TheArtMarket.NYC
a consortium showcasing art exhibitions for global and local collectors highlighting galleries in New York City.
Exhibitions rotate weekly, showcasing galleries an average of 6 times per year, contributing to a release of 8-12 gallery shows every week.

[Based upon individual gallery programming]
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December 25, 2020 – January 7, 2021

ONGOING THIS WEEK

VIEW SHOWS
Massey Klein
Bodega
George Adams Gallery
Kathryn Markel
Friedrich Petzel Gallery
Karma
Berry Campbell
Cheim & Read
Venus Over Manhattan
Margaret Thatcher







Massey KleinViewing Room
BodegaViewing Room
George Adams GalleryViewing Room
Kathryn Markel Fine ArtsViewing Room
Friedrich Petzel GalleryViewing Room
KarmaViewing Room
Berry CampbellViewing Room
CHEIM & READViewing Room
Venus Over ManhattanViewing Room
MARGARET THATCHER PROJECTSViewing Room

Massey Klein

Massey Klein is a contemporary art gallery located in the Lower East Side of NYC.The gallery supports both local and international mid-career and emerging artists.Husband and wife team, Garrett Klein and Ryan Massey, believe in the collaborative partnership between artist, gallery, and collector. The gallery functions as a meeting place where collectors and the general public can experience carefully curated exhibitions and foster meaningful relationships with art.

"An Echo's Glyph"

Artist: Catherine Haggarty

Massey Klein Gallery is pleased to present An Echo's Glyph, a solo exhibition featuring new paintings by Catherine Haggarty. The gallery is also pleased to announce, TOAST, a solo exhibition of new work by Leigh Suggs hosted in Massey Klein’s intimate east gallery room.

Both exhibitions will be on view by appointment from Friday, December 18th until Saturday, January 30th, 2021. The gallery will host an opening reception day from 1-6pm on Sunday, December 20th. Please email info@masseyklein.com to schedule an in-person viewing or visit the gallery’s website to experience a virtual walk-through of both exhibitions.

Catherine Haggarty, 3 Dolphins , 2020

Oil stick and airbrush on canvas

54 x 38 inches

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Catherine Haggarty , Mime in a Merry-Go-Round, 2020

Oil stick and airbrush on canvas

20 x 16 inches

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Catherine Haggarty's practice explores the ambiguous relationship of language, time, context, and form. Using air brush, oil stick and fluid acrylic, forms reference animal patterns, imprints, and ancient symbols that create a fictional space for viewers to navigate. She is interested in how lines can have both clear agency and wavering ambiguity while building an image - pushing blurry imagery and saturated forms together. Her artwork explores how images communicate; how our automatic, subconscious and steadfast attention can collide to conjure new forms, new images and perhaps, new understandings of ourselves.
Catherine Haggarty , Fermina In Forest, 2020

Oil stick,fluid acrylic and airbrush on canvas

48 x 36 inches

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Catherine Haggarty , For Mary Oliver, 2020

Oil stick and airbrush on canvas

48 x 36 inches

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Haggarty’s newest body of work included in An Echo’s Glyph is informed by early cave paintings in France that she visited in 2019. Inspired by the atmosphere within the caves and the visceral experience of viewing the paintings, her work seeks to capture the essence of her subject matter, rather than present a clear, formal object. Atmospheric and abstract layers build, organically shifting to reveal glimpses of an animal and its signifiers. Haggarty incorporates a variation of footprints, patterns, and animal coats to portray themes of movement and migration as well as animal chatter and communication. The mysterious nature of the artist’s environments encourage the viewer to reflect on the human experience and timelessness of painting.
Catherine Haggarty, Catherine Haggarty, 2020

Oil stick and airbrush on canvas

16 x 20 inches

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Catherine Haggarty , Fox Mountain, 2020

Oil stick and airbrush on canvas

20 x 16 inches

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Catherine Haggarty , Mockingbird, 2020

Oil stick and airbrush on canvas

20 x 16 inches

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Catherine Haggarty, The History of Cats, 2020

Oil stick and airbrush on canvas

16 x 20 inches

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Catherine Haggarty earned her MFA from Mason Gross, Rutgers University in 2011. Currently, Haggarty is an adjunct professor at The School of Visual Arts and also co-directs NYC Crit Club. Haggarty has been a visiting artist and lecturer at SUNY Purchase, MFA; Hunter MFA; Denison University; Brooklyn College MFA; and in 2018 Haggarty was the Anderson Endowed Lecturer at Penn State University. The artist’s paintings and curatorial work have been reviewed by and featured in Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, Brooklyn Magazine, The New York Times, Maake Magazine, Art Maze Magazine, Art Spiel, Sound and Vision Podcast, among others.

Bodega

Bodega opened on the Lower East Side of New York in 2014. Its founders and directors are Elyse Derosia and Eric Veit. The gallery grew out of an earlier project of the same name which ran from 2010–2013 in Philadelphia.

"ADD SHOT"

Artist: Whitney Claflin

Fabric paint on a former skirt, various paints and magazine clippings on linen, a found patch on found fabric, Nat Sherman’s MCDs and ash with ink on enamel on fabric, oil on linen with sequins and glitter on an older sanded down painting from 2015.

Through all the material oscillations in Whitney’s work, it’s often useful to think of the work as “mostly painting.” Similarly, the gallery in ADD SHOT is “mostly a gallery,” but the Whitney-esque avatar listening to a 20 minute mix of club, folk punk, pop, and hardcore wearing a custom printed vintage polo that says “LOVE” on the back also turns the gallery into a Barneys-meets-thrift store retail space.

Whitney Claflin, Mime in a Merry-Go-Round, 2020

Custom shirt, skirt, bra, underwear, bag, mannequin, plinth, 20:18 audio mix, headphones

75 x 59 x 53 in

(190.5 x 149.9 x 134.6 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, Mime in a Merry-Go-Round, 2020

Custom shirt, skirt, bra, underwear, bag, mannequin, plinth, 20:18 audio mix, headphones

76 x 59 x 53 in

(190.5 x 149.9 x 134.6 cm)

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Nearby, a painted frame on a small landscape painting centered over the radiator is a cute nod to Upper East Side domesticity and a photocopy wheat pasted to the wall slightly below the center hanging line of the rest of the gallery (a $5 each edition of 100) recalls the earnest moralism of a DIY music scene.
Whitney Claflin, Mime in a Merry-Go-Round, 2020

Custom shirt, skirt, bra, underwear, bag, mannequin, plinth, 20:18 audio mix, headphones

77 x 59 x 53 in

(190.5 x 149.9 x 134.6 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, Mime in a Merry-Go-Round, 2020

Custom shirt, skirt, bra, underwear, bag, mannequin, plinth, 20:18 audio mix, headphones

78 x 59 x 53 in

(190.5 x 149.9 x 134.6 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, Mime in a Merry-Go-Round, 2020

Custom shirt, skirt, bra, underwear, bag, mannequin, plinth, 20:18 audio mix, headphones

79 x 59 x 53 in

(190.5 x 149.9 x 134.6 cm)

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The power of Whitney’s work and the shape of this exhibition is that the work functions like a guide, a mix tape of its own sort, asking you to consider one thing and then the next while you still have the last thing stuck in your head. There’s a ominous beauty in VAMP U.S.A., a painting of drippy red and needley blue lines over a white spiral that stays in your head if you then turn to the happy yellow painting of a beautifully rendered kitty licking its paw, a painting imbued with optimistic love. It’s these tensions that point us back and forth through the gallery and throughout the work.
Whitney Claflin, All signal, no noise (!!!), 2020

Fabric paint on former skirt

11 x 16 in

(27.9 x 40.6 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, All signal, no noise (!!!), 2020

Fabric paint on former skirt

11 x 16 in

(27.9 x 40.6 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, Life (‘s like this), 2020

Nat Sherman’s MCDs, ash, alcohol ink, enamel on found fabric

20 x 30 in

(50.8 x 76.2 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, I prefer walking (Veeza), 2020

Oil, ink, enamel, eye shadow, glitter, sequins on linen

48 x 36 in

(121.9 x 91.4 cm)

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Whitney gives body to conflict, amplifies subjectivity, and highlights the feedback-looping maximallisms of the moment. Perhaps now is the time to add a shot, whether it’s espresso to your latte, or tequila to your Texas Size Famous Frozen Raspberry Margarita.
Whitney Claflin, Spaces, 2020

Oil and ink on linen

12 x 16 in

(30.5 x 40.6 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, Life (‘s like this), 2020

Nat Sherman’s MCDs, ash, alcohol ink, enamel on found fabric

20 x 30 in

(50.8 x 76.2 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, LOVE (!!!), 2020

Found patch on found fabric

32 x 30 in

(81.3 x 76.2 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, LOVE (!!!), 2020

Found patch on found fabric

32 x 30 in

(81.3 x 76.2 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, three stars/ one rose (night sky/ a wall), 2020

Oil, acrylic, ink, carbon transfer, fabric paint, colored pencil on linen

11 x 16 in

(27.9 x 40.6 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, Stranger Danger, 2020

Photocopy on paper

Edition of 100, 8.5 x 11 in

(21.6 x 27.9 cm)

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Whitney Claflin, Sigh Co., 2020

Magazine clipping on knife

75 x 8 x .5 in

(1.9 x 20.3 x 1.3 cm)

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Whitney Claflin (b. 1983, Providence, RI) lives and works in New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Drei, Cologne; Central Fine, Miami; Real Fine Arts, Brooklyn; and Green Gallery, Milwaukee. Recent group exhibitions include Bodega, New York; Galerie Buchholz, New York; Croy Nielsen, Vienna; Greene Naftali Gallery, New York; Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York; and Dawid Radziszewski, Warsaw.

George Adams Gallery

The George Adams Gallery traces its origin to the Allan Frumkin Gallery founded in Chicago in 1952 and New York in 1959. George Adams’ association with the New York gallery began in 1980, when Mr. Adams and Mr. Frumkin formed a partnership, Frumkin/Adams Gallery, in 1988. Upon Mr. Frumkin’s retirement in 1995, the gallery assumed its present identity of George Adams Gallery. In 2005, after 46 years on 57th Street, the gallery relocated to West 26th Street in Chelsea.

"Drawn from Life: Works on Paper, 1970-1976"

Artist: Joan Brown

The George Adams Gallery is pleased to present Joan Brown: Drawn From Life, an exhibition of works on paper spanning the years 1970 to 1976. Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of Brown’s death, on October 26th, 1990, this exhibition looks back to one of the most fruitful periods of Brown’s career from the perspective of her drawings from the model.

Highly experimental, unstudied and boldly rendered, they reveal that drawing was a mode Brown used as a form of practice, to allow herself to come to the canvas instinctually and without preparation. The exhibition will include over a dozen works ranging from simple line drawings to more fully rendered paintings on paper - several of which Joan had set aside for her personal collection and never before exhibited. A new publication, fully illustrated, focusing on Brown’s drawings - the first - will accompany the exhibition with contributions by Jenelle Porter, Eva Rivlin and Tamsin Smith and an introduction by George Adams.

Joan Brown, Model in Studio, 1973

Graphite,acrilyc,ink and collage on paper

54x45 inches

JBRd191

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Joan Brown, Figure#13, 1970

Graphite on paper

35x22 1/2 inches

JBRd139

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Joan Brown came to prominence around 1960, while in her early twenties and in graduate school, as part of the second generation of Bay Area Figurative painters. However, by 1969 she had transformed herself into a radically different artist, one who would come to be defined by her individualism. In the several years following, Brown devoted much of her time to drawing - predominantly from a model in the studio.
Joan Brown, Figure#11, 1970

Ink on paper

22 1/2x35 inches

JBRd 182

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This was a communal activity - working alongside friends and contemporaries such as Manuel Neri, Elmer Bischoff, Gordon Cook or Robert Arneson, she took these sessions as a way to “get into, or feel, or get mesmerized by, or investigate an image that I wanted to paint. I would do many drawings until I got familiar with the image… it’s the same with getting to know the figure.”
Joan Brown, Figure#25, 1970

Ink on paper with collage

35x22 1/2 inches

JBRd176

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Joan Brown, Figure#39, 1970

Graphite on paper

35x22 1/2 inches

JBRd145

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The progression of her drawings from 1970 onwards suggests this process of familiarization. Though the earliest are rendered in the briefest strokes of graphite or ink, by 1972 a limited palette of red, black and white acrylic is introduced - the shorthand Brown needed to differentiate flesh from furniture and to block out graphic patterns and outlines. In drawings such as Model + Mirror in Studio, 1972, the composition takes primacy with all but the key elements painted over in glossy black ink.
Joan Brown, Model with reflection in window, 1972

Acrylic,ink and graphite on paper

36x24 inches

JBRd150

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Joan Brown, Model + Artist, 1972

Acrylic,ink and graphite on paper

40 1/4 x26 inches

JBRd152

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Joan Brown, Model + mirror in studio, 1972

Acrylic,ink and graphite on paper

20x38inches

JBRd 151

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The culmination of these studio drawings is the Mary Julia series Brown completed over the course of 1976, based on the model Mary Julia, a long-time collaborator of Neri’s. All show Mary Julia variously costumed in the outfits she would bring to their sessions, giving a playful, narrative quality to the series with her filling the role of the every-woman: vulnerable, confident and beguiling.
Joan Brown, Model with Table with Wheels, 1973

Acrylic,ink and graphite on paper

24x36 inches

JBRd 156

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Joan Brown, Models and Crates, 1973

Graphite, acrylic and ink on paper

45x28 1/2 inches

JBRd192

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Joan Brown, Model with drowings, 1973

Graphite, acrylic and ink on paper

45x28 1/2 inches

JBRd190

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This literal documentation of time, as well as the notion of time in the more ephemeral sense, take up equal space in the paintings.
Joan Brown, Model with Ladder and Cupboard, 1973

Ink ,acrylic and graphite on paper

45x28 1/2 inches

JBRd195

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Joan Brown, Model in Studio, 1974

Graphite,ink and acrylic on paper

45x28 1/2 inches

JBRd188

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After 1974 Brown began to use more color, though her convention of the pink figure continued. These later drawings are more fully realized, with defined settings or conversely, minimal, silhouetted compositions akin to those in her paintings from around this time.
Joan Brown, Model Resting, 1975

Acrylic, graphite oil pastel on paper

36x24 inches

JBRd162

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Joan Brown, Celeste#2, 1976

Acrylic,graphite on paper

36x24 1/8 inches

JBRd167

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The culmination of these studio drawings is the Mary Julia series Brown completed over the course of 1976, based on the model Mary Julia, a long-time collaborator of Neri’s. All show Mary Julia variously costumed in the outfits she would bring to their sessions, giving a playful, narrative quality to the series with her filling the role of the every-woman: vulnerable, confident and beguiling.

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts specialized in works on paper - both original prints and unique works of art on paper such as watercolor, collage, and pastel with the addition of paintings by the young avant-garde.

"Detritus"

Artist: Maeve D’Arcy

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to present Detritus, an exhibition of new paintings by Maeve D’Arcy. The show marks the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

531 West 26th Street,First Floor,New York, NY 10001

Maeve D’Arcy, CRANBERRY SAUCE SHRINE, 2020

oil on canvas

36 x 48 in.

dar028

$ 6,000.00

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This literal documentation of time, as well as the notion of time in the more ephemeral sense, take up equal space in the paintings.
Maeve D’Arcy, THE GAMESHOW NETWORK, 2020

oil on panel

36 x 48 in.

dar030

$ 6,000.00

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Swaths of color, interrupted by vivid objects, are in dialogue with waves of dots and lines. This dynamic visual harmony is crafted through a careful process of addition, and every new element alters what D’Arcy refers to as the “tempo” of the painting. The dots, lines, and gestures offer a meditation on memories, flashbacks, daydreams, or nightmares. They represent parts of a whole, snippets of something larger, different moods, chapters, vignettes, and epic poems. The work is intimate and autobiographical, a collection of observations and exclamations.
Maeve D’Arcy, COLD CUTS, 2020

acrylic and oil on panel

40 x 40 in.

dar024

$ 5,500.00

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Maeve D’Arcy, DO THE RIGHT THING, 2020

acrylic on panel

24 x 24 in.

dar032

$ 3,500.00

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Maeve D’Arcy has exhibited her work in New York, London, and Ireland, most recently in a two person show at Lazy Susan Gallery in 2019, a two person show at Topaz Arts in 2018 and a two person show at Ille Arts in 2016.
Maeve D’Arcy, PLEASE BE KIND REWIND, 2020

acrylic on panel

24 x 24 in.

dar031

$ 3,500.00

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Maeve D’Arcy, FRANK SINATRA'S MOTHER, 2020

acrylic and spray paint on panel

50 x 50 in.

dar034

$ 7,200.00

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She earned her MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London, and a BA from CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies where she received the Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship, and the Diego Hidalgo Scholarship for the Arts.
Maeve D’Arcy, FRAGILE COWBOYS, 2020

acrylic on panel

24 x 24 in.

dar033

$ 3,500.00

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Maeve D’Arcy, POSSUM PRIEST IN THE BOROUGH OF QUEENS, 2020

acrylic on panel

36 x 36 in.

dar027

$ 5,000.00

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She has attended many residencies including Jentel and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and earlier this year at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs. In an effort to support the Black Lives Matter movement, D’Arcy will be donating a percentage of all sales to The Okra Project, a collective that assists the Black Trans community with vital resources.
Maeve D’Arcy, COFFEE CAKE, 2020

acrylic on panel

12 x 12 in.

dar025

$ 1,750.00

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Maeve D’Arcy, TEETH FALLING OUT DREAM, 2020

acrylic on panel

12 x 12 in.

dar026

$ 1,750.00

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Friedrich Petzel Gallery

Friedrich Petzel Gallery, founded in 1994, first opened on Wooster Street in the Soho area of New York City. In 2000, the gallery moved to 537 West 22nd Street in Chelsea and in 2006 expanded to include a separate space next door dedicated to smaller exhibitions, artists' projects, and performances. In Fall 2008, Friedrich Petzel Gallery opened a joint gallery with Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. This new gallery, called Capitain Petzel, is housed in a glass-encased gallery located in Mitte section of Berlin and presents exhibitions of established international artists.

"SELF MUST DIE"

Artist: Derek Fordjour

Petzel Gallery is pleased to present SELF MUST DIE, a solo exhibition event by New York-based artist Derek Fordjour.

The show, Fordjour’s first with the gallery, is an offering of creative labor in response to our current moment, a deeply personal and collective state of anxiety around death and hyper-visible racial violence. It examines the nature of martyrdom, vulnerabilities inherent to living in a Black body, performance of competency, and the liminal space existing between autonomy and control.

Derek Fordjour, Pall Bearers, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

102.25x74.25inches

254x182.9cm

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Derek Fordjour, Chorus of Maternal grief, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

80x72inches

203.2x182.9cm

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In SELF MUST DIE, Fordjour interrogates the inevitability of actual death, made more urgent by the realities of a global pandemic, and points to the aspirational death of the artist’s ego brought into focus by a burgeoning career. It is both cultural manifesto and personal declaration.
Derek Fordjour, Prossecion(after Ellis Wilson), 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

76.5x115inches

194.3x292.1cm

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The show is comprised of three parts: VESTIBULE, a site-specific sculptural installation; Fly Away, a live puppetry art performance; and a suite of new paintings.
Derek Fordjour, Eulogy, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

74.25x50.25inches

182.9x12.9cm

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Derek Fordjour, Freehand Blackball Tondo 50, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

48.25inches diametr

122.6cm

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VESTIBULE offers a collection of sculptural objects imbued with biblical allegory and the spirit of James Cone’s Black Theology of Liberation. It refashions the gallery as a secular yet sacred space of memorial. Among its features, the small entry compels visitors to undergo a destabilizing bodily shift that elicits an intimate and reorienting experience.
Derek Fordjour, Ascention, 2020

resin,plaster,soil,cayenne papper,acrylic,steel and found object

85x22.5inches

215.9x57.2cm

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Derek Fordjour, Domicile, 2020

fabric,wire,clay,acrylic,dirt,electric wire,light bulb,battery,wood and found object

38x15.5inches

96.5x39.4cm

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A directional light from above slowly combs the entire room, invoking both searchlight and spotlight, ideas central to the recent death of Breonna Taylor. Constructed of bituminous coal and wrought iron, Taylor Memorial hangs from above.
Derek Fordjour, Barrier Stall, 2020

resin and brass

48x26.5x26.5inches

121.9x67.3x67.3cm

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Derek Fordjour, Contrapposto(Teal), 2020

resin,brass,walnut wood

33.25x19x18inches

84.5x48.3x45.7cm

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Fly Away, a collaboration between Fordjour and award-winning puppeteer Nick Lehane, is performed by a stellar cast, with an original score composed by John Aylward and performed live by oboist Hassan Anderson. The puppet is a Fordjour-designed, hand-sculpted figure crafted by Robert Maldonado.
Derek Fordjour, Taylor Memorial, 2020

resin,steel and coal

32x19x19inches

81.3x48.3x48.3cm

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Derek Fordjour, Nocturnal, 2020

resin,coal,brass,fiberboard and live cremon flowers

38x25.25x12inches

96.5x64.1x30.5cm

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The protagonist’s narrative arc rises and falls along a journey of personal discovery. Larger themes that course through Fordjour’s body of work become resonant. Fly Away performances are scheduled at 2pm and 5pm daily. Tickets are free and available upon request. For additional information on scheduling, COVID-19 safety precautions and reservations, please visit flyawayshow.com.
Derek Fordjour, Birmingham Steel, 2020

resin,nickel,steel,birch,walnut wood,velvet,globe lights,wax

40.25x28x13.75inches

102.2x71.1x34.9cm

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Derek Fordjour, Sunrise Cotton, 2020

resin,steel,synthetic fur,wool,suede fibers,handblown glass,copper leaf and fiber board

40x28x10inches

101.6x71.1x25.4cm

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Spanning two galleries are several new paintings, executed in Fordjour’s signature collage technique, representing the latest developments in his studio practice. The first is a suite of paintings based on Black funerary tradition. The second gallery presents a broad range of subjects including several at monumental scale.
Derek Fordjour, STRWMN, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

87.25x67.25inches

221.6x170.8cm

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Derek Fordjour, The Detriment of Autonomy, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

87.25x67.25inches

218.4x165.1cm

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About Derek Fordjour:Derek Fordjour was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1974 to parents of Ghanaian heritage. Fordjour earned his BA at Morehouse College, MA in Art Education at Harvard University and an MFA in Painting at Hunter College. His work has been exhibited at notable institutions nationally and internationally.
Derek Fordjour, Showtime!, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

108x140inches

274.3x355.6cm

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Derek Fordjour, Cadence, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

78.75x117.25inches

200x297.8cm

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He received commissions for public projects including a permanent installation for Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York City at 145th Street Subway Station and The Whitney Museum’s Billboard Project. He was awarded 2016 Sugar Hill Children’s Museum Artist-in-Residence, the 2017 Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in New York City, and named recipient of the 2018 Deutsche Bank NYFA Fellowship Award. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Hyperallergic.
Derek Fordjour, Freehand Blackball Tondo 50, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

48.25inches diametr

122.6cm

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Derek Fordjour, Ascention, 2020

resin,plaster,soil,cayenne papper,acrylic,steel and found object

85x22.5inches

215.9x57.2cm

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Derek Fordjour, Domicile, 2020

fabric,wire,clay,acrylic,dirt,electric wire,light bulb,battery,wood and found object

38x15.5inches

96.5x39.4cm

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Derek Fordjour, Barrier Stall, 2020

resin and brass

48x26.5x26.5inches

121.9x67.3x67.3cm

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Derek Fordjour, Contrapposto(Teal), 2020

resin,brass,walnut wood

33.25x19x18inches

84.5x48.3x45.7cm

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He has also been featured in several publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair and Forbes Magazine. Fordjour was recently appointed the Alex Katz Chair of Painting at The Cooper Union and serves as a Core Critic at Yale University School of Art. His work also appears in several collections including The Studio Museum of Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, Perez Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum and LACMA.
Derek Fordjour, Taylor Memorial, 2020

resin,steel and coal

32x19x19inches

81.3x48.3x48.3cm

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Derek Fordjour, Nocturnal, 2020

resin,coal,brass,fiberboard and live cremon flowers

38x25.25x12inches

96.5x64.1x30.5cm

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Derek Fordjour, Birmingham Steel, 2020

resin,nickel,steel,birch,walnut wood,velvet,globe lights,wax

40.25x28x13.75inches

102.2x71.1x34.9cm

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Derek Fordjour, Sunrise Cotton, 2020

resin,steel,synthetic fur,wool,suede fibers,handblown glass,copper leaf and fiber board

40x28x10inches

101.6x71.1x25.4cm

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Derek Fordjour, STRWMN, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

87.25x67.25inches

221.6x170.8cm

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Derek Fordjour, The Detriment of Autonomy, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

87.25x67.25inches

218.4x165.1cm

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Derek Fordjour, JUGGLR, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

92.25x74.25inches

234.3x188.6cm

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Derek Fordjour, Six Ring Stance, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

87.25x67.25inches

221.6x170.8cm

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Derek Fordjour, The Futility of Achievement, 2020

acrylic,charcoal,cardboard,oil pastel and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas

77.25x142.25inches

196.2x361.3cm

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Karma

Karma is a gallery in the East Village of New York City. Founded by Brendan Dugan in 2011 Karma was originally located in a small storefront in the West Village, New York. Starting in 2015, Karma’s focus shifted from project-based exhibitions towards formal artist representation. The gallery program has always been a mixture of young, established, and under-recognized artists as well as artists’ estates. Karma plans to continue this diverse program as the formal roster continues to develop.

"Ballin’ the Jack"

Artist: Louise Fishman

Karma is pleased to present Ballin’ the Jack, a solo exhibition by Louise Fishman. The exhibition consists of two new bodies of work: oil paintings created in her studio in New York City and watercolors made at her home upstate.

Louise Fishman, Dugout, 2020

oil on linen

70 × 110 inches

177.8 × 279.4 cm

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The exhibition celebrates the athletic fervor and genre-bending accomplishments of Fishman’s practice. Beginning her practice at the height of Abstract Expressionism, Fishman asserted herself as a queer feminist Jewish woman within the artistic milieu of the time.
Louise Fishman, Mondrian's Grave, 2018

oil on linen

110 × 70 inches

279.4 × 177.8 cm

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Louise Fishman, A La Recherche, 2018

oil on linen

66 × 55 inches

167.64 × 139.7 cm

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Her calligraphic mark-making, atmospheric spaces, and muscular articulations recount the urgency of her self-expression, and speak to the sentiment of “ballin’ the jack.”
Louise Fishman, Choral Fantasy, 2018

oil on linen

66 × 55 inches

167.64 × 139.7 cm

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Louise Fishman, Clear, Unruffled and Calm, 2019

oil on linen

40 × 40 inches

101.6 × 101.6 cm

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After relocating to upstate New York this spring, Fishman’s work drew influence from her new pastoral setting. Energized by the change, her small-scale watercolors celebrate the beauty of the countryside and display a refreshing poetic sensibility.
Louise Fishman, Mantra, 2020

oil on linen

36 × 24 inches

91.44 × 60.96 cm

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Louise Fishman, Ayzn, 2020

oil on linen

36 × 24 inches

91.44 × 60.96 cm

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Ballin’ the Jack charts a before and after: a material record of this shift in the artist’s vision.
Louise Fishman, Ballin' the Jac, 2019

oil on linen

74 × 86 inches

187.96 × 218.44 cm

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Louise Fishman, Weather, 2020

oil on linen

36 × 24 inches

91.44 × 60.96 cm

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Fishman’s paintings fuse gestural abstraction with geometric minimalism, often featuring her hallmark grid motif. Unlike the grids of Mondrian and LeWitt, Fishman’s are sculptural, yet evanescent—at times overt and at others subtle. Rigid rectangles of paint give way to airy hash marks, which fade into the background as Fishman reworks the surface. Fishman has referred to her compositions as a “breathing system,” underscoring the influence of meditation on her practice.
Louise Fishman, Unbinding, 2020

oil on linen

36 × 24 inches

91.44 × 60.96 cm

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Louise Fishman, Too Much, Too Much, 2020

oil on linen

66 × 57 inches

167.64 × 144.78 cm

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While these abstractions do not chronicle Fishman’s life, their production is informed by her private, political, and cultural encounters. The works are infused with the literature, music, emotions, and philosophies that move her. Choral Fantasy is titled after the Beethoven composition playing while Fishman was working; Unbinding refers to the Vipassana Buddhist notion of “unbinding” the mind; A La Recherche was doubly inspired by her mother’s favorite writer and by a Proustian play she attended.
Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor on paper

4 × 6 inches 9⅜ × 11⅜ inches

10.2 × 15.2 cm23.8 × 28.9 cm (framed)

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Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor on paper

4 × 6 inches,9⅜ × 11⅜ inches

10.2 × 15.2 cm,23.8 × 28.9 cm (framed)

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Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor on paper

18 × 24 inches,23½ × 29⅜ inches

45.7 × 61 cm,59.7 × 74.6 cm (framed)

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Louise Fishman, The Art of Losing, 2020

watercolor on paper

18 × 24 inches,23½ × 29⅜ inches

45.72 × 60.96 cm,59.7 × 74.6 cm (framed)

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The artist utilizes the robust gestures of Abstract Expressionism not in spite of its masculine roots, but, in part, because of them. Through paintings such as Mondrian’s Grave, Fishman subverts what Helen Molesworth has called the “field of gendered language” that has often been used to historicize abstraction. Splatters, sfumato, impasto, and scratches—Fishman’s canvases are troweled, scraped, and peeled, exuding a forceful physicality.
Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor and ProBlack

10¼ × 14 inches,15⅝ × 19½ inches

26 × 35.6 cm,39.7 × 49.5 cm (framed)

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Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor on paper

4 3⁄4 × 9 1⁄2 inches,9⅜ × 11⅜ inches

12 × 24.1 cm, 23.8 × 28.9 cm (framed)

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The visual language of Dugout testifies to the strenuous activity behind Fishman’s creations; heavy blends of oil paint, skims of color, and jagged textures are interwoven with raucous cacophony. Its layering of textures produces a recessive, spatial quality. The surface is broken into a multitude of planes: flat blocks of muted greens, browns, and reds are thickly laid down with the edge of a palette knife.
Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor,Sumi ink on coffee filter

11½ × 12 inches,17 × 18 inches,

29.2 × 30.5 cm,43.2 × 45.7 cm (framed)

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Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

Sumi ink on paper

8 × 8 inches,13¼ × 13¼ inches,

20.3 × 20.3 cm,33.7 × 33.7 cm

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Blurs and scratches record horizontal movement: the activity of a sweeping hand. As Suzan Frecon writes, “One can perhaps think of musical dimensions while trying to describe [Fishman’s works], from very loud, smashing crescendos, to the whisper finesse of a dribble or caress of paint, directly from her mind-passion-hand, applied with varied and unorthodox painting tools such as trowels, various painting knives, and many common implements found in hardware stores and on NYC’s old Canal Street.”
Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor on paper

12¼ × 16 inches,17⅝ × 21½ inches

31.1 × 40.6 cm,44.8 × 54.6 cm (framed)

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Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor on paper

9 × 12 inches,15 × 18 inches

22.9 × 30.5 cm,38.1 × 45.7 cm (frame

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The sweeping views of Fishman’s upstate setting inspired a new, bucolic vernacular. Her lyrical small-scale watercolor paintings reflect this agrestic change of scenery. Earthen tones, fluid and stippled marks—all evoke the colors and surface characteristics of soil, rocks, trees, and flowers. Aerated, ethereal blue washes allude to country brooks and streams; flecks of red and green slashes echo floral imagery.
Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor & Sumi Ink on paper

10¼ × 14⅛ inches,20 × 16 inches

26 × 35.9 cm,50.8 × 40.6 cm (framed)

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Fishman’s atmospheric brushwork is effervescent and vivacious. Unrelentingly emotive, the collected paintings of Ballin’ the Jack evoke Fishman’s energetic, compassionate vision.
Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor on found paper

8½ × 11 inches,13¾ × 16⅜inches

21.6 × 28 cm,34.9 × 41.6 cm (framed)

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Louise Fishman, Untitled, 2020

watercolor on found paper

8½ × 11 inches,13¾ × 16⅜inches

21.6 × 28 cm,34.9 × 41.6 cm (framed)

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The exhibition is accompanied by a definitive, comprehensive monograph of around 500 works spanning from the 1950s to the present day. The publication archives the development of the artist’s visual vernacular, and includes narratives by Suzan Frecon, Bertha Harris, Aruna D’Souza, Andrew Suggs, John Yau, an essay published by the artist, and two newly commissioned texts from Debra Singer and Josephine Halvorson.

Berry Campbell

Berry Campbell - Christine Berry and Martha Campbell have many parallels in their backgrounds and interests. Both studied art history in college, began their careers in the museum world, and later worked together at a major gallery in midtown Manhattan. Most importantly, however, Berry and Campbell share a curatorial vision.

"Harmonies (Paintings from the 1980s)"

Artist: John Opper

Berry Campbell Gallery is pleased to announce a finely curated exhibition of paintings from the 1980s by the renowned New York School painter, John Opper (1908-1994). Active as a painter for over six decades, Opper evolved from creating abstract gestural works, in which he drew inspiration from the natural world, to a pure form of abstraction.

John Opper, Untitled(AMA-12), 1985

acrylic on canvas

56 1/4x50 1/4in

(142.9x126.6cm)OPP-00055

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John Opper, Untitled (#31), 1984-86

Acrylic on canvas

66 x 60 1/4 in.

(167.6 x 153 cm)OPP-00058

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By the mid-1980s, Opper was building on and combining his earlier stylistic modes, creating works with a vibrating quality of controlled movement. Rich yellows, deep reds, bright greens, and sky blues challenge, but do not intrude on each other. Each color is composed of sophisticated tonal variations, not with the purpose of delineating foreground and background, but instead revealing a harmonious synthesis of otherworldly space. John Opper: Harmonies is on view at Berry Campbell in Chelsea from November 19, 2020 through December 23, 2020. The gallery is open with regular fall hours, Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm.
John Opper, Untitled (A18), 1984-86

Acrylic on canvas

66 1/4 x 66 in.

(168.3 x 167.6 cm)OPP-00066

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John Opper, Untitled (A12), 1984-87

Acrylic on canvas

66 x 66 1/4 in.

(167.6 x 168.3 cm)OPP-00056

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ABOUT THE ARTIST Born in 1908 in Chicago, Opper moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1916. In high school, he began studying art as well as taking a correspondence course in commercial art and attending classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art.[i] Inspired by the paintings he saw at the Cleveland Museum, including those by the Ashcan School painters George Bellows and Robert Henri, Opper abandoned the idea of becoming a commercial artist. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in the Cleveland School of Art (now Cleveland Institute of Art). The school at that time had a highly traditional curriculum, but Opper was pulled in a modern direction by a visit to the Pittsburgh International Exposition in 1928, where he saw the work of Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and other abstract painters for the first time.
John Opper, Untitled (AMA 3) , 1985

Acrylic on canvas

68 1/8 x 72 1/4 in.

(173 x 183.5 cm)OPP-00053

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John Opper, Untitled (AMA-5), 1985

Acrylic on canvas

68 1/2 x 60 1/4 in.

(174 x 153 cm)OPP-00054

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Dissatisfied with the Cleveland School of Art, Opper spent a year in Chicago, taking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. He returned to Cleveland, where he studied at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve), receiving his B.S. in 1931. By that time, the Depression had struck. Remaining in Cleveland, Opper taught afternoon and evening metalworking and sketching classes at the Karamu Settlement House, the oldest African American theater in the United States. In the 1920s into the 1930s, the House, which became known as the Playhouse Settlement, drew actors, dancers, artists, and printmakers.
John Opper, Untitled, 1986

Acrylic on canvas

64 1/4 x 68 1/4 in.

(163.2 x 173.3 cm)OPP-00063

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John Opper, Untitled (B-24), 1988

Acrylic on canvas

69 x 62 in.

(175.3 x 157.5 cm)OPP-00057

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Following his graduation from Western Reserve, Opper hoped to go to New York. This became possible in 1933. However, having heard that Gloucester, Massachusetts, was “a nice spot to paint,” Opper went there first, residing in a fisherman’s house.[ii] In Gloucester, he showed his work to Hans Hofmann, who was teaching at the school run there by Ernest Thurn.
Louise Fishman, Untitled (AM 10), 1987-88

Acrylic on canvas

60 1/4 x 66 in.

153 x 167.6 cm)OPP-00071

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Louise Fishman, Amagansett (AM-5), 1987-88

Acrylic on canvas

60 1/4 x 66 in.

(167.6 x 198.1 cm)OPP-00062

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Hofmann encouraged Opper to work “in a more modern vein and start finding what it’s all about.”[iii] Following this advice, Opper went from Gloucester to New York. There he and another artist from Cleveland, Edward Kaufman, started a mail-order club of American and British prints, which they mostly printed themselves, to distribute to schools and museums. With an office on Fifth Avenue, they made a portfolio of nine artists, including Louis Lozowick, Wanda Gag, and Karl Hofer. Shortly after moving to New York, Opper married his high-school sweetheart Estelle Hausman.
Louise Fishman, Untitled, 1988

Acrylic on canvas

68 x 80 in.

(172.7 x 203.2 cm) OPP-00065

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By the mid-1930s, he had joined the WPA Easel Division. Opper credited the WPA experience with introducing him to new modern ideas. To advance further in this direction, he attended the 57th Street school Hofmann had established after leaving the Art Students League. Looking back at his time at the school, Opper felt that beyond Hofmann’s teaching, most advantageous was his contact with fellow artists, including Byron Browne, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, and George McNeil. At the time, he also met Giorgio Cavallon and the sculptor Wilfrid Zogbaum.
John Opper, Untitled (#12), 1988

Acrylic on canvas

66 1/4 x 62 in.

(168.3 x 157.5 cm)OPP-00059

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John Opper, Untitled (AM-8), 1988

Acrylic on canvas

66 x 60 in.

(167.6 x 152.4 cm) OPP-00060

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In 1936, Opper was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists, along with Balcomb and Gertrude Greene. The organization was formed to provide an opportunity for artists to show abstract works at a time when there were few other opportunities to do so. Opper had his first solo show in 1937. Held at the Artists’ Gallery in New York, it displayed a “colloquial flavor” and “imaginative color” as noted by a reviewer for Art News. The reviewer described the works on view as suggestive depictions of “East River tugboats, old garages, and scenes around Manhattan.”[iv] During his summer in Gloucester in 1933, Opper came to know Milton Avery. Painting in Avery’s informal studio in New York City the following winter, he became acquainted with Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko. Opper participated in a couple of shows during the 1930s of the American Artists Congress Against War and Fascism, whose president was Stuart Davis. About the same period, Opper joined the Artists’ Union and served as the business manager of its publication, Art Front. “With the WPA, you got together whether it was the [Artists’] Union or the [American Artists’] Congress or whether it was a bar…and you talked about art, and heard about important artists, and you began to live art.”[v]
Louise Fishman, Untitled (K), 1988

Acrylic on canvas

44 x 56 in.

(111.8 x 142.2 cm) OPP-00067

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Louise Fishman, Untitled (BOW-4), 1988

Acrylic on canvas

56 1/4 x 80 1/4 in.

(142.9 x 203.8 cm)OPP-00064

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During World War II, Opper worked for a ship design company, creating drawings for piping systems used for PT boats. In 1945, he left New York for a teaching job at Women’s College, University of North Carolina. He then taught at the University of Wyoming, followed by the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, before returning to New York in 1949, where he taught at Columbia University and completed his doctorate. In the evening, he taught at the Pratt Institute, in the company of several leading New York artists, including Franz Kline and Tony Smith. It was during his years away from New York that Opper began to create purely abstract works. He had been unable to do so earlier because he had been torn “between the needs of the society and the needs of war on the one hand, and what I felt were the aesthetic needs of painting.”[vi]
John Opper, Untitled (4-88), 1988

Acrylic on canvas

66 x 60 in.

(167.6 x 152.4 cm)OPP-00061

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John Opper, Untitled (AMA 15), 1988

Acrylic on canvas

54 x 58 in.

(137.2 x 147.3 cm)OPP-00070

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However, he gradually came to believe that what is essential to art “is that which changes . . . the language and the substance of it.”[vii] With a wife and two children, Opper again left the city between 1952 and 1957, when he returned the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Despite his absence from New York City, Opper made frequent trips back, never failing to gather with friends such as Kline, Philip Guston, Grace Hartigan, and Willem de Kooning at the Cedar Bar. In 1955, Opper had a solo exhibition of abstract works at Egan Gallery in New York. In a review in Art News, Parker Tyler referred to Opper as a “substantial member of the New York School” who had exploited “its fusion of free rhythms and hieroglyphics with Cubism’s standard analysis of space and object.”[viii] By the summer of 1957, Opper was back in New York City, where he joined the faculty of New York University, remaining until he retired in 1974 as professor emeritus. Opper found a large studio in a former YMCA building on the Bowery. He partitioned off the third-floor space into two studios and offered the second space to James Brooks. When Rothko received the Four Seasons commission, Opper suggested he use the empty gym, which he did. When Opper had a heart attack in 1966, he moved one floor down to minimize the flights of stairs rather than give up his studio, which he kept until he died. The illness also made him switch permanently from oil to acrylic paint.
Louise Fishman, Cleveland, 1990

Acrylic on canvas

56 x 124 1/4 in.

(142.2 x 315.6 cm)OPP-00068

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Louise Fishman, Untitled (S-5-3), 1991

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 60 in.

(121.9 x 152.4 cm)OPP-00069

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In 1962 Opper bought a house in Amagansett, Long Island, and began construction on a studio. From then on, he painted in both Amagansett and the Bowery studios. Starting in 1988, he spent the winter months in Sarasota, Florida, where he established another studio. Throughout his long career, Opper showed with several well-known New York galleries. In 1959, Eleanor Ward invited him to the Stable Gallery. He left the gallery in 1962, following the advent of Pop Art. Starting in the mid-1960s, Opper was represented by the Grace Borgenicht Gallery. He continued to paint until his death from a heart attack in New York City in 1994.

Opper’s work is in numerous American museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Florida; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Among his awards are the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 1969; National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1974; and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Jimmy Ernst Award, 1993.

CHEIM & READ

CHEIM & READ-Louise Bourgeois: Spider, 1996, at Cheim & Read, West 23 Street, New York. February 14 - April 13, 1997.Founded in 1997 by John Cheim and Howard Read, Cheim & Read is a contemporary art gallery in New York that presents both recent and historically-significant artworks in museum-quality exhibitions. The gallery works directly with some of the world's most important artists, foundations, and estates, including Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Ron Gorchov, Jack Pierson, Serge Poliakoff, and Sean Scully.

"EARLY WORK 1967-1979"

Artist: LYNDA BENGLIS

A major exhibition presented by Cheim & Read and Ortuzar Projects brings together work that proved crucial to the development of Lynda Benglis’s practice during her first decade in New York. Three concurrent exhibitions will be on view in Tribeca and the Upper East Side.

LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED, 1969

Pigmented polyurethane foam

6 1/4 x 56 5/8 x 57 5/8 inches

15.9 x 143.8 x 146.4 centimeters,CR# BE.13917

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Lozenge-shaped wax paintings are juxtaposed with Benglis's latex and polyurethane pours at Cheim & Read at 23 East 67th Street. One floor above, at the Ortuzar viewing room, is a selection of gilded wall sculptures inspired by the caryatids from the porch of the Erechtheion at the Acropolis in Athens. Sparkle and metallized knot sculptures, including the multi-part installation North, South, East, West, 1976 – last shown in New York at a 1981 Whitney Museum exhibition – are on view at Ortuzar Projects in Tribeca.
LYNDA BENGLIS, NIGHT SHERBET B, 1969

Pigmented polyurethane foam

5 x 25 1/2 x 42 1/2 inches

12.7 x 64.8 x 108 centimeters,CR# BE.7696

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LYNDA BENGLIS, NIGHT SHERBET B, 1969

Pigmented polyurethane foam

5 x 25 1/2 x 42 1/2 inches

12.7 x 64.8 x 108 centimeters,CR# BE.7696

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Benglis has forged a fifty-year career at the forefront of Post-Minimalist innovation alongside her peers Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, and Bruce Nauman. She arrived at singularly beautiful, often shocking results that, as art historian and critic Julia Bryan-Wilson writes in the exhibition’s online catalogue essay, “refuse to be constrained by conventional codes around the ostensibly discrete genres of painting and sculpture.” This joint exhibition marks the first survey of Benglis’s early work in New York since her mid-career retrospective (2009-2011), which traveled to the New Museum.
LYNDA BENGLIS, NIGHT SHERBET B, 1969

Pigmented polyurethane foam

5 x 25 1/2 x 42 1/2 inches

12.7 x 64.8 x 108 centimeters,CR# BE.7696

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LYNDA BENGLIS, SHAPE SHIFTER, 1969

Poured pigmented latex

21 x 33 inches

53.3 x 83.8 centimetersCR# BE.16574

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We are delighted to announce the release of the online exhibition catalogue including an new essay, "Flounce: Lynda Benglis's Queer Femme Forms," by Julia Bryan-Wilson, the Doris and Clarence Malo Professor History of Art at University of California, Berkeley, and the Adjunct Curator at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. Julia has published significant scholarly works including Fray: Art and Textile Politics (2017, University of Chicago), and Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (2009, University of California) on the radical art production the late 1960s and early 1970s, the same years surveyed in this exhibition.
LYNDA BENGLIS, SHAPE SHIFTER, 1969

Poured pigmented latex

21 x 33 inches

53.3 x 83.8 centimetersCR# BE.16574

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LYNDA BENGLIS, SHAPE SHIFTER, 1969

Poured pigmented latex

21 x 33 inches

53.3 x 83.8 centimetersCR# BE.16574

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Wax & Pours:These sexually suggestive bodies of work both arise out of highly liquid processes. Made at the cusp of the 1960s and ’70s, these lushly colored, sculptural build-ups of pigmented wax transform their wood and masonite supports into ambisexual totems, alternately reveling in buttery sensuality and bristling with coral-like encrustations. Simultaneously phallic (vertical and columnar) and vulval (symmetrical and slit across the middle), the artist likened the making of them to masturbation, during which she repetitively applied coats of molten wax.
LYNDA BENGLIS, TU-LIP, 1967

Purified and pigmented beeswax, damar resin, and gesso on masonite and wood

30 1/8 x 5 1/4 x 1 3/4 inches

76.5 x 13.3 x 4.4 centimetersCR# BE.4039

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LYNDA BENGLIS, CHALK-WAX III, 1968-70

Pigmented purified beeswax, damar resin on masonite

36 x 5 x 1 inches

91.4 x 12.7 x 2.5 centimetersCR# BE.13272

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LYNDA BENGLIS, CHALK-WAX III, 1968-70

Pigmented purified beeswax, damar resin on masonite

36 x 5 x 1 inches

91.4 x 12.7 x 2.5 centimetersCR# BE.13272

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LYNDA BENGLIS, CHALK-WAX III, 1968-70

Pigmented purified beeswax, damar resin on masonite

36 x 5 x 1 inches

91.4 x 12.7 x 2.5 centimetersCR# BE.13272

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In contrast, the latex and foam pours, from 1968 and 1969, sit on the floor with impudent humor, jarring shapes, and provocative color. Benglis created them by consciously lampooning the macho Abstract Expressionist myth of the genius alone in his studio, attempting to force art history in a single direction while ignoring the multifarious visions that actually existed.
LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED, 1970

Pigmented beeswax, damar resin and gesso on masonite

36 x 5 x 3 inches

91.4 x 12.7 x 7.6 centimetersCR# BE.16142

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LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED, 1970

Pigmented beeswax, damar resin and gesso on masonite

36 x 5 x 3 inches

91.4 x 12.7 x 7.6 centimetersCR# BE.16142

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LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED, 1970

Pigmented beeswax, damar resin and gesso on masonite

36 x 5 x 3 inches

91.4 x 12.7 x 7.6 centimetersCR# BE.16142

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LYNDA BENGLIS, KAREN, 1972

Purified pigmented beeswax, damar resin and gesso on masonite

36 x 5 x 3 inches

91.4 x 12.7 x 7.6 centimetersCR# BE.5178

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The works in this show display Benglis’s insistence, as Catherine J. Morris writes in the catalogue for the exhibition WOMAN. FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE of the 1970s, that “culturally and politically determined labels should be understood as fluid and responsive positions rather than as static identifications.” (1)
LYNDA BENGLIS, KAREN, 1972

Purified pigmented beeswax, damar resin and gesso on masonite

36 x 5 x 3 inches

91.4 x 12.7 x 7.6 centimetersCR# BE.5178

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LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED, 1971

Purified pigmented beeswax, damar resin and gesso on masonite

36 1/4 x 5 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches

92.1 x 14 x 6.4 centimetersCR# BE.40084

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LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED, 1971

Purified pigmented beeswax, damar resin and gesso on masonite

36 1/4 x 5 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches

92.1 x 14 x 6.4 centimetersCR# BE.40084

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LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED, 1971

Purified pigmented beeswax, damar resin and gesso on masonite

36 1/4 x 5 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches

92.1 x 14 x 6.4 centimetersCR# BE.40084

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"These objects refuse to be constrained by conventional codes around the ostensibly discrete genres of painting and sculpture; they also violate, or queer, norms around any presumed gender binary." - Julia Bryan-Wilson
LYNDA BENGLIS, FLOUNCE, 1978

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

48 x 16 x 8 inches

121.9 x 40.6 x 20.3 centimetersCR# BE.19424

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LYNDA BENGLIS, FLOUNCE, 1978

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

48 x 16 x 8 inches

121.9 x 40.6 x 20.3 centimetersCR# BE.19424

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Gold:When she was a girl, Benglis’s grandmother took her on a trip to the Greek island of Megiste, also known as Kastellorizo, her family’s ancestral home. It was there that she encountered the gilded icons of the Greek Orthodox Church, which made a deep and lasting impression on her.
LYNDA BENGLIS, FLOUNCE, 1978

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

48 x 16 x 8 inches

121.9 x 40.6 x 20.3 centimetersCR# BE.19424

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LYNDA BENGLIS, FIGURE I, 1978

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

34 3/4 x 20 x 7 3/4 inches

88.3 x 50.8 x 19.7 centimetersCR# BE.308

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LYNDA BENGLIS, FIGURE I, 1978

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

34 3/4 x 20 x 7 3/4 inches

88.3 x 50.8 x 19.7 centimetersCR# BE.308

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LYNDA BENGLIS, FIGURE I, 1978

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

34 3/4 x 20 x 7 3/4 inches

88.3 x 50.8 x 19.7 centimetersCR# BE.308

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Benglis’s use of gold is conflicted and complex, playing on its perceived preciousness as well as the ways it can be cheap and deceptive, a referential range encompassing both Byzantine treasure and Mardi Gras glitter. In her catalogue essay, Bryan-Wilson singles out the bulging, bow-like Flounce (1978):"Many of Benglis’s works also flounce – they amplify and exaggerate the voluptuous pleasures found in femme self-fashioning of all kinds, and revel in its outrageous and lewd aspects."
LYNDA BENGLIS, CURRENT, 1979

Brass wire mesh, plaster, gesso, oil based size, and gold leaf

17 1/2 x 14 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches

44.5 x 36.8 x 7 centimetersCR# BE.9645

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LYNDA BENGLIS, CURRENT, 1979

Brass wire mesh, plaster, gesso, oil based size, and gold leaf

17 1/2 x 14 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches

44.5 x 36.8 x 7 centimetersCR# BE.9645

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LYNDA BENGLIS, CURRENT, 1979

Brass wire mesh, plaster, gesso, oil based size, and gold leaf

17 1/2 x 14 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches

44.5 x 36.8 x 7 centimetersCR# BE.9645

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LYNDA BENGLIS, FAN BIRD, 1979

Brass wire screen, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

35 x 22 x 4 1/2 inches

88.9 x 55.9 x 11.4 centimetersCR# BE.40388

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Knots:Knot sculptures made out of cotton bunting treated with glitter, paint, or sprayed metals create an interior and an exterior, like a body, and reference the long limbs of a figure. The four elements, sprayed in zinc, steel, and tin that make up North South East West (1976) explode in an ecstatically choreographed configuration across the wall.
LYNDA BENGLIS, FAN BIRD, 1979

Brass wire screen, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

35 x 22 x 4 1/2 inches

88.9 x 55.9 x 11.4 centimetersCR# BE.40388

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LYNDA BENGLIS, PANKAJ, 1979

Bronze wire mesh, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

27 1/2 x 12 x 10 inches

69.9 x 30.5 x 25.4 centimetersCR# BE.6224

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LYNDA BENGLIS, PANKAJ, 1979

Bronze wire mesh, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

27 1/2 x 12 x 10 inches

69.9 x 30.5 x 25.4 centimetersCR# BE.6224

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LYNDA BENGLIS, PANKAJ, 1979

Bronze wire mesh, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

27 1/2 x 12 x 10 inches

69.9 x 30.5 x 25.4 centimetersCR# BE.6224

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In these works, Benglis exhibits a surface restraint, employing mostly monochrome, while ratcheting up the complexity of the forms. These are Minimalist sculptures gone haywire, looping into and around themselves, evoking the convolutions of lived experience rather than the purity of theoretical thought. The show also includes Smile (1974), a bronze cast of the double-headed dildo that Benglis brandished in her notorious ARTFORUM ad of November 1974, which launched the artist as an icon of defiance against the powers that be.
LYNDA BENGLIS, SKOWHEGAN TORSO, 1979

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

27 1/8 x 27 3/8 x 11 3/8 inches

68.9 x 69.5 x 28.9 centimetersCR# BE.40186

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LYNDA BENGLIS, SKOWHEGAN TORSO, 1979

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

27 1/8 x 27 3/8 x 11 3/8 inches

68.9 x 69.5 x 28.9 centimetersCR# BE.40186

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LYNDA BENGLIS, SKOWHEGAN TORSO, 1979

Chicken wire, cotton, plaster, gesso, oil based size, gold leaf

27 1/8 x 27 3/8 x 11 3/8 inches

68.9 x 69.5 x 28.9 centimetersCR# BE.40186

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LYNDA BENGLIS, ETA , 1972

Aluminum screen, cotton bunting, plaster, paint, glitter

40 x 18 x 14 inches

101.6 x 45.7 x 35.6 centimetersCR# BE.40391

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"Benglis grasps the joy of the fake-out, the hard that looks soft, the industrial that becomes pliable and handworked."
LYNDA BENGLIS, ETA , 1972

Aluminum screen, cotton bunting, plaster, paint, glitter

40 x 18 x 14 inches

101.6 x 45.7 x 35.6 centimetersCR# BE.40391

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LYNDA BENGLIS, ETA , 1972

Aluminum screen, cotton bunting, plaster, paint, glitter

40 x 18 x 14 inches

101.6 x 45.7 x 35.6 centimetersCR# BE.40391

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LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED (TOTEM), 1972

Plaster, fabric, glitter, mica

101 x 5 x 3 1/2 inches

256.5 x 12.7 x 8.9 centimetersCR# BE.36160

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LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED (TOTEM), 1972

Plaster, fabric, glitter, mica

101 x 5 x 3 1/2 inches

256.5 x 12.7 x 8.9 centimetersCR# BE.36160

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After moving from Louisiana to New York in 1964, Benglis began a series of radical experiments with materials and techniques in pursuit of “defiantly feminist, […] queerly, cheekily, forcefully femme” works that defy preexisting formal and material parameters of contemporary art.
LYNDA BENGLIS, UNTITLED (TOTEM), 1972

Plaster, fabric, glitter, mica

101 x 5 x 3 1/2 inches

256.5 x 12.7 x 8.9 centimetersCR# BE.36160

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LYNDA BENGLIS, CHARLIE, 1973

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, copper

30 7/8 x 18 1/8 x 13 1/4 inches

77.2 x 48.3 x 33 centimetersCR# BE.19090

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LYNDA BENGLIS, CHARLIE, 1973

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, copper

30 7/8 x 18 1/8 x 13 1/4 inches

77.2 x 48.3 x 33 centimetersCR# BE.19090

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LYNDA BENGLIS, CHARLIE, 1973

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, copper

30 7/8 x 18 1/8 x 13 1/4 inches

77.2 x 48.3 x 33 centimetersCR# BE.19090

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From the very beginning Benglis’s practice, she has manipulated ambivalent and critical relationships among formal categories, confounding the definitions of performance, photography, video, painting, and sculpture. Helen Molesworth referred to this admixture as “a radical slippage of coordinates” (2) that opens Benglis's art to multiple streams of bodily, gendered, erotic, and psychosexual content. Together, these key bodies of work bear out Benglis’s formidable influence on contemporary sculpture. Her radical experiments with materials, engendered in style and form, must be reconsidered today as not only provocative but thoroughly transformative.
LYNDA BENGLIS, BRAVO, 1973-1974

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, bronze, copper

27 x 10 x 10 inches

68.6 x 25.4 x 25.4 centimetersCR# BE.1893

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LYNDA BENGLIS, BRAVO, 1973-1974

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, bronze, copper

27 x 10 x 10 inches

68.6 x 25.4 x 25.4 centimetersCR# BE.1893

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LYNDA BENGLIS, BRAVO, 1973-1974

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, bronze, copper

27 x 10 x 10 inches

68.6 x 25.4 x 25.4 centimetersCR# BE.1893

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LYNDA BENGLIS, KILO, 1973-1974

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, aluminum

18 x 25 x 17 inches

45.7 x 63.5 x 43.2 centimetersCR# BE.19420

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LYNDA BENGLIS (b.1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana) lives and works in New York and Santa Fe. Her work is the subject of a forthcoming exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2020-2021) and the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2021). Her work was recently on view at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, presented by NEON (2019-2020);
LYNDA BENGLIS, KILO, 1973-1974

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, aluminum

18 x 25 x 17 inches

45.7 x 63.5 x 43.2 centimetersCR# BE.19420

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LYNDA BENGLIS, KILO, 1973-1974

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, aluminum

18 x 25 x 17 inches

45.7 x 63.5 x 43.2 centimetersCR# BE.19420

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LYNDA BENGLIS, ALPHA 1, 1973-74

Aluminum screen, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, aluminum, tin

32 x 14 x 12 inches

81.3 x 35.6 x 30.5 centimetersCR# BE.241

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LYNDA BENGLIS, ALPHA 1, 1973-74

Aluminum screen, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, aluminum, tin

32 x 14 x 12 inches

81.3 x 35.6 x 30.5 centimetersCR# BE.241

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Kistefos-Museet, Jevnaker (2018); The Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire (2015); and the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Le Consortium, Dijon, RISD Museum, Providence, the New Museum, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2009-2011). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants, among others.
LYNDA BENGLIS, ALPHA 1, 1973-74

Aluminum screen, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, aluminum, tin

32 x 14 x 12 inches

81.3 x 35.6 x 30.5 centimetersCR# BE.241

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LYNDA BENGLIS, X-RAY, 1973-74

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, gesso, sprayed zinc, aluminum

20 x 55 1/2 x 14 inches

50.8 x 141 x 35.6 centimetersCR# BE.19091

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LYNDA BENGLIS, X-RAY, 1973-74

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, gesso, sprayed zinc, aluminum

20 x 55 1/2 x 14 inches

50.8 x 141 x 35.6 centimetersCR# BE.19091

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LYNDA BENGLIS, X-RAY, 1973-74

Aluminum wire mesh, cotton bunting, plaster, gesso, sprayed zinc, aluminum

20 x 55 1/2 x 14 inches

50.8 x 141 x 35.6 centimetersCR# BE.19091

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LYNDA BENGLIS, QUEBEC, 1974

Aluminum wire screen, cotton bunting, sprayed zinc, copper, aluminum

39 x 28 x 8 inches

99.1 x 71.1 x 20.3 centimetersCR# BE.9807

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LYNDA BENGLIS, QUEBEC, 1974

Aluminum wire screen, cotton bunting, sprayed zinc, copper, aluminum

39 x 28 x 8 inches

99.1 x 71.1 x 20.3 centimetersCR# BE.9807

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Her work is in the permanent collections of public institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Tate Modern, London. ­This exhibition is her eleventh with Cheim & Read, and her first with Ortuzar Projects.
LYNDA BENGLIS, SMILE, 1974

Cast bronze

15 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 2 1/4 inches

39.4 x 16.5 x 5.7 centimetersCR# BE.40387

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LYNDA BENGLIS, SMILE, 1974

Cast bronze

15 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 2 1/4 inches

39.4 x 16.5 x 5.7 centimetersCR# BE.40387

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LYNDA BENGLIS, NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, 1976

Aluminum wire screen, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, steel, tin

North: 40 x 23 x 15 1/2 inches,South: 51 x 27 x 14 inches,East: 37 x 29 x 19 inches,West: 60 x 24 x 17 inches

CR# BE.19446

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LYNDA BENGLIS, NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, 1976

Aluminum wire screen, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, steel, tin

North: 40 x 23 x 15 1/2 inches,South: 51 x 27 x 14 inches,East: 37 x 29 x 19 inches,West: 60 x 24 x 17 inches

CR# BE.19446

INQUIRE
LYNDA BENGLIS, NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, 1976

Aluminum wire screen, cotton bunting, plaster, sprayed zinc, steel, tin

North: 40 x 23 x 15 1/2 inches,South: 51 x 27 x 14 inches,East: 37 x 29 x 19 inches,West: 60 x 24 x 17 inches

CR# BE.19446

INQUIRE

Venus Over Manhattan

Venus Over Manhattan-Founded in 2012 by Adam Lindemann, Venus Over Manhattan is dedicated to curated exhibitions both historic and contemporary, which cast a unique and often iconoclastic view on the work of established artists or artists whose works have been somewhat overlooked.

""

Artist: Joan Brown

Venus Over Manhattan will present Joan Brown, the gallery’s first exhibition devoted to the work of the late California figurative painter for whom painting was a vehicle for exploration of the self in all of its physical, emotional, and spiritual wonder.

Comprising a dozen major paintings, many not seen for decades, the exhibition surveys a particularly productive decade in Brown’s career, from the late 1960s through the late 1970s, and features key loans from the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa, as well as a number of important private collections. On view through December 24th, Joan Brown will be complemented by an illustrated catalogue featuring new scholarship, as well as excerpts from archival interviews with the artist.

Joan Brown, Joan Brown, Grey Wolf with Red Clouds and Dark Tree, 1968

Oil on canvas

61 x 85 1/4 in

(154.9 x 216.5 cm)

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Joan Brown achieved national notoriety by the time she was twenty-two years old, for work that “melded an abstract expressionist approach to paint handling with her interest in a kind of abbreviated representational imagery.” Separated from her first husband and recently graduated from the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute),
Joan Brown, Devil Stepping on Fish, 1970

Oil enamel and glitter on masonite

96 x 48 in

(243.8 x 121.9 cm)

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Joan Brown, Sara as Eve, 1970

Oil enamel on masonite

96 x 48 in

(243.8 x 121.9 cm)

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Brown engaged the heady atmosphere and sense of freedom that San Francisco’s Beat scene and nascent Funk movement provided. In a tight-knit creative community of her peers, including Jay De Feo, Wally Hedrick, Bruce Conner, and her second husband Manuel Neri, Brown made large works with incredibly thick paint that claimed as their subjects her immediate and personal surroundings.
Joan Brown, Dancers in a City #4, 1973

Oil on canvas, two panels

Each panel: 96 x 60 in (243.8 x152.4 cm)

96 x 120 in (243.8 x304.8 cm)(JBRO011)

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Joan Brown, The Swimmers #2 (The Crawl), 1973

Enamel and oil pastel on canvas

73 x 85 in

185.4 x 215.9 cm(JBRO002)

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She shared with her peers a “mistrust of verbalization and intellectualizing, a disdain for the ways and fashions of the commercial art world, and [a] total and adamant rejection of painting as decoration,” and forged a practice entirely for herself, which recorded in a diaristic manner her ongoing relationship with the world at large. Untrusting of her own increasing renown, and cognizant of her ability to “fake spontaneity” in her paintings, Brown made the radical decision in 1964 to stop working with the thick impasto for which she’d been celebrated. Fiercely independent, Brown “went underground” for the next three years and fundamentally altered her practice, working to become a painter of “control and intention, rather than spontaneity.”
Joan Brown, Let's Dance, 1976

Oil enamel on canvas

96 x 78 in

243.8 x 198.1 cm(JBRO015)

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Joan Brown, The Swimmers #1 (Diving), 1973

Oil enamel and oil pastel on canvas

84 1/2 x 72 1/2 in

214.6 x 184.2 cm(JBRO012)

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Registering the impact of major shifts in her family life, including her father’s death in 1969, and her mother’s suicide six weeks later, Brown’s paintings became increasingly symbolic in the 1970s, and featured flatly painted compositions with suggestive animals. She began painting on four by eight foot sheets of masonite with household enamel paint and incorporating glitter -- paintings in which she claimed to feel like a “participant,” large enough for her to walk into. Two of these paintings, “Garden of Eden Series #2:
Joan Brown, David with Sphinx, 1978

Acrylic, graphite on paper

Sheet: 18 x 24 in (45.7 x 61 cm)

Framed: 18 1/4 x 25 3/8 in (46.4x 64.3 cm)(JBRO016)

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Joan Brown, The Long Journey, 1981

Enamel on canvas

78 x 96 in

198.1 x 243.8 cm(JBRO017)

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Devil Stepping on Fish” (1970) and “Garden of Eden Series #3: Sara as Eve” (1970) feature prominently in the Venus exhibition, foregrounding the symbolic nature of her work from this period. The 1970s also saw Brown center her own image in her practice, undertaking a series of self-portraits in which she features prominently or is represented by a hybrid figure as a surrogate. One of these paintings, “Self-Portrait in Fur Hat” (1972), on loan from the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, shows Brown in a signature paint-covered shirt against a starkly checkered background, one of her signature motifs.
Joan Brown, Woman Preparing for a Shower, 1975

Enamel on canvas

84 x 72 in

213.4 x 182.9 cm(JBRO013)

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Joan Brown, Woman Waiting in a Restaurant, 1975

Enamel on canvas

96 x 72 in

243.8 x 182.9 cm(JBRO014)

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When Brown and Cook moved back to San Francisco in 1971, swimming took a central position in her life. She swam frequently in the treacherous waters of the San Francisco Bay, and began working with former Olympic swim coach Charlie Sava, who had an outsized impact on Brown’s painting as well. As the artist’s style continued to develop, Sava “helped Brown clarify her own thoughts about her art as it became increasingly more simplified and direct,” which Brown described as being “about economy, about getting rid of extra stuff.” Evidencing this influence, a pair of paintings from 1973/1974, titled respectively “The Swimmers #1 (Diving)” and “The Swimmers #2 (The Crawl),” are reunited at Venus for the first time since Brown’s retrospective exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum in 1974.

Brown and Cook loved to get dressed up and go dancing, and as if to commemorate these memories, Brown completed a series of some twenty works between 1971 and 1973 that she referred to as the Dancers series. One of the largest works from this group, “Dancers in the City #2,” a monumentally scaled diptych, features centrally in this exhibition.

Brown’s marriage to Cook ended in 1976, and in its aftermath her work became increasingly oriented toward the spiritual until her untimely death in 1990 at the age of 52. In 1977, she began traveling extensively to Egypt, China, and India, and subsequently affected another overhaul of her painterly style, as seen in “The Long Journey” from 1981. Due in large part to her numerous stylistic shifts, her desire for independence, and her skepticism toward the art world, Brown’s place in the narrative of late 20th century American art has been under recognized, a situation complicated by her regionalist associations with Bay Area Figuration. Together, the works on view at Venus propose a new consideration of an artist who is among the most original and independent painters of her time.

ABOUT JOAN BROWNJoan Brown was born in 1938 in San Francisco, California. She received her BFA and MFA from the California School of Fine Arts in 1959, and 1960, respectively. Brown’s work has been the subject of numerous solo presentations, including recent exhibitions at the Richmond Art Center, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. Her work is held in the collections of many public institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Brown died in Puttaparthi, India, in 1990.

MARGARET THATCHER PROJECTS

MARGARET THATCHER PROJECTS-Margaret Thatcher Projects has, since its inception in 1998, been located in the West Chelsea arts district. The gallery opened in its first space on West 20th Street. In 2002 Thatcher Projects moved to its artist-designed space on West 25th Street, the Whitehall building. In 2009 we relocated to our current home, a ground floor gallery at 539 West 23rd Street.

"New York, New York"

Artist: William Steiger

Margaret Thatcher Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new collages by William Steiger, the artist’s twelfth solo show at Thatcher Projects, and his first show featuring only imagery of New York City.

The exhibition will open on Saturday, November 7 and continue through Wednesday, December 23, 2020. Instead of a reception, the artist will be in the gallery from 1 to 6 p.m. on November 7, with visitors encouraged to stop by throughout the day to facilitate social distancing.

William Steiger, New Yorker, 2020

Collage of cut paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

20 x 16inches

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William Steiger, ESB #2, 2020

Collage of cut paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

20 x 16inches

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William Steiger deconstructs familiar architecture in a manner that questions our perception of time and space. The subjects of his paintings include machinery, modes of transportation, buildings and landscapes, each distilled to their most vital elements. In his recent work, Steiger depicts this imagery by collaging painted paper and found ephemera, such as maps, charts and marbled endpapers, to produce striking vistas. He meticulously cuts each layer then mounts it on panel, adeptly balancing the pieces to capture the essence of a scene while still highlighting each part. In the final compositions, every façade, shadow line or girder is defined by texture or color to represent a known landscape from a challenging angle.
William Steiger, 30 Rock, 2020

Collage of cut paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

20 x 16inches

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William Steiger, Parachute Jump, 2020

Collage of cut paper, hand marbled paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

20 x 16 inches

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New York, New York is Steiger’s celebration of the city in which he lives and works. This exhibition exclusively focuses on collages of urban landmarks that characterize Manhattan and the boroughs. The scale of the work is intimate with collages no larger than 20x16 inches, yet the delicate layers of paper produce cityscapes that are bold and monumental. In Parachute Jump, the Coney Island thrill ride is made of slivers of deep red paper that pop against a swirling blue and cream sky. In ESB, the slab-like edifices of midtown Manhattan partially obscure the dominant, elegant form of the Empire State Building as seen from a low vantage point. Warm and cool papers create the volume of the skyscrapers, with perforations defining the many windows that hint at activity within.
William Steiger, Parachute Jump (ink), 2020

Ink on paper mounted on panel

20 x 16 inches

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William Steiger, Cyclone, 2020

Collage of cut and found paper, wood, gouache and glue mounted on panel

20 x 16 inches

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Steiger’s work has always been a response to his surroundings. New York City, his immediate environment, is a conceptual and physical space that can be traced and mapped in many ways. Steiger’s found-paper representations of New York structures delineate touchstones that connect us all. Despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the fabric of the city, the enduring qualities of New York’s architecture and landmarks transcend the fragility of the times.
William Steiger, Deno’s Wonderwheel, 2020

Collage of cut and found paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

16 x 20 inches

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William Steiger received a B.A. in Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an M.F.A. in painting from Yale University in 1989. Steiger has been a recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, and awards, including The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award, Basil H. Alkazzi Travel Award, London, England, and The Phelps Berdan Memorial Award for Distinction in Painting, Yale University. His work is included in numerous private, public and corporate collections. Steiger has had more than 35 solo exhibitions worldwide including New York, Seoul and Tokyo. He has been making prints with the prestigious publisher Pace Prints since 2004. In 2011, Hudson Hills Press published a 200-page monograph on the artist's work with 13 contributing writers and over 200 images.
William Steiger, Hotel Empire, 2020

Collage of cut and found paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

11 x 14 inches

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William Steiger, Cyclone (future events), 2020

Collage of cut and found paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

11 x 14 inches

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William Steiger, Collage of cut and found paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel, 2020

Collage of cut and found paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

11 x 14 inches

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William Steiger, Elevated, 2020

Collage of cut and found paper, gouache and glue mounted on panel

11 x 14 inches

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William Steiger, Dirigible Manhattan, 2020

Collage of cut paper, vintage maps, gouache and glue mounted on panel

8 x 10 inches

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A New Standard for VR in Viewing Rooms.

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