Category Archives: exhibitions

JENNIFER CHO: HAYSTACK, MOUNTAINS AND WATERLILIES

Madison Ave New York Jennifer Cho Mountain, Haystack and Water Lillies
Jennifer Cho Haystack
Jennifer Cho
Haystack (detail), 2000 - 2023
Compact Discs
Dimension varies
Jennifer Cho Mountains
Jennifer Cho
Mountains (detail), 1995 - 2023
Acrylic, colored pencil on canvas
10 x 8 x 1.5 in., each
Dimension varies
Jennifer Cho Waterlilies
Jennifer Cho
Waterlilies (detail), 2000 - 2023
Compact Discs, sepia ink, goldfish, water, vinyl, wood
Dimension varies
Jennifer Cho Mountains
Jennifer Cho
Mountains (detail), 1995 - 2023
Acrylic, colored pencil on canvas
10 x 8 x 1.5 in., each
Dimension varies
Jennifer Cho Waterlilies
Jennifer Cho
Waterlilies (detail), 2000 - 2023
Compact Discs, sepia ink, goldfish, water, vinyl, wood
Dimension varies
Jennifer Cho Haystack
Jennifer Cho
Haystack (detail), 2000 - 2023
Compact Discs
Dimension varies
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Madison Ave New York

Jennifer Cho

Haystack, Mountains and Waterlilies

April 25 – May 31, 2023

In Haystack, Mountains and Waterlilies, Jennifer Cho mobilizes “Slow Art” to articulate the need for sensuous and sensible vigilance within art-making. The exhibition is an ecology of built forms, a simulacra—a made up ecosystem that offers a view of a world proximate to our own.   It fuses warm atmosphere with conceptual elegance, drawn from outworn materials. The installations delight and enchant while destabilizing what qualifies as a landscape. In Haystack, Mountains and Waterlilies, all five senses are employed with grace and acerbic wit, balancing consistency with surprise. Cho inhabits the painterly practices of Cezanne, Monet and Millet, transporting their intensely embodied preoccupations with landscape onto her own artistic concerns. Complicated and subtle, the exhibition excavates the sedimentary layers of technology that develop a scene of both intimacy and ignorance; technology we entrust with our most vital choices and secrets.

“Haystack” (2000-2023) is a ghostly, crystalline work carved from soldered compact discs. The term “Slow Tech,” coined by Jennifer Cho, enlists rigid, glittering forms that resemble a natural haystack. Extravagant yet tranquil, the work triggers a human nostalgia for a primordial state of cultivation, as art objects are culled from the natural world. Like Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) tributes to the endurance of unrewarded toil for peasants, unspooling the strands of the compact disc requires careful, assiduous work. Taking the time to unfurl these strands, Cho engages in an epic struggle with seemingly slight and minuscule material.

To raise “Mountains” (1995-2023), Jennifer Cho inhabits the practices of Jeong Seon (1676-1759) and Paul Cezanne (1839-1906). While these artists walked through the respective mountains of Mt. Kumgang and Mt. Saint Victoire, they used their footsteps as a way to physically and psychologically register the scene they were about to paint. Cho transposes that footwork into handwork, creating a delicate, melancholy rendering of “Mountains.”

Haunting and menacing, “Waterlilies” (2000-2023) erects shallow pools at the center of a gallery room containing Siamese fighting fish and floating compact discs. Hazy and textured, the clear water grows progressively murky as the fish dart around the pond. The work interlaces narrative with fantasy, developing a false ecosystem from fish and obsolete technology that nonetheless teems with life. The result is an otherworldly biome that seems to exist outside of time and space—an altered reality. 

Haystack, Mountains and Waterlilies confers the history of landscape as a long arc, connecting Asian landscape to European plain air works, to Contemporary Art. In these respective works, history provides the framework for new matter, as ostensibly obsolete technology is re-released as mountains, flora, fauna, and water. The exhibition persuades for a fresh conceptualizing of time, asserting a vision of history less as a linear progression but more as a topography whose past is layered within its present material. The beauty of the physical universe is not an illusion of the human eye and the rest of the human sensorium, but a true glimpse into the inner nature of things. Daring to look at works of art in the flesh, Jennifer Cho sees the landscape both in its beauty and in its terror. 

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https://www.meer.com/en/73369-jennifer-cho-haystack-mountains-and-waterlilies

https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Jennifer-Cho–Haystack–Mountains—Wate/324E0A622C5354BB

https://thedailyguardian.com/chronicling-historic-wars/

https://www.wired.com/2000/04/tech-art-takes-over-n-y/

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JANET TAYLOR PICKETT: LIGHT, COLOR AND DESIRE

NECESSARY MEMORIES | March 15 - April 28 | SUNY Old Westbury NY
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
Courtesy Oceanside Museum of Art
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JANET TAYLOR PICKETT: Light, Color and Desire

May 27 – September 3, 2023

Oceanside Museum of Art

Light, Color and Desire presents the art of Janet Taylor Pickett, whose pathbreaking work explores Blackness, identity, and history.   A focused solo exhibition of nearly thirty (30) paintings and combines produced between 2003 and 2023, Light, Color and Desire  coronates the artist, as a synecdoche for all women, as  a contemporary goddess who reigns over fertility, fecundity, and embodied experience.  This mythology of Self reaches its apotheosis in Taylor Pickett’s luminous portraiture. Emanating expectancy and resolve, the subjects appear as incarnations of an ongoing desire for social, sexual, and spiritual freedom that is personal and universal. Polemical, unique, politically and socially committed, the art included in Light, Color and Desire demonstrates Taylor Pickett’s arrival at a distinct narrative voice inspired by Johannes Vermeer, Henri Matisse, and Frida Kahlo.

Janet Taylor Pickett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1948, the third generation in her maternal family to be raised in that city, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Her father, Dempsey Taylor Jr., was born in Brownsville, Tennessee and travelled north during the Great Migration, settling with his family in Ypslanti, Michigan. This imbrication of personal and shared Black History is concealed in Taylor Pickett’s work, which pours forth from an arduous path sowed with the sorrow of memories and a sea of desires. In particular, Janet Taylor Pickett’s becoming was influenced by Romare Bearden, whose collaged elements became the bedrock of her own work, situating her as a celebrated collagist.

LIGHT

Janet Taylor Pickett has always been intrigued by light, a preoccupation that she shares with Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675). Vermeer implemented camera obscura and applied layers of shadow to achieve the effect of an illuminated subject emerging from the darkness. Taylor Pickett begins with a full composition and then engages color blocking, leaving light to illumine her central subject. Neither plaintive nor condemning, the subjects seem to gaze both inwards and outwards, beholding internal and external topographies with poise and depth. In The Artist Unmasked (2021), the steadfast female gaze belies colossal emotions that the subject restrains. The expression harbors a universal vulnerability; an imperative grace under pressure that a (white) culture expects Black women to retain. This self-possession within constriction also figures in the painting Ladies in Waiting (1981), where the artist is framed by luscious, magenta walls. The light-infused domestic interior pulses with a celestial buoyancy, as though the space hums with ethereal hymns.

COLOR

Light, Color and Desire positions Janet Taylor Pickett as a colorist: an artist keen to the affordances of each hue, and how they inter-animate each other. Taylor Pickett forgoes neutral tones in favor of a kaleidoscopic color scheme, which conjures mood, light and space. Her saturated palette and enlistment of cutouts highlights her dialogue with Henri Matisse (1869 -1954). In The Ritual (2003), an amalgamation of painted and collaged elements, Taylor Pickett recruits cutout dress forms, which augment and amplify Matisse Cutouts. The work curates an altar that colligates a European reference (a painting by Fra Angelico) to African ones: hennaed hands and a fertility figure ringed with a golden aureole. Its display of talismanic forms and Christian iconography renders the work an homage to Black faith and a votive in its own right.  Taylor Pickett’s Indigo Blue further highlights her visual dialogue with Matisse (Prussian) Blue. This deep affinity for Blue is enacted in Memory of Water II (2021), which substantiates the ever-present call and response water has had in the collective history of African Americans. Water symbolizes the flow of memory from the Nile, to the Mississippi River to the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean; it is the genetic rhythm of memory that water holds.

DESIRE

Engulfed in flora and fauna, ripe with bold self-possession, the intensely embodied subjects in Janet Taylor Pickett’s work suggest her spiritual linkage to Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), who deployed self-portraiture to explore sexuality, femininity, and her relationship to the natural world. In Forest Born (2022), the roots and curls of flora render an organic issuance from nature. Both artists share an autobiographical narrative that weaves pain and joy to desire. In their political commitments and their unapologetic examination of suffering as well as beauty, they are thematically and aesthetically connected across time and space. Taylor Pickett and Frida Kahlo turn to their own bodies as a site and source of inspiration. While Frida Kahlo lingers on trauma, Taylor Pickett, attuned to life’s difficulties, tributes the beauty of the world and the joy of life. This resiliency and jubilance is personified in the recent painting series Gaia (2022), the goddess of the earth, whose gaze is defiant and searching. The portraits enact the apotheosis of self-actualization; the artist-as-subject is endowed with full agency, and regards the viewer with a gaze that harbors the command of a mystic. As a conceptual linchpin of the exhibition, Gaia confers that Light, Color and Desire is seeing the life of Janet Taylor Pickett.

Janet Taylor Pickett is utterly authentic in her vision and scope: an expression of a life being led in pursuit of psychical, spiritual and aesthetic liberation. It marks her as a vessel for femininity writ large—a contemporary goddess whose beauty and power supercharges life itself. While Taylor Pickett approaches the present as a benediction, she also presides over the past. History suffuses her art. As sustained visual poems, the paintings and combines in Light, Color and Desire probe a personal and collective past to posit a distinctly Black mythology of Self. Taylor Pickett’s work is a serious intellectual interrogation of beauty, nature and emotions that enables her recognition at the fore of Contemporary Art. Imbued with the mysticism of devotional work and the enigmatic lyricism of folklore, Janet Taylor Pickett paints as she emotes.

Dr. Jennifer Baahng, Guest Curator

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JANET TAYLOR PICKETT: NECESSARY MEMORIES

Janet Taylor Pickett, Melon Dress, 2001, oil, charcoal, oil stick and collage on canvas, 60 x 40 in
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Courtesy Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury
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JANET TAYLOR PICKETT: NECESSARY MEMORIES

March 15–April 28, 2023

Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury

Necessary Memories is a solo exhibition of Janet Taylor Pickett that explores her sustained engagement with identity, heritage, and the complexity of lived experience. The exhibition is presented on the occasion of the inauguration of the Black Studies Center and the Black Studies major at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, an initiative representative of the College’s strong social justice mission and racial diversity. A survey of the artist’s prolific body of work from 1972 to 2021, the exhibition showcases over fifty (50) works that externalize the interior life of Janet Taylor Pickett. Intimate and confessional, Necessary Memories pinpoints moments of tension in competing desires for rootedness and freedom. Replete with visual motifs, Janet Taylor Pickett draws on personal biography as a compass to chart a path towards a broader collective heritage that prompts imaginative sustenance for the present.

Janet Taylor Pickett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1948, the third generation in her maternal family to be raised in that city, a stop on the Underground Railroad. Her father, Dempsey Taylor, Jr., was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, and traveled north during the Great Migration, settling with his family in Ypsilanti, Michigan. This imbrication of personal and shared Black history, concealed in Taylor Pickett’s birthplace, is central to her work. Attuned to the socio-political affordances of her practice, she wields her art as activism: a cautionary tale about the recalcitrance of historical trauma on both the individual and national psyche. Combining quilted constructions, sculptural works, and storytelling through images and handwritten texts, the artist conjures the past with ease, galvanized by her embrace of frustration and pain, and her reckoning with struggle as a touchstone for healing.

HERITAGE

Janet Taylor Pickett’s excavation of her heritage finds its beginnings in her 1972 MFA thesis at the University of Michigan, entitled, black art: reviewing its roots. This project catalyzed the artist’s activist concerns that became the conceptual framework for her artmaking. Adinkra, emblazoned on the book’s cover, was developed by the Ashanti tribes to symbolize various natural and metaphysical concepts. Mobilizing African visual poetics, Taylor Pickett reconceptualizes the relationship between text and image, narrative and myth—tensions and interchanges throughout her art practice.

Taylor Pickett’s thesis was a questionnaire to over three hundred (300) Black artists listed in the Afro- American Slide Depository at the University of Southern Alabama, including Romare Bearden, Benny Andrews, Emma Amos, and Jacob Lawrence, and a compilation of their survey responses. Taylor Pickett and Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) take Blackness as their formal and conceptual subject. “Migration Series” (1940-41), Lawrence’s ambitious, sixty (60) panel work, focuses on the people at the heart of the great Migration, breaking apart the massive relocation into intimate vignettes. In these works, figures and landscapes are reduced to sparse shapes and abstracted figures. This economy of composition also characterizes “The Skin I’m In” (2016), which reflects Taylor Pickett’s belief that simplified forms convey a wellspring of meaning. A spartan composition, “The Skin I’m In” is a non- figurative portrait that deconstructs the female body, casting it as a flat, white dress sewed with beads, collaged with African masks and ridged tribal markings, and set against Matisse Cutout and a cropped photograph of the artist. In aggregate, these sewed surfaces form an epidermis that literally sutures beauty to pain.

IDENTITY

While deep historical roots and the traditions of Janet Taylor Pickett’s ancestors are at the fore of her conceptual concerns, she assembles these histories to investigate her identity. In “Melon Dress” (2001), the artist enlists a dress form patterned with watermelons and cotton tufts, pejorative symbols yoked to the trauma of slavery, as a metaphor for selfhood. A scroll wraps around the dress featuring text from Larry Vincent Buster’s The Art and History of Black Memorabilia (2000) that elucidates the historical significance of the watermelon:

Watermelon is believed to have originated more than 4,000 years ago in southwestern Africa, where it provided a ready-made water canteen.

It’s high in nutrients and low in calories—just the kind of food to keep slaves alive aboard ship during the transatlantic passage from Africa.

The artist’s figuration of the written word further underlines the socio-historical charge of her work; in coopting and retooling traumatic history by way of watermelon and cotton, she generates a new personal mythology that combines words and repeating visual motifs to forge an alternative canon.

Identity is also a central theme in “An Odyssey” (2014-2015), Taylor Pickett’s milestone wall installation, comprised of over fifty (50) dress forms. Deeply influenced by the color and textiles of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), the artist made cutouts as open secrets; portals to the past that declare their story through a mixture of photographs and collages, while retaining a patina of mysticism and abstraction. Solemn and meditative at times and buoyant and animated at others, the works are, she contends, “conduits and vessels of meaning…visual records, captured memories, observations, and inspirations.” Each dress form cutout compels the viewer to consider its interrelated images, as a myriad of stories reveal themselves. An Odyssey is a matrix for Taylor Pickett’s creative process, a conceptual tool to examine identity politics, and a vessel for transformation.

The artist’s quest to unpack the ancestral heritage nestled in her identity manifests in “Hot House” (1996). An oil painting with collage elements on combined un-stretched canvases, the work is an amalgamation of the artist’s philosophical and aesthetic preoccupations in the early 1990s. Teeming with verdure that presses out of the frame with an anthropomorphic aliveness, the work asserts sexuality, sensuousness, and nature. It bears the influence of Taylor Pickett’s creative conversant, Sam Gilliam (1933-2022), with whom she worked at the Vermont Studio School in 1991. Gilliam, known for his “Drape Paintings,” encouraged Taylor Pickett to “get off the canvas” and wrestle with the inchoate three-dimensionality in her work. A turning point in Taylor Pickett’s practice, the conversation instilled in her a sense of liberation that was as emotional as it was formal.

COMPLEXITY OF LIVED EXPERIENCE

Engaging with beauty and the difficulty of embodiment, Janet Taylor Pickett produces work that speaks to the complexity of lived experience. Art’s capacity to function as a totalizing enactment of life is most acutely evident in her fabric constructions, which she began making after her father’s death in 1992. Quilted on felt, “Healing Shirt” (2007) demonstrates a striking tactility and weight. Its display of talismanic forms and Christian iconography renders the work both an homage to Black faith and a votive object in its own right. In its immersive humanism, Taylor Pickett’s oeuvre resonates with German performance artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986). Beuys, who constructed environments out of felt and other materials, was enraptured by the ritualistic interactions created by participatory art. Similarly energized by the metaphysical transmissions afforded through visual work, Janet Taylor Pickett affirms art as healing; a channel to a realm deeper and more expansive than the purely visible world. Beuys’ notion of art as a “social sculpture,” a shared Happening that can reshape society and culture, is taken up by Taylor Pickett. The artist uses Blackness as a “social sculpture”; her embodied experience as an African American person is her art.

Aesthetic and existential arrival are realized in “She Blooms in Her Own Time” (2021). [Pic 7] This self- portrait enacts the apotheosis of self-actualization; the artist-as-subject is endowed with full agency and regards the viewer with a gaze that harbors the command of a mystic, seeing through and beyond the viewer. Flanked by slabs of saturated color, she deploys orange burnt sienna, the skin tone that resembles her father’s tanned forearm, and that she uses to depict all of her subjects. While Matisse clearly figures as a creative interlocutor, the work is utterly authentic in its articulation of Taylor Pickett’s distinct narrative voice. As the conceptual linchpins of the exhibition, “Healing Shirt” and “She Blooms in her Own Time” confer that Necessary Memories is seeing the life of Janet Taylor Pickett. These two works posit the convergence of the artist’s social, ethical, and metaphysical commitments with her blossoming as an artist. As she erases boundaries to create work that is relatable and transcendental, Taylor Pickett offers a visual scripture that is entwined with her own becoming.

Necessary Memories affirms how art is a physical experience, and a public one—an impulse that is intuitive, introspective, and geared towards the world outside oneself. Sensitive and visceral, Taylor Pickett delivers a narrative of mythic proportions through her radiant, experimental, and intensely articulate works. History suffuses Janet Taylor Pickett’s art. As sustained visual poems, the paintings, collages, and sewed works in Necessary Memories probe a personal and collective past to posit a distinctly Black mythology of Self. Multi-textured and multi-dimensional, with vibrant color and unexpected juxtapositions, Taylor Pickett’s work is a serious intellectual interrogation of beauty, nature, and the human condition. Galvanized by the socio-political activities in her formative years, Taylor Pickett began to formulate “an aesthetic language, a visual synergy” that spoke to the demands of the historical moment. The artist’s activist concerns remain a through-line in her practice, as recent paintings build upon the commitments and convictions articulated in her early work. Necessary Memories traces the artist’s swan dive into the murky waters of both her own and her country’s past, and her ultimate resurfacing, clear-eyed, with a deeply embodied sense of truth in her art. Janet Taylor Pickett is the artist, and Janet Taylor Pickett is the oeuvre.

Dr. Jennifer Baahng, Guest Curator

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PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Pitches & Scripts
Pitches & Scripts
Installation 1
Pitches & Scripts
Installation 2
Pitches & Scripts
Installation 3
Pitches & Scripts
Installation 4
Pitches & Scripts
Installation 5
R.C. BAKER
R.C. Baker
Pocket MonstersTM Strobe, 2000
Gouache on color laser copy and collage
16 3/4 x 10 7/8 in.
Sharon Butler Weed whacker, 2002 Inkjet on paper 11 x 9 in.
Sharon Butler
Weed whacker, 2002
Inkjet on paper
11 x 9 in.
Jeff Gabel #15 (Card Series 2), 2006 Pencil on paper 4.25 x 3 in.
Jeff Gabel
#15 (Card Series 2), 2006
Pencil on paper
4.25 x 3 in.
Bjorn Meyer-Ebrecht Untitled (Fountain), 2019 Ink and tape on paper 88 x 88 1/2 in.
Bjorn Meyer-Ebrecht
Untitled (Fountain), 2019
Ink and tape on paper
88 x 88 1/2 in.
Janet Taylor Pickett Dresses Akimbo (Blue Sky), 2015 Acrylic, vantage photos, inkjet print, collages on paper 8 x 7 in.
Janet Taylor Pickett
Dresses Akimbo (Blue Sky), 2015
Acrylic, vintage photos, inkjet print, collages on paper
8 x 7 in.
Zhang Hongtu Long Live Mao, solo, 1987 Acrylic on found Quaker Oats cereal box 9.75 x 5.25 in.
Zhang Hongtu
Long Live Mao, solo, 1987
Acrylic on found Quaker Oats cereal box
9.75 x 5.25 in.
Sharon Butler Idiomatica, 2002 Acrylic, sewing, inkjet print, collages on paper 11 x 14 in.
Sharon Butler
Idiomatica, 2002
Acrylic, sewing, inkjet print, collages on paper
11 x 14 in.
Sharon Butler, Louise Bourgeois, 2002 Acrylic, pen, pencil, inkjet print, sewing, collages on paper 11 x 17 in.
Sharon Butler
Louise Bourgeois, 2002
Acrylic, pen, pencil, inkjet print, sewing, collages on paper
11 x 17 in.
Sharon Butler Caffeinated, 2002 Inkjet print, sewing, collages on paper 12 x 18 in.
Sharon Butler
Caffeinated, 2002
Inkjet print, sewing, collages on paper
12 x 18 in.
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PITCHES & SCRIPTS

January 20 – March 11, 2023

Jennifer Baahng Gallery is pleased to present PITCHES & SCRIPTS, a group exhibition of works on paper. On view are ink and graphite drawings, collages, inkjet prints and sewed surfaces produced from the 1980’s through 2020. In pooling together six artists, the exhibition pitches a fermentation of ideas, technologies, and political stances that connote rupture and disintegration, while scripting growth, movement and new life. PITCHES & SCRIPTS runs from January 20 through March 11, 2023, with its opening reception on Friday, January 20, 6 – 8 PM.

The spectral presence of history suffuses the work of Janet Taylor Pickett and Zhang Hongtu. Blackness is a “declarative statement” for Janet Taylor Pickett (b. 1948), whose works, as ongoing visual poems,  probe personal and collective memory. Dresses Akimbo, on view, elaborates upon the symbolism of that gesture: a stance of power, bewilderment, and love. A forerunner of Chinese Political Pop Art whose work engages a multilayered discourse,  Zhang Hongtu (b. 1943) asserts themes of dislocation, national identity, propaganda, and politics in the Long Live Mao series, which is equal parts whimsical and profound.

Idiomerica by Sharon Butler (b. 1959) was catalyzed by the artist’s move from New York City to the suburbs. The works investigate the visual grammar of capitalist suburban Americana through video animations, text projects, digital drawings, and the resulting tendencies of reductive art. Conversely, moving from the Midwest to New York City, Jeff Gabel (b. 1968) developed Short Fiction Sketches in scribbly and smudge tone drawings. The works externalize the imagination  of a solitary artist inducted into a sea of uncanny urban experiences.

The Terminal Century by R.C. Baker (b. 1960) seethes with existential angst, as painted and collaged elements tremor with disruption and discordance, while also pointing to the beauty nestled in such moments of ostensive entropy. Similarly responding to a post-War world order, Bjorn Meyer-Ebrecht (b. 1972), makes ink drawings at a monumental scale, creating a pictorial architecture in ink that displays luminous materiality. In their rich, textured surfaces, the works included push the pictorial plane from drawing into painting. 

PITCHES & SCRIPTS assembles the memories of the artists at a formative historical moment, and inquires how art shapes history by responding to cultural shifts or by instigating them itself. As we are flung—‘pitched’—into the future, the exhibition looks to this collection of work for a loose, dynamic script for how to narrativize ourselves in the present.  PITCHES & SCRIPTS renders a ‘soft landing’ for our launch into the new year.

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Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
Adam Simon reviews Sharon Butler’s NEXT MOVES on The Brooklyn Rail

Adam Simon reviews Sharon Butler’s “Next Moves” in the October 2022 issue of The Brooklyn Rail

September 15 – November 15, 2022
Sharon Butler

NEXT MOVES

Sharon Butler
Sept 15 - Nov 15, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Sharon Butler

SHARON BUTLER

Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
Jeff Gabel #15 (Card Series 2), 2006 Pencil on paper 4.25 x 3 in.

JEFF GABEL

TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
BJÖRN MEYER-EBRECHT​

BJÖRN MEYER-EBRECHT​

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


Oct 5 – 31, 2023
Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso Málaga 

Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso Málaga 

October 3, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Zhang Hongtu participates Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions at the Asia Society Texas, February 10 - July 2, 2023

Zhang Hongtu is featured at the Asia Society in Texas

February 10 - July 2, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
(DE)CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND BEYOND November 13, 2022 to March 12, 2023

Zhang Hongtu lectures and exhibits at the Wende Museum

November 13, 2022 - March 12, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
March 25 - April 27, 2022
ZHANG HONGTU:

Zhang Hongtu’s “Mai Dang Lao” from the Brooklyn Museum Collection is featured on PBS NYC – ARTS

February 17, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

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GARDEN OF DELIGHT

GARDEN OF DELIGHT Museo del Prado
Garden of Delight
Installation view 1
Garden of Delight
Installation view 2
Garden of Delight
Installation view 3
Garden of Delight
Installation view 4
GARDEN OF DELIGHT Museo del Prado
Hieronymus Bosch, "Garden of Earthly Delight," detail, 1490-1510, Museo del Prado
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GARDEN OF DELIGHT

December 3 – 23, 2022 

Opening Reception: Saturday, December 3, 10AM – 5PM 

JENNIFER BAAHNG is pleased to invite you to Garden of Delight, a launching exhibition for the BAAHNG SHOP, from December 3 to 23, 2022. Jubilant and scintillating, luscious and succulent, the exhibition showcases nearly one hundred works of art and art objects by the gallery artists, and by celebrated artists of Modern and Contemporary Art. The opening of the exhibition coincides with the “36th Annual Miracle on Madison Avenue,” an annual one-day fundraising event, organized by The Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for its pediatric programs. 

Packed with a sumptuous cornucopia of oil paintings, pastel drawings, ceramics, hand-painted books and moving sculptures, Garden of Delight is a festive and fantastical tableaux of visual delectables. A trove of glittering and luminous surfaces, ranging from the pocket-sized to the formidable, the exhibition offers treasures both tiny and substantial. Guests will be greeted by soldered compact discs, miniature paintings and a gold-plated lollipop on velvet plush. Like an advent calendar, pastel drawings by Michael McClard, collaged boxes by Janet Taylor Pickett and The Taillight Series by Sharon Butler are installed as a seasonal dense-hang. Wall-papered with Zhang Hongtu’s iPad drawings and Eric Brown’s woven paintings, the installation entices and beguiles. Meanwhile, a painted snowboard soars across the white wall, kicking up “flying art”—hand-painted fans by Jackie Matisse, conjuring snow. A deck of baseball card-sized portraits by Jeff Gabel depicts fictive strangers that breathe with a gentle gravity, and Lego-constructed handbags by Jaye Moon deliver Braille messages ranging from the cheeky “Text Me,” to the profound. 

BAAHNG SHOP, the online shop of JENNIFER BAAHNG, offers a curated selection of books, exhibition catalogues, unique objects, limited editions, and artist designed accessories. 

Related:

Categories: exhibitions

Tags:

NEXT MOVES

Sharon Butler
Sharon Butler
Installation View 1
Sharon Butler
Installation View 2
Sharon Butler
Installation View 3
Sharon Butler
Installation View 4
Sharon Butler
Installation View 5
Sharon Butler
Sharon Butler
Stacked 2, (July 16 and 17, 2019), 2022
Oil on linen
72 x 48 inches
Sharon Butler
Sharon Butler
Bedfrence (July 6, 2019), 2022
Oil on canvas
77 x 49 inches
Sharon Butler
Sharon Butler
Brighter than Grass (July 15, 2019), 2022
Oil on linen
78 x 60 inches
Sharon Butler
Sharon Butler
Addenda (February 10, 2019), 2022
Oil on linen
68 x 40 inches
Sharon Butler
Sharon Butler
Quasi-Believer (June 8, 2018), 2022
Oil on linen
68 x 24 inches
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SHARON BUTLER

Next Moves

September 15 – November 15, 2022

Opening and Artist’s Reception: Thursday, September 15th, 6-8PM

JENNIFER BAAHNG GALLERY is pleased to present NEXT MOVES, the gallery’s inaugural solo exhibition of Sharon Butler’s work, and to announce its representation of the artist. The exhibition showcases a group of recent multi-panel paintings and selected mixed-media drawings. As conferred, these works articulate the pulse and the trajectory of Butler’s work, transposing graphic differences and traversing dimensions with elegance and wit. NEXT MOVES runs from September 15 through October 22, with an artist’s reception at the gallery on Thursday, September 15th, from 6–8PM. 

In 2016, Sharon Butler began making digital drawings on a phone app called PicsArt. They were meant to be seen on a smartphone, and she posted one each morning on Instagram as a way of marking daily life. Over the course of four years, she made and posted more than 1200 of them. It was a “growing thinking” and a “time in an alley waiting it out.” Eventually, the impulse to paint – born of the irresoluteness that courses through all painters – took hold. In 2020, to facilitate the transformation of the tiny digital drawings into full-sized paintings, she began drawing geometric grids on canvases. The digital drawings encapsulated in small squares on the mobile screen, infinitely scalable and potentially endless, were transfigured into permanent building blocks.

In Butler’s work, the grid functions metaphorically as a pulsating chord; a portal through which she gets from point A to point B. As such, it encapsulates activity, gathering meaning and power over time. So deployed, the grid builds on Butler’s interest in wabi-sabi and the provisional approach that she has called, in The Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere, “casualism.” Like Piet Mondrian’s valedictory Broadway Boogie Woogie, her paintings apprehend the syncopation and movement of New York City, exploring seriality with conceptual rigor, opting for a serendipitous, ironic approach.

The multi-panel paintings in the exhibition are monumental versions of smaller solo works. They embrace the history of painting and abstraction by way of idiosyncratic conjunctions and addenda. They resound with color, texture, and light, while also establishing compositional formality, tactile physicality, and emotional resonance. These liberal re-imaginings of images that were once originally pixelated retain an expressively vibrational quality. At the same time, an exuberant materiality anchors convergent edges, shapes, and patterns that afford the work visual stability.

In artcritical, critic Laurie Fendrich described Butler’s paintings as “beautiful and grittily compelling.” Fendrich added that “the future of abstraction will be owned by those who accept a post-compositional approach to their paintings. Right now, Sharon Butler has the best of both worlds.” In NEXT MOVES, Sharon Butler proposes restlessness within the strictures of painting, courting risk and glory, and we are in her church.

Sharon Butler’s solo exhibitions have been reviewed in numerous publications, including New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, artcritical, The New Criterion, The James Kalm Report, and Time Out New York. She has been awarded grants from Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and Eastern Connecticut State University. She has held residencies at Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, Pocket Utopia, and Counterproof Press. She has served as a visiting professor, artist, and/or critic at Brown University, Cornell University, the Hoffberger School of Painting (MICA), Penn State, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the School of Visual Arts, the Parsons School of Design at the New School, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is the founder of the art blogazine, Two Coats of Paint. She currently teaches in the MFA programs at the New York Academy of Art and the University of Connecticut. 

Sharon Butler lives and works in New York.

LINK:

Adam Simon reviews Sharon Butler’s NEXT MOVES on The Brooklyn Rail

A Conversation with Raphael Rubinstein and Sharon Butler

Related:

Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
Adam Simon reviews Sharon Butler’s NEXT MOVES on The Brooklyn Rail

Adam Simon reviews Sharon Butler’s “Next Moves” in the October 2022 issue of The Brooklyn Rail

September 15 – November 15, 2022
Sharon Butler

NEXT MOVES

Sharon Butler
Sept 15 - Nov 15, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Sharon Butler

SHARON BUTLER

Categories: exhibitions

Tags:

TANGO

TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022
Romare Bearden, exhibitions near me
Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden Sharon Butler Chun Kwang Young Jeff Gabel Michael McClard Mario Merz Jaye Moon Mr. Janet Taylor Pickett Osvaldo Romberg David Salle Zhang Hongtu exhibitions near me
Installation 1: Sharon Butler, David Salle
Romare Bearden Sharon Butler Chun Kwang Young Jeff Gabel Michael McClard Mario Merz Jaye Moon Mr. Janet Taylor Pickett Osvaldo Romberg David Salle Zhang Hongtu exhibitions near me
Installation 2: Sharon Butler, Mario Merz
Romare Bearden Sharon Butler Chun Kwang Young Jeff Gabel Michael McClard Mario Merz Jaye Moon Mr. Janet Taylor Pickett Osvaldo Romberg David Salle Zhang Hongtu exhibitions near me
Installation 3: Chun Kwang Young, Janet Taylor Pickett, Jaye Moon
Romare Bearden Sharon Butler Chun Kwang Young Jeff Gabel Michael McClard Mario Merz Jaye Moon Mr. Janet Taylor Pickett Osvaldo Romberg David Salle Zhang Hongtu exhibitions near me
Installation 4: Zhang Hongtu, Michael McClard. Mr., Osvaldo Romberg
Romare Bearden Sharon Butler Chun Kwang Young Jeff Gabel Michael McClard Mario Merz Jaye Moon Mr. Janet Taylor Pickett Osvaldo Romberg David Salle Zhang Hongtu exhibitions near me
Installation 5: Sharon Butler, Jeff Gabel
Zhang Hongtu Self-Portrait in the Style of the Old Masters, 2001 Computer morphed Photograph digitally print with the artist frame 38 x 29 inches Edition of 3 exhibitions near me
Zhang Hongtu
Self-Portrait in the Style of the Old Masters, 2001
Computer morphed Photograph digitally print with the artist frame
38 x 29 inches
Edition of 3
Janet Taylor Pickett Follow The Light, 2013 Collage and acrylic on wood 6 x 6 x 2.5 inches exhibitions near me
Janet Taylor Pickett
Follow The Light, 2013
Collage and acrylic on wood
6 x 6 x 2.5 inches
Janet Taylor Pickett Journey Into The Interior, 2013-14 Collage and acrylic on canvas 12 x 16 x 1.5 inches exhibitions near me
Janet Taylor Pickett
Journey Into The Interior, 2013-14
Collage and acrylic on canvas
12 x 16 x 1.5 inches
Michael McClard Just PassingThrough: Girlfriend, 2022 Pastel on paper 24 x 18 inches exhibitions near me
Michael McClard
Just PassingThrough: Girlfriend, 2022
Pastel on paper
24 x 18 inches
Michael McClard Just PassingThrough: Boyfriend, 2022 Pastel on paper 24 x 18 inches exhibitions near me
Michael McClard
Just PassingThrough: Boyfriend, 2022
Pastel on paper
24 x 18 inches
Sharon Butler December 20, 2018, 2021 Oil on canvas 52 x 45 inches exhibitions near me
Sharon Butler
December 20, 2018, 2021
Oil on canvas
52 x 45 inches
Sharon Butler San Miguel, 2021 Oil on canvas 52 x 45 inches picasso exhibitions near me
Sharon Butler
San Miguel, 2021,
Oil on canvas
52 x 45 inches
Jaye Moon Get That Money, 2022 Lego bricks and acrylic board 60 x 60 inches exhibitions near me
Jaye Moon
Get That Money, 2022
Lego bricks and acrylic board
60 x 60 inches
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TANGO

Summer Exhibition

July 13 - August 17, 2022

Romare Bearden
Sharon Butler
Chun Kwang Young
Jeff Gabel
Michael McClard
Mario Merz
Jaye Moon
Mr.
Janet Taylor Pickett
Osvaldo Romberg
David Salle
Zhang Hongtu

Related:

Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Romare Bearden Blues Singer from the Delta, 1987 Watercolor, collage 30 x 40 inches

ROMARE BEARDEN

TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
Adam Simon reviews Sharon Butler’s NEXT MOVES on The Brooklyn Rail

Adam Simon reviews Sharon Butler’s “Next Moves” in the October 2022 issue of The Brooklyn Rail

September 15 – November 15, 2022
Sharon Butler

NEXT MOVES

Sharon Butler
Sept 15 - Nov 15, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Sharon Butler

SHARON BUTLER

TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Chun Kwang Young

CHUN KWANG YOUNG

Brooklyn Museum is showcasing MOTIVE, a film by Michael McClard

Brooklyn Museum is showcasing MOTIVE, a film by Michael McClard

November 11, 2022 - April 16, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Michael McClard

BIZARRE DELIGHT

Michael McClard
Jan 26 - Feb 28, 2022
MICHAEL MCCLARD

MICHAEL MCCLARD

Michael McClard

MICHAEL MCCLARD

Michael McClard, Candide

MICHAEL MCCLARD

Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
Jeff Gabel #15 (Card Series 2), 2006 Pencil on paper 4.25 x 3 in.

JEFF GABEL

TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Mario Merz ‘IT IS AS POSSIBLE TO HAVE A SPACE WITH TABLES FOR 88 PEOPLE AS IT IS TO HAVE A SPACE TABLE FOR NO ONE,’ 1973 Double-sided pen drawing on paper 37.5 x 26 inches

MARIO MERZ

TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


Oct 5 – 31, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
snowboard

MR.

Snowboard
MR.

MR.

Osvaldo Roberg Untitled (De La Tour), 1998 Oil on canvas 14 x 10 inches, framed

OSVALDO ROMBERG

TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
David Sallie

DAVID SALLE

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


Oct 5 – 31, 2023
Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso Málaga 

Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso Málaga 

October 3, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Zhang Hongtu participates Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions at the Asia Society Texas, February 10 - July 2, 2023

Zhang Hongtu is featured at the Asia Society in Texas

February 10 - July 2, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
(DE)CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND BEYOND November 13, 2022 to March 12, 2023

Zhang Hongtu lectures and exhibits at the Wende Museum

November 13, 2022 - March 12, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
March 25 - April 27, 2022
ZHANG HONGTU:

Zhang Hongtu’s “Mai Dang Lao” from the Brooklyn Museum Collection is featured on PBS NYC – ARTS

February 17, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

Categories: exhibitions

Tags:

ALREADY AND NOT YET

Eric Brown
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
ALREADY AND NOT YET | ERIC BROWN | MAY 5 - JUNE 25, 2022
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
Rome, 2022
Oil on canvas
18 x 14 in.
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
In The City In May, 2022
Oil on paper
10 x 14 in.
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
In December, 2021
Oil on canvas
11 x 14 in.
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
Horizon (6-12), 2020
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 in.
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
Shroud, 2021
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 in.
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
The Particulars of Rapture, Triptych
2022
Oil on canvas
14 x 43 in.
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
Untitled (Textile), 2022
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 in.
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
The Presence of Everything, 2022
Oil and graphite on paper
11 x 14 in.
Eric Brown
Eric Brown
Spirit, Groan Inwardly While We Wait, Quadtypichs,
2022
Oil on canvas
72 x 82 in.
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ALREADY AND NOT YET

By Eric Brown

May 5 - June 25, 2022

JENNIFER BAAHNG is pleased to announce the gallery representation of Eric Brown and his inaugural show, Already and Not Yet.  The exhibition is a showcase of small and easel-sized paintings and works on paper created since 2020.  Central to this new body of work is process.  Brown employs the sacred process of repetitive mark-making and a meticulous and personal approach to painting to create literal and visual weavings.  The resultant paintings appear as handmade textiles that invite an up-close looking.  Already and Not Yet evokes metaphors of strength and vulnerability, imperfection, mending, and domesticity.  The exhibition will be on view from May 5 through June 11, 2022, with an opening reception on Thursday, May 5, 2022, from 5 pm to 8 pm.

At first glance, the works in Already and Not Yet suggest woven textiles, but they are not paintings of textiles or any singular subject, moment, or linear plot.  Drawing on philosopher Roland Barthes’ theory that text is a living fabric interwoven with multiple meanings, Brown shows in these works a striving for a new painterly language.  Where it is the nature of semantics to constrain and shape meaning, his painted marks-on-canvas offer a “longhand,” open to the vastness of interpretation, capable of suggesting more than just partial answers.  

The Particulars of Rapture (2022), named after a poem by Wallace Stevens, is comprised of three paintings that echo each other with similar themes but individually look different.  A visual tension materialized, the work is an elegant manifestation of the cerebral conundrums questioned by the artist.  Painted freehand, there is a tenderness of human engagement.  

The concept of “already but not yet” was proposed by theologian Geerhardus Vos, who believed that we simultaneously live in the present age and await an “age to come.”  Brown observed that amidst the unimaginable loss and suffering especially during the early days of the pandemic, even in our collective wait for a return to “normalcy,” we continue to live.  

Spirit, Groan Inwardly While We Wait (2020), created around the first weeks of the pandemic, is the source from which the rest of the works in this show originated.  It consists of four various sized panels configured into a cross with an implied fifth panel in the center.  Determinedly cross-hatched, through symbolism and abstraction, the work refers to human form and nature.  It is calm, temperamental, compelling, and yearning for everyday small miracles.  

Intimate, quotidian, diaristic, potent, the works in Already and Not Yet are neither realist nor expressionist.  They are direct and unadorned.  Repeated delicate marks seemingly fluctuate with natural light and heave in breathing spaces.  Already and Not Yet proposes that the spiritual in art may happen on a small scale, rather than in grand, orchestral gestures, and reveals the artist in pursuit of a new abstract vocabulary.  

Eric Brown received a B.A. in Studio Art from Vassar College.  In 2020, he received a Master of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary.  He is a painter and a chaplain.  He is the recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship (2016) and was a Visiting Artist and Scholar at the American Academy in Rome (2015).  He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at Ille Arts, Crush Curatorial, James W. Palmer Gallery, and Theodore: Art.  His works have been featured in artcritical, ARTnews, The New Criterion, The New York Observer, and The New York Times.  He divides his time between New York City and Sag Harbor.  

The Particulars of Rapture at ARTS CENTER at DUCK CREEK, July 23 -August 21, 2022

Related:

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


Oct 5 – 31, 2023
Eric Brown

ALREADY AND NOT YET

Eric Brown
May 5 - June 25, 2022
Eric Brown

ERIC BROWN

Eric Brown

ERIC BROWN

LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

Categories: exhibitions

Tags:

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
Zhang Hongtu
Zhang Hongtu
Installation 1
Zhang Hongtu
Installation 2
Zhang Hongtu
Installation 3
Zhang Hongtu
Installation 4
Zhang Hongtu
Installation 5
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ZHANG HONGTU

Van Gogh/Bodhidharma
March 25 – April 27, 2022

Van Gogh/Bodhidharma (2007 – 2014) by Zhang Hongtu consists of 39 ink paintings created over the course of seven years. They are the Vincent van Gogh self-portraits remade in the style of the classical Zen portraits of the Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma, the founding patriarch of Zen Buddhism. Zhang’s morphing of van Gogh and Bodhidharma into one is a remarkable display of the artist’s masterful ability to dissolve distinctions between two icons. This notion of breaking down impossible barriers has been the lodestar of Zhang’s life and five-decade-long career. As a Muslim outsider in China, then as a Chinese exile in America, Zhang has continually sought, through his works, to disintegrate dividing walls in culture, politics, and time. His works involve thoughtful juxtapositions of critique with humor, and the appropriation of images of authority figures and cultural icons, for the purpose of deflating the power of such formidably divisive influences. His work captures and contemplates a multi-layered discourse on competing ideas and proposes universality and relevancy in unexpected ways. 

Related:

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES


Oct 5 – 31, 2023
Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso Málaga 

Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso Málaga 

October 3, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Zhang Hongtu participates Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions at the Asia Society Texas, February 10 - July 2, 2023

Zhang Hongtu is featured at the Asia Society in Texas

February 10 - July 2, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
(DE)CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND BEYOND November 13, 2022 to March 12, 2023

Zhang Hongtu lectures and exhibits at the Wende Museum

November 13, 2022 - March 12, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
March 25 - April 27, 2022
ZHANG HONGTU:

Zhang Hongtu’s “Mai Dang Lao” from the Brooklyn Museum Collection is featured on PBS NYC – ARTS

February 17, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

Categories: exhibitions

Tags:

WINGS OF DESIRE

Wings of Desire | Jaye Moon
Wings of Desire | Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
Wings of Desire, 2022
20 x 50 x 1 in.
Lego bricks, wood 

“It’s great to live by the spirit, to testify for eternity… only what is spiritual in people’s minds. But sometimes I’m fed up with my spiritual existence… of forever hovering above. I’d like to feel a weight in me… to end the infinity, and to tie me to earth.” “Why am I me, and why not you?” “Why am I here, and why not there? -Wings of Desire, 1987, film
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon Paris/Texas, 2022
Lego Bricks, wood
20 x 20 x1 in.

"You realize that I can't see you, even though you can see me. If you turn the light off in there, will you be able to see me? I don't know. I never tried. Can you see me now? Yeah. Do you recognize me? Oh, Trevis." - Paris,Texas, 1984, film
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
Color Purple, 2022
a diptych
Lego bricks, wood
20 x 40 x1 in.

“Folks don’t like nobody being  too proud,  or too free.” “God love admiration. You saying God is vain? No, not vain. Just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple…… in a field… and you don’t notice it.” - The Color Purple, 1985, film
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
Our Differences, 2022
Lego bricks, wood
20 x 20 x1 in.

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences,” -Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 1984, book
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
Perfect Lovers, 2012
Altered two commercial clocks
13. 5 x 13.5 x 2.75 in., each
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
America, 2000
Lego bricks, plexiglass
12 x 12 x 1 in.

Jaye Moon
America - Pedestrian Crossing, 2002
Lego bricks, plexiglass
12 x 12 x 1 in.

Jaye Moon
America_Red Door, 2000
Lego bricks, plexiglass
12 x 12 x 2 in.

Jaye Moon
Untitled, 1997
Lego bricks, plexiglass, metal
12 x 12 x 1 in.
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
Who’s in Heaven, 2012
Iridescent, florescent, matt, transparent plexiglass in aluminum frame
16.25 H x 18.25 W inches
Unique

Jaye Moon
F Word, 2012
Lego bricks, plexiglass
10 x 10 in
Unique

Jaye Moon
S Word, 2012
Lego bricks, plexiglass
10 x 10 in
Unique

Jaye Moon
Cunt, 2012
Iridescent, florescent, matt, transparent plexiglass in aluminum frame
21 x 15.25 in.
Unique
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
People Like You need To Fuck People Like Me, 2012
Neon
26 x 35.4 x 2.6 in
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
Medicine, 2022
Metal spoon, beads
6.5 x 1.5 x .5 in.
Unique
Jaye Moon
Jaye Moon
Live Or Die, 2022
Lego bricks, two commercial clocks, two amplifiers
13.5 x 13.5 x 2.75 in., each
“Who's deciding who's gonna live?” “Who's deciding who's gonna die?” -The Thin Red Line, 1987, film
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WINGS OF DESIRE

A Brief Survey of Sculptural Paintings by Jaye Moon

March 25 – April 27, 2022

Jennifer Baahng Gallery is pleased to announce the gallery representation of Jaye Moon, and her solo exhibition, WINGS OF DESIRE, a brief survey of sculptural paintings from 2012 to 2022, with a focus on her work with braille. WINGS OF DESIRE is an exhibition that highlights Moon’s praxis of using braille as an art medium to create freer and wider ways to communicate and open possibilities to everyone. The exhibition will run from March 25 through April 27, 2022, with an opening reception on Friday, March 25, 2022, from 3pm to 7pm.

Viewers will experience Moon’s work through the brilliant colors, bold patterns, and the novelty of using universally appealing, unpolitical, mathematical toys as an art medium. Moon’s LEGO paintings also contain messages transcribed in braille. Braille, which is not a language but a code into which many languages can be transcribed, consists of six dots arranged in the formation of a rectangle. Moon uses braille in her work, presented either as dots arranged in a specific formation, or presented as numbers (with each number signifying what would have been a dot’s position in the rectangle). What viewers will find coded in the braille in Moon’s work are the intricate human stories that we share.

In the poetic and eponymous work, Wings of Desire (2022), LEGO bricks are sculpted to visually capture the opening scene of Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire (1987). It depicts an aerial view of two invisible angels looking over a city, and the segregation and power that cause one lonesome angel to feel isolated and desirous to connect with people. It also contains a specific pattern of raised dots on the surface, which form the braille transcription of the script excerpt of a poignant moment in the film. The braille is conspicuous but also seamlessly blended into the background. It is tactile and in plain sight for all to see, but at the same time, it transmits messages just for the traditionally excluded.

In the visually striking, Neon work, People Like You Need To Fuck People Like Me (2012), Moon’s rework of Tracey Emin’s 2007 iconic piece, Moon transcribed Emin’s tantalizing, confessional message into braille presented as numbers. It is another example of Moon using the mode of language for the unseen, for its visual and universal utility, this time to shatter the ice in the silenced discussion of female sexuality. Emin’s feminist message is widely received in the West, yet in many Asian cultures, expressing sexuality, especially female sexuality, is discouraged. By translating Emin’s raw message into numerical code, Korea-born Moon opens up the possibility to hail the same message in the face of discrimination, without fear of ostracism or penalty.

Moon uses braille as an art medium to break new ground in the contemporary human condition of isolation caused by barriers of sexuality and disability. She uses braille because it is based on binary logic that can transcend political, cultural, and social structures. It is also the mode of language for the people who are often overlooked.

WINGS OF DESIRE is an elegant and robust display of stunning, intricate, and inventive works that are both exploratory and instructive: as we shift towards more impersonal communication, we may lose the complexity of our own identities, but we also discover new ways to see our identities and gain a greater understanding of each other. In this pursuit of her own distinctive culture, Jaye Moon is undeterred.

Jaye Moon Soars On Wings of Desire by Paul Laster

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