sign in sign up
<<
Home , Lorna Simpson

STEVEN EVANS, GRAN FURY, JENNY HOLZER, , MARLENE MCCARTY, LORNA SIMPSON, KARA WALKER IN A FEW WORDS January 24 – February 23, 2019

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present In a Few Words, Marlene McCarty’s provacative exploration of gender, a group exhibition of text-based works on view in the back sexuality, and language has been expanding since her galleries from January 24 through February 23, 2019. involvement in the activist art collective Gran Fury in the mid- 1980s. UNTITLED (1990) and Election Year Coffee (1992) In a Few Words reflects on the text-based strategies used by apply the confrontational tone of her previous works with artists for social commentary and political activism in the Gran Fury onto surfaces more contained, more focused and 1980s and 90s. Language and text have been employed by oblique in their accusation. The unspecified identities of “you” artists since the early 20th century, growing in prominence in and “I” remain ambiguous, revealing little else than the the conceptual based practices in the 1960s and 70s. But it universal speaker’s desire to confront and engage the viewer. was in the 1980s that text became more widely used by a diverse group of artists, often to make bold social or political Lorna Simpson’s influential approach to conceptual statements. In A Few Words features examples of such work photography is largely concerned with representing the by artists Steven Evans, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, Marlene position of Black women in contemporary American society. McCarty, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and the art collective Like many of her photographic works, Untitled (A lie is not a Gran Fury. shelter), 1989, obscures the woman’s face, instead centering the viewer’s gaze on her gown-covered torso and the text Steven Evans’ Song Title series presents the titles and lyrics emblazoned across it. Produced for the San Francisco Art to popular dance songs in a vivid array of vinyl lettering, latex Against AIDS Project and exhibited publicly in bus stops paint, and neon signs. The work considers the layers of throughout the city, the text determinedly confronts the lies memory, history, and identity built around the songs, and how and false narratives perpetuated in the neglect of the health their isolated words can be reappropriated into the rhetoric of of Black women in America. resistance. Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of Jenny Holzer’s practice centers around the race, gender, sexuality, and violence through the silhouetted use of the textual narrative within the public dimension. In her medium. Yet in Walker’s monumental text Letter from a Black Plaques series, the artist appropriates the honorific form of Girl (1998), the physical body of remains invisible and the cast bronze plaque to frame her texts—inconclusive, disconnected from the external voice. Instead, the accusatory prophetic observations on the anxieties, injustices, and ironies narrative serves as its own deconstruction and reconstruction of everyday life. Holzer’s Plaques prompt viewers to consider of the Black body and every violent fantasy imposed upon it, how authority–of those who installed the work, and those who making and unmaking itself through its own words. view it—is exerted through a permanent, public text. Activist art collective Gran Fury created RIOT (1989) – a study Glenn Ligon’s work mines the ambiguities of language in its for which is presented in the current exhibition – in dialogue consideration of race, representation, and American history. with fellow art collective General Idea’s 1987 AIDS silkscreen. In his text-based works, the artist positions himself as an Both adapted the composition from Robert Indiana’s 1966 outward observer, reading into the cultural and political LOVE silkscreen, replacing his stacked-four letter words with landscape of America’s past and present. Condition Report their own. While General Idea was interested in the (2000) is a reference to two distinct moments in time—the transmutability of a word and concept through repeated original usage of the phrase as a protest sign for the 1968 exposure—paralleling the growing epidemic itself—Gran sanitation workers strike in Memphis, and the condition report Fury’s RIOT instead explored the public consumption of for Ligon’s painted reconstruction of the sign from 1998. The agitprop as a catalyst for anger and direct action. indexical descriptions reported—“hairline cracks; brown drips; dark smudge”—render the surface of the work as physical and insistently present as the bodies it historically stood for.

530 W 22ND STREET - NEW YORK, NY 10011 212.929.2262 - [email protected] OPEN TUESDAY – SATURDAY 10 TO 6

Multimedia artist Steven Evans (b. 1961, Key West, Florida) Lorna Simpson (b. 1960, , New York) emerged as a was primarily active from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, pioneer of conceptual photography in the mid-1980s. She recently reemerging in 2013. He works across a wide variety received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual of media, including photography, sculpture, and painting. He Arts, New York (1983), and her MFA from the University of currently serves as Executive Director of FotoFest California, (1985). Her works are included in the International in Houston. His work was recently included in collections of the , New York; the exhibitions at CAM Raleigh and the Spiritmuseum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Whitney Museum Stockholm. of American Art, New York; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Haus der Kunst, Marlene McCarty (b. 1951, Lexington, Kentucky) has worked Munich, among others. across various media since the 1980s. She was a member of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury and was the co-founder Kara Walker (b. 1969, Stockton, California) received her BFA of the transdisciplinary design studio Bureau with Donald from the Atlanta College of Art (1991) and her MFA from the Moffett. She studied at the University of Cincinnati College of Rhode Island School of Design (1994). She was awarded the Design, Architecture, and Art (1975-77) and Schule für John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Gestaltung, Basel (1978-83). A major survey of her work, Award in 1997. Her work can be found in collections Hard-Keepers, was presented at the Royal Hibernian worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Academy in Dublin in 2013. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; and the Museum Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo Jenny Holzer (b. 1950, Gallipolis, Ohio) has been presenting (MAXXI), Rome. Walker currently lives and works in New York her textual works to the public for over forty years. She and serves as the Tepper Chair in the Visual Arts at Rutgers received her BFA from Ohio University (1972), and her MFA University Mason Gross School of the Arts. from the Rhode Island School of Design (1977). Holzer’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at The eleven-person artist collective Gran Fury emerged in the institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum late 1980s from the HIV/AIDS activist group, ACT-UP. The (1989); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2008); group employed the interventionist tactics of ACT-UP into the Haus der Kunst, Munich (1993); the Whitney Museum of dissemination of their graphics, injecting activist messages American Art, New York (2009); and the exhibition Artist into the public consciousness through mass advertisements, Rooms, currently on view at Tate Modern through July 2019. flyers, posters, and apparel. Gran Fury released their final piece “Good Luck…Miss You” in 1995, reflecting on shifting Glenn Ligon (b. 1960, Bronx, New York)) lives and works in trends in HIV/AIDS activism. New York. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University in 1982 and attended the Whitney Museum For additional information please contact Scott Briscoe at Independent Study Program in 1985. A mid-career 212.929.2262 or [email protected]. retrospective of Ligon’s work, Glenn Ligon: America, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in March 2011 and traveled nationally. His work is held in museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; ; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art; Tate Gallery, London; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.