artist’s previously unpublished writings. An overview essay by Jodi Hauptman explores af Klint’s portfolio and the circumstances of its creation, and essays by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Laura Neufeld, and Lena Struwe unpack the imagery, materiality, and botanical knowledge of these works. 272 pages, 160 color illustrations. Hardcover, $55. ISBN: 978-1-63345-168-1. 

Hilma af Klint: Flora is a deluxe facsimile of the full portfolio, published in a limited edition of 500. Each of the 46 drawings are presented on its own sheet at full scale, and the collection is enclosed in a luxe clamshell case. $500. ISBN: 978-1-63345-169-8.

Both editions are published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and will be available at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART - MoMA, NEW YORK

moma.org

Lisa Edelstein @ Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles - "Dance Me to the End of the World" Exhibition

Lisa Edelstein

DANCE ME TO THE END OF THE WORLD

Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles

January 18 - February 15, 2025

LISA EDELSTEIN

Cruising, 2024

Watercolor on paper/dibond, 35 x 35 inches

© Lisa Edelstein / Courtesy Charlie James Gallery

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present LISA EDELSTEIN: DANCE ME TO THE END OF THE WORLD, an exhibition of new watercolor paintings and the artist’s first at the gallery. Edelstein mines her own family history in works that transform vintage photographs into compositions that acutely capture the color and texture of a particular moment in time. The images are candid, the figures largely unposed and caught off-guard, implying action on either side of the frozen moment depicted. Lisa Edelstein’s interest in storytelling arises across the various avenues of her artistic practice, including painting, writing, and acting. The title of the exhibition references the Leonard Cohen classic whose instrumentation evokes traditional Jewish klezmer music. The song shares a cultural pride and dark sweet sadness with Edelstein’s paintings.

Lisa Edelstein’s interest in storytelling arises across the various avenues of her artistic practice, including painting, writing, and acting. The story that weaves throughout Dance Me to the End of the World is the artist’s own, her compositions populated by cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents in various domestic settings. The cumulative effect gives a sense of a boisterous and interconnected family enjoying the fruits of mid-century American success. Yet the paintings also convey a more universal sense of family — the figures feel familiar and known, almost intrusively personal yet widely relatable. Edelstein captures the complex, perennial dynamics between family and friends and of subjecting oneself to the camera’s gaze.

Dance Me to the End of the World gives a distinct sense of Edelstein’s suburban New Jersey childhood, full of 1970s interiors and intergenerational gatherings. The work is strongly rooted in Jewish memory and identity at a moment when both are politically precarious. Lisa Edelstein proudly claims her own heritage by leaning into the symbols of Jewishness, such as the shiny braided challah on the celebratory table in Rites. This work also emphasizes the photographic roots of the material in its square format and emphatically candid staging. 

In the largest painting in the exhibition, Twister, a group of young teens play the iconic game, all lined up and awaiting the next spin. The bold plaids and stripes of their clothing set against the strong grain of the wood-paneled walls firmly locate this scene in the 1970s, perhaps in the family’s finished basement. The figures engage with the game yet each maintains the distinct interiority that blossoms in early adulthood. Edelstein’s watercolor method produces rich, saturated tones that seem to hold light within the color – the rosy cheeks of the figures reflect the same glow that bounces off the lacquered wood paneling. 

Lisa Edelstein’s paintings are deeply rooted in the Jewish diasporic experience of growing up within a multigenerational family whose elders fled violence and discrimination to find success in the new world. The lush surroundings of these paintings – designed interiors, new cars, dance lessons – signal a flourishing made possible by this new start in America, while also firmly rejecting the deprivations of wartime Europe that hover in the recent past. This immigrant success story suffuses the paintings, from the proud stance of the couple in Day Trip to the beach vacation in Cruising.

The paintings maintain the feel of a snapshot throughout, mimicking the scale and shape of the scrapbook down to the square polaroid and oval-cut portrait. Lisa Edelstein’s watercolor medium perfectly suits the soft lines and haze of memory that characterize old photographs. Moments gain new meaning in translation, as details reveal themselves through close observation and magnification. These works transport the viewer to a different time, and are filled with tenderness towards the jumble of personalities and physical spaces that bring a family to life.   

LISA EDELSTEIN (b. 1966, Boston, MA) attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts before leaving to work as an actress, writer and filmmaker, eventually expanding her practice to painting. Her artwork has been exhibited with Anat Ebgi Gallery, Charlie James Gallery, and Gavlak Gallery and her art practice has been profiled in Forbes Magazine. Edelstein's practice is contemplative and reflective, intimate, personal and extremely rigorous. Through the lens of both the female and Jewish gaze, she draws you in, welcoming you into her family while also holding a mirror up to your own.

CHARLIE JAMES GALLERY

969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012

www.cjamesgallery.com 

Walton Ford @ The Morgan Library & Museum, NYC - "Birds and Beasts of the Studio" Exhibition

Walton Ford 

Birds and Beasts of the Studio 

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York 

April 12 – October 20, 2024 

Walton Ford (b. 1960) 

Study for “Ars Gratia Artis,” 2017

Watercolor, gouache, and ink over graphite 

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York,

gift of the artist; 2019.196. 

© 2024 Walton Ford. Photography by Janny Chiu

The Morgan Library & Museum presents Walton Ford: Birds and Beasts of the Studio. The exhibition celebrates the 2019 gift from artist Walton Ford (b. 1960) to the Morgan of sixty-three studies and sketches, shown publicly for the first time. Walton Ford is fascinated by the perception of wild animals in the human imagination, and his monumental watercolors subvert historical conventions of animal painting. This exhibition examines the artist’s working process, illuminating the role that historical, literary, cultural, and scientific research plays in his practice. Presented together with drawings of animals and birds selected by the artist from the Morgan’s holdings, this exhibition sheds new light on the museum’s collection from the perspective of a living artist.

Walton Ford (b. 1960) 

Study for “Verfolgen”, 2018 

Watercolor, gouache, and ink over graphite 

The Morgan Library & Museum, 

gift of the artist, 2019.213. 

© 2024 Walton Ford

Birds and Beasts of the Studio opens with a selection of Walton Ford’s drawings inspired by his visits to the American Museum of Natural History, New York. To this day, he visits the museum to explore its archives, field studies, documents, and taxidermy specimens. This section of the exhibition reveals the extensive scientific research that grounds Ford’s artistic practice, which relies on attention to detail and the accuracy of animal features.

The second section presents some of Walton Ford’s studies and watercolors that imagine encounters between lions and humans, and are largely based on true stories. These works include a series centered on the Barbary lion—a now extinct subspecies which fought gladiators in ancient Rome and was used as the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) mascot. Also on view are compositional sketches from a series inspired by the escape of eight lions in Leipzig in 1913, as well as a work in which a lion devours famed Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). Though humans hardly appear in Ford’s work, the interest of human culture is always evident. 

Similarly, the works in the third section elaborate on the story of a black panther that escaped the Zurich Zoo and spent weeks alone in the countryside before being caught and eaten by a farmer. In dozens of paintings and drawings, Ford visualizes the panther surviving in the snowy Alps. While some pieces depict the panther from the point of view of Swiss villagers, others imagine the animal’s viewpoint, or feature dreamlike apparitions.

These sections are followed by a selection of titles from Walton Ford’s personal library, bringing focus to his literary source material. The presentation highlights the wide range of texts in Ford’s collection, from volumes of natural history and early colonial travel diaries to folktales and fables.

John James Audubon (1785–1851) 

Eastern Gray Squirrel, 1841 

Watercolor and graphite with gouache on cream paper 

The Morgan Library & Museum, 

purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1910; 1976.12:2.

Photography by Steven H. Crossot.

The installation concludes with a presentation of pieces selected by Walton Ford from the Morgan’s extensive holdings, accompanied by wall texts written by the artist. Ford’s commentary highlights his expertise on artistic depictions of animals throughout the centuries, providing insights into the creative process in many of these works. The selection features some of the Morgan’s finest animal drawings executed between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries, including work by Rembrandt van Rijn, John James Audubon, Eugène Delacroix, and Beatrix Potter.

Highlights of the exhibition include three of Walton Ford’s largescale watercolors on loan from private collections, paired with their respective studies.

Colin B. Bailey, Director of the Morgan Library & Museum, said, “It is a great pleasure to present this exhibition in collaboration with Walton Ford, celebrating the generous gift of his outstanding studies and sketches to the Morgan.Shown alongside exceptional works selected by the artist from our collection, in addition to being introduced to Walton’s working practice, visitors will also have the opportunity to encounter historic works through the perspective of a living artist.”

This exhibition is organized by Isabelle Dervaux, former Acquavella Curator and Department Head of Modern and Contemporary Drawings, and Jennifer Tonkovich, Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings and Prints.

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM

225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016

www.themorgan.org

Ken Price @ McClain Gallery, Houston - A Focus Exhibition

Ken Price: A Focus Exhibition

McClain Gallery, Houston

November 1 – December 30, 2023

Ken Price (1935 – 2012) is best known for his innovative ceramic sculpture and is recognized as one of the most important sculptors to have emerged in Los Angeles in the 20th century. Throughout his 50+ year career, Price also made extraordinary drawings with watercolor of varied subjects from sculpture studies and still lifes to landscapes and erotic drawings. Ken Price rose to prominence in the early 1960s and was a key player in the explosion of the Los Angeles Contemporary art scene in the 60s.

Born in Los Angeles in 1935, Ken Price grew up near the beach and spent his youth surfing nearly every day. Price began studying art at Santa Monica Collage at the age of 18. He went on to earn a BFA in 1956 from the University of Southern California and took ceramics classes at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis College of Art and Design, where he studied under Peter Voulkos. Ken Price earned an MFA in 1959 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and had his gallery debut at the legendary Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles just a year later, at the age of 25. He quickly established himself with several successful solo exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1969.

Ken Price exhibited extensively until his death in 2012, at his home in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, just outside of Taos. That same year a major retrospective of his work, on which he collaborated with friend and architect Frank Gehry, was staged at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. Works by Price are held in numerous museum collections, among them The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

McCLAIN GALLERY

2242 Richmond Avenue, Houston, TX 77098

www.mcclaingallery.com

Hannah Wilke @ Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Berverly Hills - Flowers 1973 - 1991

Hannah Wilke

Flowers 1973 - 1991

Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Berverly Hills

January 28 – March 25, 2023

HANNAH WILKE

Untitled, n.d.

Watercolor on paper, 12 x 9 inches

© The Estate of Hannah Wilke, courtesy of Marc Selwyn Fine Art

Marc Selwyn Fine Art presents Flowers 1973-1991, an exhibition of drawings by the late American artist Hannah Wilke (1940–1993). This exhibition will focus on the flower image and includes works in watercolor and sepia ink on paper. It will also include a grouping of three of Wilke’s abstract vaginal forms in ceramic from the 1970’s, highlighting the relationship between her works on paper and her threedimensional sculpture. A pioneering figure in feminist art, Hannah Wilke explored issues of beauty, gender, and Western cultural convention with a diverse approach that included photography, performance, video, sculpture, and drawing. The first woman of her generation to make vaginal art, Hannah Wilke asserted ownership over her own body and was a key figure in the feminist art movement of the 1960’s and 70’s.

Hannah Wilke’s multi-disciplinary practice melded Post-Minimalism, second wave feminism and Abstract Expressionism, making her one of the most influential yet under recognized artists of the late 20th century. Wilke’s works on paper are often in dialogue with her sculpture. Rarely exhibited before her death in 1993, drawings were an integral part of her practice beginning in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. While Wilke’s undulating lines often generate highly abstracted compositions that relate to her sculpture, this exhibition will focus on a series of recognizable floral images which are closely linked to her threedimensional organic forms.

Hannah Wilke’s sketches of flowers embody a delicate and ambiguous beauty and come from the same energy exemplified in her performances. As Nancy Princenthal wrote in the artist’s monograph (Hannah Wilke, 2010, Prestel) “Her observations were acute, bringing to life every particularity of texture and form, blooming health and decay without sacrifice to the delicacy for which flowers are treasured.” Wilke continued to produce flower drawings until her death, with some of the final examples done on hospital pillowcases.

HANNAH WILKE (b. New York, NY, 1940; d. Houston, TX, 1993) trained at Stella Elkins Tyler School of Fine Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. Key solo museum exhibitions during her life included Hannah Wilke: Scarification Photographs and Videotapes, Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine, (1976); and Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective, University of Missouri (1989). Recent solo presentations of her work include Hannah Wilke: Art for Life’s Sake, Pulitzer Arts Foundation (2022), Hannah Wilke: Gestures, Neuberger Museum of Art, New York (2008) and a solo gallery at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011). Hannah Wilke has also been included in significant group exhibitions, including: Eva Hesse and Hannah Wilke: Erotic Abstraction, Acquavella Galleries, New York (2021), Performing for the Camera, Tate Modern, London (2016); Human Nature, LACMA, Los Angeles, CA (2012); Naked Before the Camera, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012); The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, MoMA, New York, NY (2010); elles@centrepompidou, Centre Pompidou, Paris, (2009-10): WACK!, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007); and Sexual Politics, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 1996. Her work is featured in major museum and foundation collections including Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; LA County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Princeton University Art Museum; and Coleccion Jumex, Mexico City.

MARC SELWYN FINE ART

9953 South Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212

www.marcselwynfineart.com

Gladys Nilsson @ Garth Greenan Gallery, NYC - New Works in Watercolor

Gladys Nilsson: New Works in Watercolor

Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

November 3 – December 17, 2022

Gladys Nilsson

A Stretch Too Far, 2021

Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper, 41 3/4 x 71 inches

© Gladys Nilsson, Courtesy of Garth Greenan Gallery

Garth Greenan Gallery presents Gladys Nilsson: New Works in Watercolor, an exhibition of works on paper at 545 West 20th Street. The exhibition features a selection of the artist’s recent watercolors, all painted between 2021 and 2022.

Gladys Nilsson has always been fascinated by close inspections and careful depictions of human interactions – celebrating the small things that go along with getting through the day, and eying the awkward and unconscious things people do to themselves when they do not think anyone is looking. In Wheee (2021), a sizable woman perched on a tree branch cranes her neck downward, inspecting a diminutive man at the base of the tree, like a scientist discovering some new, curious species. Nilsson, in all her work, displays a great and admirable affection for human eccentricities and goofiness. Through frame after frame, she explores satiric and sympathetic peculiarities of simple human life. The awkwardness of such looming bodies, with her comical approach to simple existence and interaction, becomes a celebration of seeing others and being seen, of the musings of display and spectatorship.

A Stretch too Far (2021) features Gladys Nilsson’s winding, playful imagery. Over a dozen major and minor characters partake in the festivities—peering at, touching, bumping noses, and grabbing at each other. A mischievous green man pulls a woman’s fleshy pink leg into the second frame. A row of swimmers forms a frieze at the bottom of the composition, unaware of the drama unfolding above. To the left and the right of the work, various figures wrap themselves around the swaying trees. The work indexes her stylistic hallmarks, as she playfully resurrects canonical painting conventions—the diptych, hierarchical scale, horror vacui, and continuous narrative—while assigning new functions and meanings to each within her idiosyncratic graphical style.

Gladys Nilsson first came to prominence in 1966, when she joined five other recent School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduates (James Falconer, Art Green, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum) for the first of a series of group exhibitions called the Hairy Who. The artists’ styles were assertively idiosyncratic, but most had trained with professors Kathleen Blackshear and Paul Wieghardt and adapted some of their respective Surrealist and German Expressionist tendencies.Gladys Nilsson skillfully integrates elements of both in her playful investigations into human sexuality and its inherent contradictions. Gladys Nilsson was the first member of the Hairy Who—and one of the first women in history—to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1973. In 1990, Gladys Nilsson joined the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she continues to teach today.                  

Since 1966, Gladys Nilsson’s work has been the subject of more than 50 solo exhibitions, including 16 at Phyllis Kind Gallery (1970–1979, 1981–1983, 1987, 1991, and 1994, Chicago and New York), two at The Candy Store (1971 and 1987, Folsom, California), and one at Hales Gallery (2019, London). Her work has also been featured in many important museum exhibitions, such as Human Concern/Personal Torment (1969, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York); Who Chicago? (1981, Camden Art Center, London); Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art (1992, Los Angeles County Museum of Art); Chicago Imagists (2011, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin); and What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present (2014, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence). Most recently, Nilsson’s work appeared in The Candy Store (2018, Parker Gallery, Los Angeles), Hairy Who? 1966–1969 (2018–2019, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Chicago Imagists from the Phyllis Kind Collection (2019, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago), and How Chicago! Imagists 1960s–1970s (2019, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, University of London).               

Gladys Nilsson’s work is featured in the collections of major museums around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Morgan Library, New York; the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.                   

Garth Greenan Gallery represents Gladys Nilsson.

GARTH GREENAN GALLERY

545 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011

www.garthgreenan.com

Kristina Bength: Within Cuts and Bends - L MD galerie, Paris

Exposition : Kristina Bength 
Within Cuts and Bends 
L MD Galerie, Paris
31 mai - 16 juillet 2011 

KRISTINA BENGHT, Within Cuts and Bends-9, 2010, 

Aquarelle sur papier / Watercolor on paper, 62 x 77 cm

Courtesy Kristina Bength & L MD galerie, Paris 

English version below

La galerie L MD à Paris présente, dans son espace principal, la nouvelle série d'acquarelles de l'artiste suédoise KRISTINA BENGHT, Within Cuts and Bends (dont une partie seulement a été présenté au Salon du Dessin Contemporain en mars dernier). Le travail Kristina Bength est une réactivation et une réinterprétation de faits passés à travers la pratique du dessin. Elle montre la possibilité de falsifier la mémoire et de rejouer le présent, à travers la vie et la destinée de la mystérieuse Amanda Kristina Pedersen.

Within Cuts and Bends reprend le point de départ des deux séries de dessins Transpositions Within The Image Of A Name et Physionomic Inquiries By Amanda Kristina Pedersen : l’histoire de la photographe et comédienne Amanda Kristina Pedersen, condamnée en 1904 pour fraude et falsification d’identités. Le procès eut lieu à Falun en Suède, la ville natale de l’artiste Kristina Bength qui, depuis 2008, s’est emparée de la vie et du destin de la faussaire.

La série d’aquarelle Within Cuts and Bends présente au spectateur des espaces vides et muets, inspirés par des photographies prises par Pedersen -qui fut photographe dans un hopital- au cours de ses multiples « vies ». La transposition de l’image argentique en aquarelle provoque un contraste, celui de la qualité liquide de l'eau créant des surfaces indéfinies qui défient le temps statique de photographie. Within Cuts and Bends joue sur la présence de cette eau, métaphore du souvenir et de l'oubli. En effet, en utilisant des images d’archives et en les réinterprétant dans sa peinture, Bength écrit de nouvelles histoires. Elle révèle les pièges de la mémoire et la réécriture de l'histoire au présent.

Les installations des dessins sont essentielles dans le travail de Kristina Bength. La série Transpositions Within The Image Of A Name fut suspendue sur câbles en tableaux successifs avec en fond sonore, le verdict prononcé à l’issue du procès de Pedersen. La série Physionomic Inquiries By Amanda Kristina Pedersen était exposée en plans horizontaux, sur des lits de fer rigoureusement ordonnés, accompagnée d’un tiroir d’archives présentant les notes du journal de Pedersen, un texte fictif écrit par l’auteur Vendela Fredricson. La scénographie clinique mise en place par Bength n’échappe pas à une relation physique avec les œuvres et au mélange des genres. D’une part, elle oblige à adopter soi-même le va-et-vient d’un médecin examinateur qui scrute les images comme s’il s’agissait de radiographies pour Transpositions Within the Image of a Name ou la position d’un patient pour Physionomic Inquiries by Amanda Kristina Pedersen.

Ainsi, pour l’installation de Within Cuts and Bends dans la galerie L MD, la succession des images suspendues par des fils d'acier donne l'impression d'être une construction qui a soudainement été arrêtée et a été abandonnée, à l’image de la série d’espaces représentés. Entre photographie, peinture et cinéma, le spectateur doit reconstruire le scénario imaginaire de Kristina Bength. L’histoire continue…

Kristina Bength est née en 1984 à Falun en Suède où elle vit et travaille.

Exhibition: Kristina Bength 

Within Cuts & Bends 

L MD Galerie, Paris - France

31 May - 16 July 2011 

L MD galerie (Paris - France) presents the last series of watercolors Within Cuts and Bends of the Swedish artist KRISTINA BENGTH.

Kristina Bength reactivates and translates past events into paintings and drawings. She reveals the possibility of distorting history and memory and replaying the present. For her participation to « Le Salon du Dessin Contemporain » at Carrousel du Louvre Kristina Bength shows a sample of the project Within Cuts and Bends that will open at L MD galerie in 31 May through 23 July 2011. Within Cuts and Bends departs from photographic archive material that comes from the photographer, actress and impostress Amanda Kristina Pedersen, who in 1904 was convicted of fraud and forgery in Falun, Kristina Bength’s hometown.

Since 2008, Kristina Bength has worked on the story of Amanda Kristina Pedersen by bringing the game of fraud and imposture into play in several ways. Within Cuts and Bends is a slide of watercolour paintings that resembles an immovable silent film telling a story in fragments at the point where photographic realism meets the flowing motion of the aquarelle. The paintings depict spaces devoid of human presence, and they both invite and exclude the spectator from entering these spaces. Mute surfaces that keep the gaze out are alternated with surfaces that move freely and provoke forms that heavily contrast with photography. In other words, the aquarelle paintings give dominant significance to how the water’s fluid, transformative quality conquers and challenges the static time of photography.

In terms of material and technique as well as content, water plays an important part in Within Cuts and Bends. Being both a means of the painting process and a motif alluded upon, Water signifies the attempt to trace histories/stories and give new form to them by changing them. In this sense water becomes a metaphor of recollection and oblivion, referring back to the overall question of what it means to remember and forget, but also to what it means to use archive material and restage it in new stories. The difficulties and pitfalls of returning to the past and re-write history is the main theme of Kristina Bength’s art. The events as such cannot return, but they can recur in other forms if painting succeeds to put the storytelling potential of the archive into use.

The installation’s sculptural form establishes an allegorical relation to cinema, and there is also something mechanical over the installation. The paintings creates a separate form and are attached to steel wires that outline their own geometry of lines and forms in the exhibition space, and the installation gives the impression of being a construction that has suddenly stopped, lost its motion and been abandoned, quite similar to the milieus that the series of paintings are showing. Another dimension of Bength’s installation is the tense meeting between the metallic firmness of the wires and the fragility of the aquarelle paintings’ paper and tape. This tension is also emphasized in the paintings.

Kristina Bength was born in 1984 in Falun (Sweden) where she also works and live.

L MD GALERIE
56 rue Charlot
75003 Paris - France

www.lmd-art.com