Often curated by artists, summer group shows provide a window into the hive mind. Accordingly, I’ve put together a short list of exhibitions that are organized around the themes and ideas that artists are talking about in current conversations. Excerpts from press releases are included, and in case readers can’t make it to the galleries–summer is a perfect time to hole up in the studio and paint–I’ve added links as well.
[Image at top: Sharon Madanes, Interwoven, 2015, oil on found linen, 30 x 28 inches. Curated by Carrie Moyer, DC Moore Gallery.]
“Me, My, Mine: Commanding Subjectivity in Painting” / DC Moore Gallery / dcmooregallery.com / June 16 – July 29, 2016.
Curated by Carrie Moyer. Featuring Nadia Ayari, Ginny Casey, Geoffrey Chadsey, Sharon Madanes, Julie Ryan, Michael Stamm, Peter Williams. Press release excerpt: “Motivated by the enduring interest in figuration Me, My, Mine zeros in on the potential of commanding subjectivity in representational painting. Through their work, these seven painters generously extend an invitation to experience the prickly anxieties, obsessive self scrutiny and extravagant fantasies that exist in the privacy of their own brains. Lavish patterning, seductive surfaces and meticulous detail give an optical and tactile immediacy to the selected paintings while disorienting perspectives, subjects depicted from above or very, very close up, place us literally in the painters’ ‘shoes.’ Running interference between the physical world and the brain, hands and eyes are central subjects, the primary receivers of the data overload particular to our time.”
“Paint is a Thing” /Craig Krull Gallery (LA) / craigkrullgallery.com / July 9 – August 20, 2016.
Curated by Beth Parker. Featuring Chrissy Angliker, Keenan Derby, Roast Hoggmann, Riin Kaljurand, Caroline Larsen, Mark Posey, & Dominic Terlizzi.
Press release excerpt:”This exhibition showcases seven contemporary artists who use paint to create both an object and an illusionistic space. While these artists embrace the materiality of paint, they also depict images and narratives, allowing the paintings to become more than purely objects. Each piece incites a layered read, with a visceral reaction to the physicality of the surface, as well as a cerebral reaction to the illusion described.”
“On Painting” / Kent Fine Art / www.kentfineart.net / June 3 – July 29, 2016.
Curated by Katrina Neumann. Featuring Eve Ackroyd, Jon Campbell, Heidi Hahn, Janice Nowinski, Stefan Pehl, and Kyle Staver.
Press release excerpt: “On Painting is an invitational group exhibition featuring multi-generational contemporary artists exploring the human figure, female equality, anxiety, mythologies, fear, absence, and landscape through painting. This will be the first time that many of these painters have exhibited in Chelsea. This project addresses an emerging trend in painting that is conceptually based and materially lush. Partially as a reaction against ‘Zombie Formalism,’ these six established and emerging artists utilize their voices and life experiences to create a resurgence in figurative and landscape painting.”
“Shapeshifters” / Luhring Augustine / luhringaugustine.com / June 27 – August 12, 2016.
Featuring Joe Bradley, Jeremy DePrez, Jeff Elrod, Ron Gorchov, Ralph Humphrey, Martin Kippenberger, Imi Knoebel, Robert Mangold, Jeremy Moon, Elizabeth Murray, Kenneth Noland, David Novros, Blinky Palermo, Steven Parrino, Joanna Pousette-Dart, Ruth Root, Frank Stella, Philip Taaffe, and Richard Tuttle.
Press release excerpt: “The works in this exhibition evoke this phenomenon by deviating from the standard rectilinear format of the frame and defying succinct categorization as paintings. In creating these works, the artists used various techniques including altering the outline of the canvas, building up relief, cutting into the plane, and using materials alternate to traditional canvas as support… Shaped canvas works became popular in the 1960s as artists sought to emphasize the potential for paintings to be considered objects. Recognizing this movement, curator Lawrence Alloway organized the definitive exhibition The Shaped Canvas at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1964. Alloway presented works by five artists he recognized to be the primary protagonists of this movement, one of whom was Frank Stella. Shapeshifters includes a piece by Stella from that period, along with Richard Tuttle’s 1967 Red Brown Canvas, a late ‘60s multipart work by David Novros, and a rarely seen ‘60s work by the late British artist Jeremy Moon….”
“X” / Lyles & King / lylesandking.com / July 8 – August 12, 2016.
Featuring Betty Tompkins, Adrianne Rubenstein, Al Freeman, Mira Schor, Miriam Laufer, Mimi Smith, Anna Rosen, Alicia Gibson, Lauren Faigeles, Susan Bee, Rebecca Watson Horn, Dakotah Savage, Katrina Fimmel, Rebecca Levitan, Leslie Stein, Annette Wehrhahn.
Press release:
The Stage:
Stanford
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
‘I love beautiful women and beautiful women love me. It has to be both ways’
Marriage Equality
Hillary
‘Jihadi Brides’
Amy Schumer
‘The Future is Female’
‘The Future is Probably Transgender’
Tinder
‘Consent is So Frat’
North Carolina
Mary Lou Bruner
Orlando
“Life of Forms” / Mary Boone Gallery / maryboonegallery.com / April 30 – July 29, 2016.
Curated by Piper Marshall. Featuring Doug Ashford, Andrea Büttner, Jimmie Durham, Pam Lins, Nora Schultz, Amy Sillman.
Press release excerpt: “We begin with the poetics of form. This exhibition explores how an idea develops, gripping space through variations of matter. An artwork in this case is moving. It flows through a sequence of states, vulnerable to the process of change. As things, forms also serve as cultural markers, punctuating periods of use, or conversely of uselessness, within a duration longer than the human scope.”
“School’s Out!” / Mike Weiss Gallery / mikeweissgallery.com / June 23 – August 8, 2016.
Featuring Deborah Brown, Thrush Holmes, Liao Yibai, Jerry Kearns.
Press release excerpt: “The final seconds tick away. The sunlight beckons through the window. The bell rings. It’s the same high-pitched bell that has been blaring out all year. This time though, it provides sweet music – a coda to the year. SCHOOL’S OUT! Time for sleeping in, staying up late, and doing anything you want in between. We all remember those youthful summer months, when anything seemed possible and rules were few and far between. Mike Weiss Gallery’s summer group exhibition aims to capture that same sense of freedom – of playfully breaking from the ordinary and letting the imagination run wild.”
“Construction Site,” McKenzie Fine Art Inc. / mckenziefineart.com / June 17 – August 13, 2016.
Featuring Cathryn Arcomano, Mel Bernstine, Samantha Bittman, Eric Brown, Kellyann Burns, Paul Corio, Alison Hall, Jason Karolak, Liv Mette Larsen, Noah Loesberg, Christian Maychack, Erin O’Keefe, Gary Stephan, Altoon Sultan, Don Voisine, Laura Watt, and Will Yackulic.
Press release excerpt: The exhibition “examines the influence of architecture and the built world on abstraction.”
“Boys and Girls Can Still Draw” / Nathalie Karg / nathaliekarg.com / July 6 – August 26, 2016.
Featuring Marina Adams, Joe Andoe, Peter Barrickman, Steve DiBenedetto, Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Andrej Dubravsky, Andreas Fischer, Joe Fyfe, Margrit Lewczuk, Erica Mahinay, Amir Nikravan, Joanna Pousette-Dart, and Kristen Schiele
Press release excerpt: “All of the included artists were asked to submit paintings and works on paper, thus making visible the potential parallels and associations possible between the two.”
“Lunacy” / Ortega y Gasset Projects / oygprojects.com / June 25 – July 24, 2016.
Curated by Eric Hibit. Featuring the work of Jonathan Cowan, John Dilg, Matthew F Fisher, Everest Hall, JJ Manford, and Luc Paradis.
Press release excerpt: “The moon has a long history of captivating painters. Since the beginning of Modernism, painters such as J.M.W. Turner, Ralph Blakelock, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Georgia O’Keefe, and Arthur Dove have represented the moon for poetic and personal ends. The artists in Lunacy work in this legacy and push the subject to new expressive realms.”
“The Woman Destroyed” / P.P.O.W / ppowgallery.com / June 30 – July 29, 2016.
Curated by Anneliis Beadnell. Featuring Elizabeth Glaessner, Lauren Kelley, David Mramor, Allison Schulnik, Jessica Stoller, Robin F. Williams.
Press release excerpt: “A group exhibition taking inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Woman Destroyed published at the height of the international women’s civil rights movement in 1967. De Beauvior’s existential publication is comprised of three fictional novellas on the theme of women, long past their youth, facing unexpected crises- alienation, solitude and heartache. Using de Beauvoir’s character’s psychologically profound empathy and exasperation towards societal and domestic expectations, the artists present works that extend the complexities of female crisis into contemporary and fantastical dimensions.”
“Blackness in Abstraction”/ PACE / pacegallery.com / June 24 – August 19, 2016.
Curated by Adrienne Edwards. Featuring Terry Adkins, Jonathas de Andrade, Rasheed Araeen, Kevin Beasley, Sergio de Camargo, Kōji Enokura, Ellen Gallagher, Robert Irwin, Sui Jianguo, Rashid Johnson, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Laura Lima, Turiya Magadlela, Steve McQueen, Ulrike Müller, Oscar Murillo, Wangechi Mutu, Louise Nevelson, Lorraine O’Grady, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Fred Sandback, Jack Tworkov, Carrie Mae Weems, Jack Whitten, and Fred Wilson.
Press release excerpt: “… tracing the persistent presence of the color black in art, with a particular emphasis on monochromes, from the 1940s to today. Featuring works by an international and intergenerational group of artists, the exhibition explores blackness as a highly evocative and animating force in various approaches to abstract art.”
“THINGS: a queer legacy of graphic art and play” / PARTICIPANT INC / participantinc.org / July 17 – August 21, 2016.
Featuring Curt McDowell, Tom Rubnitz and Robert Ford, with Seth Bogart, Rafa Esparza, Aimee Goguen + Brontez Purnell
Press release excerpt: “Through expressive self-portraiture, utopian world making, and scene charting ‘zine cultures, the materials assembled in ‘THINGS’ evince the intensely vital and political potential of craft to reflect the world as it appears or is perceived at immensely personal moments of artistic reflection.”
“Puff Pieces” / Rachel Uffner Gallery / racheluffnergallery.com / July 8 – August 12, 2016.
Curated by Feelings. Featuring Justin Adian, Lynda Benglis, John Chamberlain, Samara Golden, Guy Goodwin, Sam Moyer, Jayson Musson, and Erwin Wurm.
Press release excerpt: “The show serves as a singular consideration of puffy forms. Puff pieces put up soft fronts. Buoyed by subjective views, these articles’ inflated accounts of their objects forgo neutrality for intensified terms of expression. Without counterargument or opposing perspectives, puff pieces brazenly advance, entertain, hype, and convert. The padded sculptures and paintings on display share puff pieces’ excess. Materials and approaches range, but all works present viewers with a generous surface. The round, swollen shapes and gentle contours may bring on sensations of pleasure, mirth, safety, and ease before traveling off in different directions. Reflecting on these first formal impressions offers a personal key to each work, a self-indulgent way in promoted by Feelings in its publication Soft Art.”
“OBJECTY” / Tibor De Nagy Gallery / tibordenagy.com / June 22 – July 29, 2016.
Featuring Tom Burckhardt, Kathy Butterly, Elliott Green, Dave Hardy, Joshua Marsh, Jen Mazza, John Newman, Ian Pedigo, Alan Wiener, Trevor Winkfield, Randy Wray, Tamara Zahaykevich.
Press release excerpt: “The exhibited works toy with the notion of ‘still life’ not so much in a literal sense or as a rethinking of the representation of objects, but more as an abstract and magical reflection of qualities that make up objects. The artists as ‘object makers’ imbue these things with a life of their own liberating them from the confines of the specifically definable. In the end, they no longer share a relationship to still life in the historical sense as a presentation of wealth or position, but strive to cast light on new verisimilitudes.”
“Rules of the Game” / Transmitter / transmitter.nyc / July 8 – August 7, 2016.
Featuring Palma Blank, Amanda Browder, Paul Corio, Jean Alexander Frater, Ben McNutt, Michael Namkung, Norm Paris, Derrick Velasquez.
Press release excerpt: “The primary difference between sport and art is the existence of agreed-upon rules. Art has etiquette, a context something like a set of rules, but as a set of discourses essentially rooted in exceptionality, the making of art in general is fairly anarchic. Rather, every artist’s practice proposes, self-consciously or not, a set of rules, a new game they’re playing, and part of our job as viewer is, much like a viewer of an unfamiliar sport, to figure out what those rules are. This is the game where we don’t touch the ball with our hands. This is the game where we have to bounce the ball if we’re moving. This is the game where we punch each other until one of us can’t stand. Art is the game where we make up rules and try to explain them until we can’t stand either.”
“Christmas in July” / Underdonk / underdonk.com / July 8 – August 7, 2016.
Curated by Tamara Gonzales. Featuring Joe Ballweg, Andrea Bergart, Kari Cholnoky, Tamara Gonzales, Max Heiges, Michael Mahalchick, Chris Martin, Mike Olin, Joyce Pensato, Ana Ratner, RATK.
Press release excerpt: “Over the years I’ve observed many artists, myself included, reach for the shimmering leftovers of the traditional holiday. Who can resist the plethora of goodies now available year round in dollar-stores? Or the holiday cast offs that pile up on the streets each year when the December festivities finally conclude. Apparently not many of us. This exhibition brings together a group of artworks exploiting red and green color, Christmas detritus, and imagination, in ways both subtle and not so subtle. (Mostly not so subtle.) And will aspire to stay true to the advice of sites like ‘Free Retail Tips.’ To that end the gallery itself will be transformed.”
Related posts:
New Image Painters challenge Zombie Formalists
Dear Tamara, and other letters about art
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Two Coats of Paint is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To use content beyond the scope of this license, permission is required.