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The Kreeger Museum 20Th Anniversary Exhibition

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The Kreeger Museum 20Th Anniversary Exhibition K@20 THE KREEGER MUSEUM 20TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION KENDALL BUSTER WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY GENE DAVIS SAM GILLIAM TOM GREEN LEDELLE MOE MICHAEL B. PLATT JANN ROSEN-QUERALT JOHN RUPPERT JIM SANBORN JEFF SPAULDING DAN STEINHILBER RENÉE STOUT YURIKO YAMAGUCHI FEBRUARY 20 – JULY 31, 2014 THE KREEGER MUSEUM 2401 FOXHALL ROAD, NW WASHINGTON, DC 20007 www.kreegermuseum.org K@20 THE KREEGER MUSEUM 20TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION FOREWORD From the inception of The Kreeger Museum exhibition program in 1998, it has been my philosophy to present exhibitions that relate to the Museum. Past exhibitions ranged from one-man shows that included Philip Johnson, Tom Wesselmann, William Kentridge, Oleg Kudryashov and Washington artists Sam Gilliam, William Christenberry, Kendall Buster, Dan Steinhilber, and Gene Davis, to group shows with selections from the di Rosa Preserve collection of California Bay Area artists and the New York artist collective, Tim Rollins + K.O.S. Each of these exhibitions focused on a particular aspect of the Museum’s permanent collection, architecture or mission. Over the last twenty years, Washington artists have played a prominent role in the Museum’s histor y— in exhibitions, public programs, educational initiatives and outreach activities. In honor of The Kreeger Museum 20th Anniversary and to acknowledge my respect for the DC art community, I asked Sarah Tanguy to curate an exhibition of Washington area artists, each of whom has exhibited at the Museum, either in a group or one-person show. These fourteen artists represent the outstanding talent and commitment prevalent in the nation’s capital. This exhibition was made possible by the generosity of the following sponsors: Aon Huntington Block Insurance; Giselle and Ben Huberman; Frederick P. Ognibene; and Marsha Mateyka Gallery. Judy A. Greenberg Director K@20 THE KREEGER MUSEUM 20TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION CURATOR’S STATEMENT In 1959, David and Carmen Kreeger began acquiring art in earnest, buying works by Renoir, Corot and Courbet during a summer vacation in Europe. Over the course of the following decades, the couple assembled an international collection of paintings and sculptures from 19th and 20th century Western, African and Asian art which included important works from Washington, D.C. The Kreeger residence, situated on five wooded acres, was designed by noted architect Philip Johnson for the Kreegers’ art collection and life style. The building is a modernist masterpiece that opened as a museum in 1994. Twenty years later, K@20 recognizes the Museum’s rich history. Encompassing a broad range of aesthetic approaches and media, this exhibition reflects an individual engagement with one or more aspects of the original collection and architecture. From installations, paintings, sculptures, and works on paper to video, the selection offers a fresh perspective, not only on individual practices, but also on the collective strength of Washington’s art community—and honors Carmen and David Lloyd Kreeger’s legacy and the Museum’s future. The importance of color and abstraction is evident in the works of Gene Davis, Sam Gilliam, Tom Green, and Dan Steinhilber. The significance of nature and landscape painting echoes in the works of Kendall Buster, Jann Rosen-Queralt, John Ruppert, Jim Sanborn, and Yuriko Yamaguchi. The role of narrative, travel and daily life informs the works of William Christenberry, Ledelle Moe, Michael B. Platt, Jeff Spaulding, and Renée Stout. Evident throughout is an artistic passion, which coupled with intellectual curiosity, yields works that transcend particular circumstance in surprising and innovative ways. Sarah Tanguy Kendall Buster KENDALL BUSTER (born 1954) Bloom Sequence , 2014 digital prints, Epson K3 “My initial study in microbiology and my interest in the history of architecture archival ink on Epson have resulted in works informed by both geometric and biological morphologies Velvet Fine Art Paper overall: 6'x 10', and operate in the territory where architecture and biology might meet… each: 8.5" x 11" Designs that suggest germination, budding, merging, hybridization, or Courtesy of the artist absorption are central to my work.” The wonder of nascent life animates Kendall Buster’s sculpture and drawing. With consuming passion, the artist examines cellular structures, and from their revealed secrets, synthesizes her own enigmas into being. No matter the scale, her intricate constructions create an intimate experience that envelops the viewer and invites penetration, virtually in the drawings and smaller pieces, and physically in the larger sculptures. The prints in Bloom Sequence are part of Parabiosis III , a project that explores the idea of a living city or an architectural work unfolding like a bud. Arranged in a minimalist grid, the prints are based on individual frames from a 3-D computer animated film. Like Edward Muybridge’s motion studies, they chronicle the transformation of a structure/organism from seed to full blossom. The pink printing paper lends a flesh-like quality and brings out a latent sensuality in the satiny black shapes. The related sculpture, made out of steel and shade cloth, extends the idea of a porous refuge capable of merging into the surrounding landscape. In contrast to conventional urban development through modular accumulation, Buster proposes growth through singular or shared evolution. In her model of a seed city, the ecology of physiological and architectural states cross-fertiliz e— resulting in an expanded perspective of our relation to both our K@20 natural and made environments. THE KREEGER MUSEUM 20th Anniversary Exhibition William Christenberry WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY (born 1936) Southern Monument XXII , 1989 “Everything I want to say through my work comes out of my feelings about that steel, wood, paint, place—its positive aspects and its negative aspects. [Hale County] is one of the mixed media, and red soil poorest counties in [Alabama] but it is also a county with great lore and legend.” sculpture: 22" x 12" x 12" tray: 3" x 24.5" x 24.5" To understand William Christenberry, one must grasp the fundamental significance pedestal: of Hale County, Alabama. Though born in Tuscaloosa, a few miles north, the artist 36" x 24.5" x 24.5" travels annually to this region, a pilgrimage that inspires the natural, architectural Courtesy of and figurative references of his haunting imagery. Like a Southern Gothic novel, his HEMPHILL Fine Arts art addresses such grand themes as the passage of time and our struggle with nature, and in his Ku Klux Klan-related work, the evil that humans wreak on each other. Often his photographs juxtapose an initial view of a pristine building in a landscape with subsequent ones of it crumbling or being overcome by kudzu. His lyrical drawings, including Untitled (August 8), present a more distilled interpretation of space. Akin to the spontaneous economy of Zen Buddhist painting, their restless marks and forms are rooted in the gestural bravado of his earlier abstract expressionist work, yet bear the traces of gourds, branches, and fence lines. In contrast to the drawings’ airy atmosphere, his sculptures emphasize material presence. Southern Monument XXII , featuring a small sheet metal building, ladder, gourd, ball, and red soil, recalls the silent mystery of Giorgio de Chirico’s tableaux. Here as elsewhere, Christenberry channels nostalgia into the creation of memory, challenging both his own recollections and those we share together. K@20 THE KREEGER MUSEUM 20th Anniversary Exhibition Gene Davis GENE DAVIS (1920–1985) untitled (P7) , 1985 acrylic on canvas “The subject of my work is color interval, the space between colors. And this is 55" x 80.75"; just as valid a subject matter as the proverbial nude or bouquet of flowers. framed: 70.75" x 97.25" The Estate of Gene Davis , Stripes are simply the device by which I define color interval.” Courtesy of Marsha Mateyka Gallery There is magic about Gene Davis’ stripe paintings. The way they pulse, the way their oscillations engage our perception in endless optical games. As the artist was wont to suggest, pick a color as a point of entry, and then pay attention to its width as it interacts with its partners. Relying on his intuitio n— Davis had no academic art training, he chose his colors randomly from a pile of acrylic tubes on the floo r—his sense of color was influenced by works of the Impressionists and Paul Klee. By contrast, he was deliberate in laying down lines, whether he used masking tape, pencil, or ruler. He thought carefully about intervals and achieved rhythms that unfold over time like a musical score. Harnessing the inherent properties and rich evocative power of line and color, Davis answers the old debate about their relative importance by joining them in a pure and direct fashion. In the 1982 Concord , black and red bands of varying width play off the blank canvas as they stop short of the edge and create a framing outline; whereas in an untitled 1985 painting, freely drawn, narrow bands of purple bleed into each other and barely contain a smaller painting of azure and black stripes. Throughout his career, Davis never tired of repetition, and his countless variations of the stripe, vertical for the most part, retain their impact on younger generations. K@20 THE KREEGER MUSEUM 20th Anniversary Exhibition Sam Gilliam SAM GILLIAM (born 1933) Screen for Models III , 20 12 “You have to ask yourself what kind of artist you want to be. I had to get out acrylic on birch on a limb and then decide how I wanted to get back. You have to constantly 80"x 45" Screen for Model II , challenge yourself to find inspiration and to learn how to work. That’s the 2012 most important thing.” acrylic on birch 80"x36.5" Restless experimentation guides Sam Gilliam’s quest to meld painting and Screen for Model I , sculpture and upset the conventional framed canvas.
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