DOCSLIB.ORG

Magnetic Fields Acknowledgements and Introduction

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Magnetic Fields Acknowledgements and Introduction Acknowledgments It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the many people who contributed to the exhibi- tion Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, and to this accompanying publication. First and foremost, it has been an honor and a joy to work so closely with the dedicated artists presented in Magnetic Fields. The idea for this exhibition grew out of our shared curatorial passion for abstrac- tion, and the desire to build upon the work done in each of our divergent professional capacities. For Erin, the exhibition continues her work in contextualizing intergenera- tional art practitioners and speaks to central themes of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art’s Permanent Collection and exhibition practice, namely the history of the artist’s gesture, and the bridging of the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For Melissa, it continues her effort to create platforms for underrecognized artists, particularly women and artists of color, and offers context for the work of Mildred Thompson (1936–2003), whom she champions through the Mildred Thompson Legacy Project. Most importantly, this exhibition is created in the spirit of raising awareness of and initiating conversation about the groundbreaking, sustaining, and innovative work of an exceptional group of underrecognized and up-and-coming artists. These artists’ achievements in abstraction merit greater recognition within the broader history and future of American abstraction. The selection of the twenty-one artists for this exhibition resulted from the exciting work of reviewing hundreds of artists’ oeuvres, across generations, in a range of media and stylistic pursuits. The final criteria that helped shape the suite of works on view include: the artist self-identifies as a woman of color; the majority of her practice has been dedicated to abstraction; and the work is rooted in the nonobjective or nonrepresentational. We thank our advisory group—and the exhibiting artists—for recommending artists for us to consider. We are grateful to those included, and others we learned about, as their points of view helped shape the premise of the exhibition. The essays by Lowery Stokes Sims and Valerie Cassel Oliver ground the project in the historical perspective that comes from years of dedicated attention to the impor- tant work of women artists, artists of color, and abstraction. In the “Conversations,” short-form essays ranging in tone from the personal to the scholarly, Nanette Carter, Allison Glenn, Gia M. Hamilton, Lauren Haynes, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Michelle Perron, Alice Thorson, and Kathryn Wat reflect on a selection of artists and works in the exhibition. Lilly Wei’s thoughtful compilation of first-person interviews with artists from each of the three generations represented in Magnetic Fields offers invaluable insight into the artists’ individual experiences. These texts help disrupt art-world assumptions on the subject of abstraction and celebrate the breakthroughs in the genre by women artists of color. To our advisory group made up of the extraordinary Isolde Brielmaier, Licia E. Clifton-James, Gia M. Hamilton, Adrienne Walker Hoard, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Dena Muller, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Lowery Stokes Sims, and Lilly Wei, we are pro- foundly grateful for your knowledge, guidance, and support throughout the planning of this project. We sincerely thank the Chair of the Kemper Museum Board of Trustees and Directors Mary Kemper Wolf for her leadership and enthusiastic support of Magnetic Fields, and Executive Director Barbara O’Brien for her guidance and encouragement of the exhibition. With gratitude, we acknowledge the hardworking and enthusiastic staff of the Kemper Museum, especially the exhibition team of Andrea Phillips, Liz Lumpkin, Aaron Jakos, and Will Toney for all their hard work in the direct plan- ning of logistics for the exhibition. All the lenders to this exhibition, both private and institutional, have our sincere gratitude for the confidence they placed in this project. The exhibition is a reality because of their exceptional generosity in loaning these exemplary works. The Mildred Thompson Legacy Project also thanks the participants in the Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive 2015 for their feedback and support; the Judith Alexander Foundation in Atlanta, Georgia, for their generous funding of documentation and conservation needs; and the Creative Time | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, which provided seed money for further research on Thompson. We received vital assistance from Omar Blayton, Anthony Craig Drennen, Donna Jackson, Lamar Lovelace, Adjua Mantebea, Gabriele Schilling and Christiane von Lengerke, Donna Snowden, Katherine Snowden Boswell, Souleo, and Sarah Workneh. We are grateful to the catalogue production team, including editor Kristin Swan, proofreader Ted Gilley, and Adrian Lucia, Melissa Duffes, Meghann Ney, and Susan E. Kelly with Lucia | Marquand. Finally, we look forward to collaborating with Director Susan Fisher Sterling, Chief Curator Kathryn Wat, and Associate Curator Virginia Treanor at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. We thank them for joining us in presenting Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today. ERIN DZIEDZIC and MELISSA MESSINA Co-curators ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 11 ERIN DZIEDZIC AND MELISSA MESSINA Magnetic Fields An Introduction Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today focuses a long- overdue lens on the contributions of women artists of color within the lineage of nonrepresentational art making.1 As the first museum exhibition of its kind, Magnetic Fields aims to spark more broad and inclusive presentations of American abstraction going forward. Intergenerational in scope, this exhibition and the accompanying catalogue amplify the formal and conceptual connections between twenty-one artists born between 1891 and 1981, many presented in conversation with one another for the first time. The artists’ compositional frameworks, exploration of materials, and inspired approaches to nonobjective art expand the discourse around nonpictorial image and object making. Featuring a range of media, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, and drawing, the exhibition places the unique visual vocabularies of black women artists in context with one another and within the larger history of abstraction. In presenting the commanding dialogue among these artists, Magnetic Fields celebrates those underrecognized leaders, and argues for their enduring relevance in the history and iconography of abstraction. The curatorial objective of Magnetic Fields is to present the formal, expressive, and conceptual scope of work by self-identifying black female artists who sustain(ed) a dedicated practice in the field of nonrepresentational abstraction. Given this focus, Magnetic Fields also pays tribute to the lived experience of each of the featured artists, who have come individually to pursue abstraction, disrupting the presumption that representation and narrative beholden to figuration are the prime modes of Detail, plate 33. visualizing personal experience. Collectively, their work represents a range of formalist approaches rooted in painterly, post-painterly, and hard- edge abstraction, with emphasis on process, materiality, innovation, and experimentation. These works employ and broaden the expressive language of abstraction amid its loaded, Eurocentric male–dominated history. This exhibition does not intend to homogenize or forsake the artists’ varied personal and conceptual motivations. Instead, it underscores the breadth and depth of the responses therein. Several of the artists in Magnetic Fields, including Lilian Thomas Burwell (born 1927) and Betty Blayton (1937–2016), describe their artistic practices as primarily spiritual endeavors.2 Alternatively, Candida Alvarez (born 1955) refers to her personalized visual language as a “subject-less pictorial mash-up” rooted in imagery from popular culture.3 While Mary Lovelace O’Neal’s contempo- raries during the Black Arts Movement responded with Fig. 1. Kianja Strobert more overtly narrative approaches, O’Neal (born 1942) describes how her work “spoke, (American, b. 1980), Porch lights, in perhaps a very abstract way, of my struggles as an African American, as an African 2015, paintings, metal lathe, papier-mâché, acrylic, screen, American woman.”4 Yet, as with many artists included here, she puts the onus on the felt, wire, 701/4 × 71 × 81/4 inches. viewer as the decipherer of meaning, stating, “Here’s the metaphor if you want to Courtesy of Tilton Gallery, deal with it.”5 New York, New York. Magnetic Fields acknowledges critical and contrasting perspectives within the common ground of abstraction. Styles and art historical referents among artists in the exhibition diverge considerably. Kianja Strobert (born 1980; fig. 1) employs references ranging from Lee Bontecou (born 1931; fig. 2) to Philip Guston (1913–1980), and looks at modern abstraction as “a collision of abstract and representational” elements.6 Other artists describe a more individualized means of arriving at their personal form of expression. Deborah Dancy (born 1949) has said, “This is how I identify my idea, through abstraction. My commitment to abstraction is a personal ideology.”7 Mildred Thompson (1936–2003) has for decades turned our eye toward abstraction’s limitless possibilities in works such as her Magnetic Fields triptych (1991, plate 44), whose surface transcribes paint into motion, gesture into celestial
Load more

Recommended publications
  • El Museo Del Barrio Opens Estamos Bien – La Trienal 20/21​, the Museum's First National Survey of Latinx
    EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO OPENS ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21, ​ THE MUSEUM’S FIRST NATIONAL SURVEY OF LATINX ART Featuring 42 artists and collectives from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico March 13 – September 26, 2021 NEW YORK, NY, February 23, 2021 – El Museo del Barrio, the first and leading museum in ​ ​ the country dedicated to preserving and presenting Latino art and culture, is pleased to reveal exhibition highlights for ESTAMOS BIEN➖LA TRIENAL 20/21, the Museum’s first large-scale ​ ​ national survey of Latinx art. Curated by El Museo del Barrio’s Chief Curator, Rodrigo Moura, Curator Susanna V. Temkin, and Guest Curator and Artist Elia Alba, the exhibition is on view to the public from March 13 to September 26. Following two years of research and studio visits by the curatorial team, ESTAMOS BIEN ​ features the works of 42 Latinx artists and collectives from across the United States and Puerto Rico. Originally scheduled to coincide with the 2020 U.S. Census and the presidential election, ​ La Trienal opens in El Museo’s galleries one year after the museum first closed due to the pandemic with works that reflect the current moment. The exhibition centers on an intersectional approach to the concept of Latinx—the much-contested term that departs from binary understandings of U.S.-Latino identity through the adoption of the gender-neutral suffix X, distancing itself from rigid definitions to allow a nuanced, ​ ​ more inclusive understanding of identity. In ESTAMOS BIEN, Latinx serves as a meeting point ​ ​ rather than a singular definition, as the artists participating in the show represent diverse generations, genders, ethnic and racial backgrounds, foregrounding Indigeneity, African and non-European heritages; gender nonconformity; and other multiplicities.
    [Show full text]
  • Lorraine O'grady
    Lorraine O’Grady Lorraine O’Grady Alexander Gray Associates Lorraine O’Grady May 28–June 27, 2015 Alexander Gray Associates Rivers and Just Above Midtown* Intro The Rivers, First Draft installation consists of photos from a performance done in Central Park as part of “Art Across the Park” in Summer 1982. Together, the curator and I made an exhausting tour of the Park to look at suitable locations. When she and I reached The Loch, a little-known section at the Park’s northern edge, it captured me. This wasn’t the Frederic Law Olmsted I thought I knew. It was wild and frighteningly unkempt, like something out of literature, not the city. And it was perfect for the piece I needed to create. Rivers would be a one-time only event with a cast and crew of 20, several of whom, including a young Fred Wilson and the late George Mingo, were part of JAM,† the black avant-garde gallery I was associated with then. The piece would be performed for an invited audience barely twice as large as the cast, no more than 40 people, nearly all with JAM or part of its environment. And there was an uninvited audience of about five passers-by who’d come on the scene accidentally and stayed. One, a young Puerto Rican taking a short-cut from the pool where he worked as a lifeguard, said afterward it was like walking into one of his dreams. The piece was a narrative three-ring circus, about a woman trying to become an artist.
    [Show full text]
  • Candida Alvarez Born: Brooklyn, New York, 1955 Extended Résumé
    Candida Alvarez Born: Brooklyn, New York, 1955 Extended Résumé 410 South Michigan Avenue, Studio 928 | Chicago IL 60605 312.305.0025 mobile | 312.386.1186 home [email protected] | www.candidaalvarez.com EDUCATION Yale University School of Art (MFA, 1997) Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1981) Fordham University (BA, 1977) SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2003 Paradise Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2002 I Will Always Remember You TBA Exhibition Space, Chicago, IL 1996 New/Now New Britian Museum of American Art, New Britian, CT 1993 Polyptychs June Kelly Gallery, NY; catalogue Paintings: 1990-1992 Kenyon College, Gambier, OH 1992 Recent Paintings The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY 1991 Paintings and Works on Paper The Queens Museum, Flushing, NY 1990 John Street Series Galerie Schneiderei, Cologne, Germany; catalogue 1989 Paintings and Drawings June Kelly Gallery, NY 1985 Exit Art The First World, NY 1983 The Hybrid Series Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT Cows and Other Things The Cayman Gallery, NYC SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 The Inland See: Contemporary Art Around Lake Michigan Western Michgan University in Kalamazoo (curated by James Yood) 2006 Black Now Longwood Arts Project, Bronx; organized by Fred Wilson Faculty Sabbatical Exhibition Betty Rymer Gallery, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Bronx Bound Lehman College Art Gallery, NYC TakeOver The Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago IL 2005 All the Things We Love Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago IL 2004 Yard Sale Track House, Chicago, IL 2003 Scenery Rena Bransten
    [Show full text]
  • Smithsonian Latino Center Egallery Guide
    Smithsonian Latino Center eGallery Guide Smithsonian Latino Center ABOUT THE LATINO ART NOW! CHICAGO LATINO VIRTUAL GALLERY PROJECT The Latino Art Now! Chicago Latino Virtual Gallery is a research project translated into a dynamic web presence featuring 40 artworks and 35 artists. It examines the artistic production of artists of Latin American descent and US-born Latinos in the city of Chicago. The Latino Art Now! Chicago Latino Virtual Gallery, as an innovative digital interactive learning 3-D space, supports the current broad redefinition of American art prompted by changing demographics. It explores artistic issues, contexts, meanings, visualities and historical groundings in addition to artists’ own engagements with identity, community, public art and the urban space. The Latino Art Now! Chicago Latino Virtual Gallery and its ancillary materials are made possible by the generous support of the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Inter-University Program for Latino Research and the in-kind support of the Smithsonian Latino Center. The digital educational resources have been made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Comcast NBC Universal, and the Chicago Community Trust. Smithsonian Latino Center Gallery e-Guide Team: Principal Investigator and Curator: Olga U. Herrera, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago Research Associate: Norma Rosso, Independent Arts Manager Creative Director: Melissa A. Carrillo, Smithsonian Latino Center Instructional Designer/Artist: Stacey Fox, Reynardine Productions Educational Content Advisor: Dr. Juana Roman Graphic Design: Paola Ramírez, InToch Designs Web Design: John-Noall Reid, Greyhouse Media Inter-University Program for Latino Research, University of Illinois at Chicago 2 | Instructions How can you have your class do a virtual walk through of the Latino Art Now Chicago Virtual Gallery? • Go to: http://latino.si.edu/LatinoArtNow/LAN-ChiVG • After you have downloaded your platform experience (MAC or PC), unzip the files and select the .exe or .dmg file to open the Gallery simulation.
    [Show full text]
  • Black/ Dinner Napkin Paintings CANDIDA ALVAREZ
    PEREGRINEPROGRAM 500 W Cermak Rd #727, Chicago, IL 60616 • www.peregrineprogram.com • 312.752.7375 [email protected] Black/ dinner napkin paintings CANDIDA ALVAREZ Mar 12, 2011 – Apr 10, 2011 PEREGRINEPROGRAM 500 W Cermak Rd #727, Chicago, IL 60616 • www.peregrineprogram.com • 312.752.7375 [email protected] Black/ dinner napkin paintings Candida Alvarez Questions and answers... PP: What inspires your work? Alvarez: The camera. In the early 80’s I bought an Olympus 35mm camera. I lived in New York and was a regular visitor to The Museum of Modern Art, frequenting the photo and painting galleries. I was continuously drawn to a 1935 print entitled Portrait of the Eternal by the Mexican photographer, Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Here, a Mexican woman (Isabel Villaseñor) is caught captive between shadow and light. She is gazing intently into a small hand held mirror, cradled into the palm of her hand, combing her long black hair, which drops away into darkness. That is the space I am after in my paintings. The space that leaves, that drops out, leaving possibility in its wake. How did these paintings come about? I begin with drawings that come out of the growing archive of newspaper and magazine images, family snapshots and photos I take or collect. Having run away from seemingly inadequate definitions for abstract painting, I find myself immersed in a relationship that tracks, exchanges and shreds the world that is pictured into a subject-less pictorial mash-up. In essence, there is no more picture, there is only painting. Is there a common thread to the imagery from which this black dinner napkin paintings series is derived? All these paintings begin with a body in action.
    [Show full text]
  • Ubfkatoh2pwe1a7m.Pdf
    Present Standard Present Standard On behalf of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), En nombre de DCASE, me gustaría expresar nuestro entusiasmo por este I wish to express my enthusiasm for this bilingual catalogue which documents catálogo bilingüe que documenta a través de imágenes y textos de la compleji- through images and texts the complexity and richness of the work of 25 artists dad y la riqueza de la obra de veinticinco artistas seleccionados para participar selected to participate in Present Standard. The exhibition runs concurrently en la presente Norma. La exposición, que se ejecuta al mismo tiempo que Pablo with Pablo Helguera’s “Librería Donceles” and “Carlos Rolon: I Tell You this Helguera de "Librería Donceles" y "Carlos Rolón: Te lo digo sinceramente" Sincerely” opening on April 7, 2016. apertura el 7 de abril de 2016. These exhibitions coincide with the Spring of Latino Art (SOLA), an ancillary Estas exposiciones coinciden con la primavera de Arte Latino (SOLA), un project of Latino Art Now! a biennial conference co-sponsored by the Inter- proyecto complementario de Arte Latino Ahora! una bienal co-conferencia University Program for Latino Research headquartered at the University of patrocinada por el Programa Interuniversitario de Investigación Latina con Illinois at Chicago and the Smithsonian Latino Center in April 2016. sede en la Universidad de Illinois en Chicago y el Centro Latino Smithsonian en abril 2016. I would like to thank Edra Soto and Josue Pellot for their work curating Present
    [Show full text]
  • The Studio Museum in Harlem Ma∂Azine/ 4OZZ ' EW\Bs` &¹ '
    Studio/ 4OZZEW\bS` &¹' The Studio Museum in Harlem Ma∂azine/4OZZEW\bS` &¹' From the Director SMH Board of pro∂rams on offer. Target Free Trustees Sundays continues all year, with Chairman new and dynamic activities every Raymond J. McGuire week. Vice-Chair Carol Sutton Lewis Treasurer Re∂inald Van Lee Secretary The Studio Museum in Harlem Ma∂azine /4OZZEW\bS` &¹' Anne B. Ehrenkranz Gayle Perkins Atkins Jacqueline L. Bradley In this issue we also introduce you Kathryn C. Chenault to our 2008–09 artists in resi- Gordon J. Davis The bi∂∂est celebration of this Re∂inald E. Davis 02 What’s Up / Barkley L. Hendricks / VideoStudio / Four Decades / Project Space / Harlem Postcards 9 Projects dence: Khalif Kelly, Adam Pendleton landmark year is, of course, our Susan Fales-Hill and Dawit L. Petros. on View / StudioSound / More-in-Store 12 Special Project / Benefit Print 13 Upcomin∂ Exhibitions 16 Catalo∂ue Gala on October 27, when this issue Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. 4OZZEW\bS` &¹' '#$#%/aa]QWObW]\ASgR]c9SbO0O[OY];OZW launches. In reco∂nition of our Sandra Grymes Excerpt / Barkley L. Hendricks 18 Elsewhere / Wedge Collection / Odili Donald Odita / Ben Jones / Rodney McMillian / foundin∂ pro∂ram, this year’s Gala Joyce K. Haupt This fall we continue the yearlon∂ Arthur J. Humphrey Jr. Street Art, Street Life / Latifa Echakhch / Second Lives / Provocative Visions / Neo HooDoo 21 Residency: Revered & honorees will be artist William T. celebration of The Studio Museum Geor∂e L. Knox Reloaded Artists in Residence / Khalif Kelly / Adam Pendleton / Dawit L. Petros Feature / Residency Redux Williams, founder of the pro∂ram, 22 24 #290 Untitled, in Harlem’s fortieth anniversary.
    [Show full text]
  • The Salon at Chicago
    THE SALON AT CHI CAG O THE SALON AT THE W ING CHICAGO CURATED BY LOLITA CROS 811 W FULTON MARKET FL 2, CHICAGO, IL Table of Contents 2 Candida Alvarez 5 Rajee Aryal 6 Alex Chitty 9 Jan Christopher-Berkson 10 Elizabeth De La Piedra 15 Cassidy Early 16 Morgan Green 19 Jillian Hansen-Lewis 20 Minami Kobayashi 23 Yvette Mayorga 24 Jeffly Gabriela Molina 27 Roni Packer 28 Cheryl Pope 31 Carrie Schneider 32 Soo Shin 35 Ann Toebbe 36 Brittney Leeanne Williams 39 Lucy Wood Baird 40 Liat Yossifor The Salon at The Wing is a permanent exhibition with rotating artwork by female artists displayed all throughout the spaces. Despite their undeniable influence, women in the arts have long faced the same exclusion and marginalization as they have in other industries. The works in The Salon at The Wing stand as a statement to the power and creative force of these women. Curated by consultant and member Lolita Cros, the show includes 25 works by 19 female artists. Similar to the warmth of a collector’s home, the viewer is privy to the unique experience of seeing fashion photographers and painters displayed alongside embroiders and collage artist. Bringing established and up-and- coming artists together, Cros assembled the works to interact with each other, outside of the traditional hierarchy of the art world. The show captures a dialogue between women of varying ages, identities, and nationalities—reflecting the heterogeneity of The Wing’s mission and members. Breaking down the barrier between the art world and the everyday, The Salon creates a space for members and guests to engage with important personal, political, and societal issues through the lens of art.
    [Show full text]
  • Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Alumni Exhibition at New York Galleries
    Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Alumni Exhibition at New York Galleries New York shows feature recent graduates from renowned programs of Painting and Printmaking, Sculpture + Extended Media Richmond, VA, April 26, 2017—This summer, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts (VCUarts) alumni from the Department of Painting and Printmaking and the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media will present concurrent exhibitions of their work. The dual shows will provide art curators, collectors, critics, and enthusiasts an opportunity to experience the talent cultivated by VCU’s School of the Arts. “The biennial New York exhibitions have become a tradition for us,” says VCUarts Interim Dean James Frazier. “They're a rite of passage of sorts, celebrating the completion of the degree in a professionally relevant context, as recent grads collaborate on all the logistics that go into preparing to exhibit their work in a nonprofit or commercial gallery, while also supporting the opportunity for their work to be seen by a New York audience.” WHATEVERBEING VCU Painting and Printmaking MFA Exhibition August 26—September 17, 2017 Reception: Saturday, August 26, 6:00—8:00pm Present Company 254 Johnson Ave Brooklyn, NY 11206 http://www.present-co.com/ Whateverbeing showcases artwork from 15 graduates of the Painting and Printmaking MFA program, including Sarah Coote, director of Richmond’s Bruce Martin Gallery; María Tinaut, who last year exhibited the solo show What might have been lost in Mexico and the two-person exhibition Memoria construida in Spain; and Will Matheson, the 2017 artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA. Exhibiting Painting and Printmaking artists are: Saulat Ajmal Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez Wesley Chavis Sarah Coote Eric Diehl Mathew Gasparek Devin Harclerode Will Matheson Beatrice Modisett Kristen Sanders Jon Rehwoldt Jake Reller Ricardo Vicente Jose Ruiz Ryan Syrell María Tinaut Whateverbeing is curated by Owen Duffy, an art historian, curator, and writer living in New York.
    [Show full text]
  • Press Release
    Candida Alvarez: De Colores November 2 – December 21, 2019 GAVLAK Palm Beach is pleased to present a selection of new paintings by the Chicago- based artist Candida Alvarez (b. 1955, Brooklyn, New York). De Colores is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and the inaugural exhibition for the new Gavlak Palm Beach location in The Royal Poinciana Plaza. The influences and ideas behind Candida Alvarez’s complex and colorful abstract paint- ings range from art history to her rich Puerto Rican heritage and observations of her dai- ly surroundings. Everything from the black and white checkered pattern of her studio floor and the vibrant colors of her mother’s apron to the De Kooning painting Excava- tion at The Art Institute of Chicago occupy equal space on the canvas. By incorporating quotidian patterns and palates with formal abstraction, Alvarez deli- cately balances abstraction and representation. Shapes resembling flowers, a faceted jewel, bird wings or the form of a bumble bee are carefully woven into fields of pure, heightened color inspired by a bowl of mangos on the kitchen table. More carefully planned than gestural, the compositions of her paintings still retain a sense of motion, from the movement of people on the sidewalk below in Brooklyn to the movement of palm trees swaying in the tropical breezes. Lush and vibrant colors are layered with con- trasting flat surfaces and depths that move between hard edge abstraction and flowing color field painting. The title of the exhibition, De Colores, is taken from the name of a popular Spanish folk song that was a strong influence on her parent’s spiritual life.
    [Show full text]
  • Selections and Excerpts 1992 – 1998 Susan Talbott, Hope Sandrow Fragments: Self/History, SECCA 1995
    Selections and Excerpts 1992 – 1998 Themes of power and vulnerability, past and present, personal and collective, have engaged Hope Sandrow throughout her artistic career…In 1973 a mishap… precipitated Sandrow’s later aesthetic direction. She had shot fifty rolls of film only to discover that the child of her hosts had dropped her camera, sticking the shutter. Only ten images survived---all images of seated people. The resulting prints were half frames---the top halves were black. “Those images changed my whole way of approaching the picture frame---how much needed to be described and how much could be left to interpretation. “ In the series Men on the Streets…she would wait until the right man walked by and ask him to pose. The photographs are like film stills, depicting action as time lapsed as the men moved across the picture plane. Back on the Streets continued this methodology, but Sandrow now used artist friends instead of strangers. She posed her models against backgrounds that recalled their own artwork. For example, Keith Haring stood before a grafittied sculpture at One Police Plaza. The series Hope & Fear that followed further explored the concept of time, expanding it beyond the immediate into the distant past. For the next five years, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art became Sandrow’s studio, as she created a series of split images about the movement between past and present. Her models were again her friends, chosen for their relationship of their own art and work to the classical art that they posed with. Recognition came early for Sandrow as works from this and the previous series were acquired by and exhibited at museums across the country.
    [Show full text]
  • Candida Alvarez B. 1955, Brooklyn, New York Lives and Works in Chicago, IL EDUCATION 2010-2012 ABD, European Graduate School
    . CANDIDA ALVAREZ b. 1955 Lives and works in Baroda, MI and Chicago, IL EDUCATION 2010-11 Communications Media, European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland 1995-97 MFA in Painting and Printmaking, Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT 1981 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME 1973-77 BA Studio Art/ Liberal Arts, Fordham University, Lincoln Center, New York, NY SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2021 Palimpsest, GAVLAK Los Angeles, CA 2020 Estoy Bien, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, IL 2019 DeColores, GAVLAK, Palm Beach, FL 2017 Candida Alvarez: Here, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL 2012 Mambomountain, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL 2003 Paradise, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2002 I Will Always Remember You, TBA Exhibition Space, Chicago, IL 1996 Candida Alvarez: New/Now, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT 1993 Polyptychs, June Kelly Gallery, New York, NY 1992 Candida Alvarez Recent Paintings, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY 1991 Candida Alvarez, Paintings and Works on Paper, The Queens Museum, Flushing, NY 1990 John Street Series, Galerie Schneiderei, Cologne, Germany 1989 Candida Alvarez Paintings and Drawings, June Kelly Gallery, New York, NY 1985 Ringside Gallery: Candida Alvarez, Exit Art, New York, NY 1983 The Hybrid Series, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT Cows and Other Things, The Cayman Gallery, New York, NY GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2021 In the Eye of the Storm, Z33, Hasselt, Belgium LatinXAmerican, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL LatinXAbstract, BRIC House, Brooklyn, NY 2020 Drawing 2020, Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY Anarquia y dialéctico en el deseo, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Juan, Puerto Rico A Very Anxious Feeling: 20 years of Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA The Long Dream, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL gavlakgallery.com Los Angeles | Palm Beach [email protected] .
    [Show full text]