Oranges and Sardines
Conversalions on Abstract Painting
November 9, 2008- February 8, 2009
Oranges and Sardines: Conversations on Abstract Painting with Mark Grotjahn, Wade Guyton, Mary Heilmann, Amy Sillman, Charline Van Heyl, and Christopher Wool
Oranges and Sardines examines how art can illuminate art, exploring the impact of approaching art through the eyes and minds of artists. Six contemporary abstract painters --Mark Grotjahn, Wade Guyton, Mary Heilmann, Amy Sillman, Charline Van Heyl, and Christopher Wool-- selects one of their own recent paintings as well as works by other artists who have been significant in their thinking about their work. Six seperate and generous galleries will present their choices in a constelation of diverse works to include Paul Klee, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Williamde Kooning, Phillip Gustan, Eva Harse, Pablo Picasso, and Dieter Roth and artists less known to the public. The artists choices have developed through many conversations with curator Gary Garrels about the issues of their work, their studio process,their apprasals of art history, and the status of contemporary art. Throughout this process a distinct distillation of choices have deleoped for each artist that is wide ranging but very specific-- works that are figurative as well as abstract have been chosen, sculptures and some works on paper have been selected in addition to painting; and historical as well as more contemporary works will be juxtaposed. Shown together, these works will engage in a "conversation" with each other, provoking fresh insights into artists who are well known and opening consideration of artists that may be more obscure.
About the Exhibition
The title for the exhibition is borrowed from American poet Frank O'Hara's poem Why I Am Not a Painter, which reflects on the elusiveness of the creative process, often resulting in a finished work that bears no ressemblance to its initial inspiration. Oranges and Sardines hopes to offer manifold examples of abstraction's invertive potential and will suggest varied reasons why it remains vital and essential to contemporary art. Similarly, the works of the six artists who have been developed the exhibition may be viewed with more complex appeciation and more insightful understanding.