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CLOSE AT HAND: CONTEMPORARY STILL LIFE EXPLORES THE BEAUTY OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS AND OFFERS A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THE GENRE Exhibition on View in McNay Art Museum’s Lawson Print Gallery Through September 15, 2019
San Antonio, TX (INSERT DATE) – All artists must solve one essential problem before starting to work: deciding what to make. Over the centuries, artists have answered this question by creating still life compositions. There is a good reason for this: still life objects do not move, and they are often close at hand in an artist’s studio. The new exhibition, Close at Hand: Contemporary Still Life, explores this question through a focus on contemporary still life prints from the McNay’s collection.
“Many of the works on paper in the exhibition have never been on view before,” said Lyle Williams, McNay Curator of Prints and Drawings. “Artworks in the exhibition take a different perspective on the genre. The exploration of the beauty of an orange peel, apple core, or book cover remind us to see and appreciate the subtlety of objects that surround us every day.”
New artworks include prints by Katje Oxman, Rachel Whiteread, Peri Schwartz, and Samuel Levi Jones. Jones’ aquatint Sold Ya is one of the Museum’s most recent acquisitions. Jones used the covers of discarded books, mostly obsolete law texts, to transfer the texture and shape of the objects to the printmaking plate. His art often questions the authority of published books and who gets to select the facts that go in them.
These works of art confirm the endurance of the still life tradition in contemporary art while simultaneously challenging traditional approaches to the genre. In contrast to more traditional still life pictures, defined by luxury goods and fine food stuffs, contemporary still lifes tend to celebrate the beauty of simple objects such as cans, glass bottles, and more.
Close at Hand: Contemporary Still Life was organized by Lyle W. Williams, Curator of Prints and Drawings, for the McNay Art Museum. The exhibition is on view until September 15, 2019.
The Elizabeth Huth Coates Exhibition Endowment and the Arthur and Jane Stieren Fund for Exhibitions are generously funding this exhibition.
Video B-Roll Package: https://vimeo.com/348422515/546255a920 Curator Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMPyF7UvY_Y&feature=youtu.be Photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8x1vnjzyrm8uu8z/AACiNpNxVn4P548_TtNhZg1Na?dl=0
About the McNay Art Museum The McNay Art Museum engages a diverse community in the discovery and enjoyment of the visual arts. Built in the 1920s by artist and educator Marion Koogler McNay, the Spanish Colonial Revival residence became the site of Texas’s first museum of modern art when it opened in 1954. Today, 200,000 visitors a year enjoy works by modern masters including Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Edward Hopper, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The 23 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds include sculptures by Robert Indiana, Luis A. Jiménez Jr., George Rickey, Joel Shapiro, and Kiki Smith. The 45,000 square-foot Jane & Arthur Stieren Center for Exhibitions, designed by internationally renowned French architect Jean-Paul Viguier, features three significant exhibitions annually. For almost 65 years, the McNay has enchanted visitors with its art, architecture, and ambiance. The museum offers rich and varied exhibitions as well as rotating displays in the Main Collection Galleries from the 20,000 works in the collection; more than 45,000 adults, teachers, students, and families take advantage of a variety of education programs and innovative educational resources.