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10/10/2011

Two exhibitions

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Mark Garry and Isabel Nolan

Stephen Friedman Gallery is delighted to announce a two-person exhibition of work by Mark Garry and Isabel Nolan.
This is the first exhibition in a new programme dedicated to the work of emerging artists that will be presented in the gallery's recently renovated space, located at no.11 Old Burlington Street.

The exhibition brings together the work of two of the most exciting young artists working in Ireland. Here, two and three-dimensional works which employ abstracted formal devices in unique and unexpected ways will be shown alongside each other. From silk-clad steel sculptures to kaleidoscopic cotton vortexes, the works shown here demonstrate the artists' subtle command over their materials and articulate a wider concern with the inherently subjective nature of constructed meaning.

Mark Garry has transformed the front gallery space with a site-specific installation comprised entirely of long strands of coloured cotton thread. Stretched tight from wall to ceiling; ceiling to floor, the strands form a continual channel of colours, akin to a beam of light refracting and reflecting or a winding musical score. As the work traverses the gallery space the interior architecture is dissected and contorted, both visually and acoustically. In this way, the relationship between the space and the artwork becomes entwined, with each needing the other for meaning to be realised.

In Gallery 2 Garry shows an interactive sonic sculpture alongside other smaller sculptural objects. This sonic sculpture comprises of two componiums, two reels of punched paper and two resonating chambers; one being the volume of a human heart and the other the volume of a human brain. The viewer is invited to wind each of the two componiums. As the quiet, tinkling notes of sound disperse across the gallery, the encounter with the dazzling installation in the front space is further activated.

Isabel Nolan is known for her exuberant sculptures, which are in equal parts enticing and puzzling; playful and serene. Here, Nolan reunites a pair of sculptures never shown together: Future Thing and Kiss the Machine. Each of these sculptures resembles a three dimensional line drawing; an undulating abstraction hovering in the air yet fashioned from steel and wrapped in a thin, lightly patterned silk fabric. The shimmering silk ‘skin' is a muted grey, mirroring the surface it conceals - from afar its presence perhaps goes unnoticed. As such these works refuse instant recognition. Their titles gesture towards meaning but deny full clarification. Indeed Future Thing implies that meaning might only be found in some unspecified future moment, its purpose not yet realised.

Nolan also presents a selection of paintings: smaller scale works, which permit the artist a wider freedom in expressing her unique interpretations of her surroundings. Vivid, dynamic brush strokes, dripping paint and a palette of vibrant colour lend these canvases an air of spontaneity, recalling the work of Wassily Kandinsky.

Nolan and Garry each exhibit a meticulous approach to their making processes. The works presented here are expertly fashioned and command an inquisitive and considered response. As such, this exhibition marks a dynamic beginning to the new programme at no.11 Old Burlington Street.

Mark Garry (b.1972, Ireland) lives and works in Ireland. Forthcoming exhibitions include The Phoenix, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, France (2011) and All Humans Do, White box, New York (2012). Recent notable exhibitions include: include Making and Meaning, CAVE, Detroit, Michigan (2011); University of Ulster gallery, Belfast (2011); Brittleness, Maria Stenfors, London (2011); Sleepover, The Serpentine Gallery, London (2010); Gallery Vartai, Vilnius, Lithuania (2010); Another Place, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2010); Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough (2009); The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (2009); Reverse Pedagogy, Model Niland, Sligo, Republic of Ireland (2009); Flower Power, Tai Turin Art International, CRAA Centro (2009); The Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA (2008); Green screen, The Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown, Sydney, Australia (2008); All colours Black, next to nothing, RHA, Dublin (2007); Rapid Eye Movement, Temple Bar Galleries, Dublin (2007); It's Difficult to say, Gallery 2, The Paradise, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2006); Making and finding, The Foundation to Life, New York, USA (2006); No one else can make me feel the colours that you bring, Temple Bar Galleries, Dublin (2004); 3 Person show, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2004). Garry represented Ireland at the 2005 Venice Biennale in a group exhibition and Ireland at Venice 2005, which was subsequently presented at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, in 2006.

Isabel Nolan (b.1974, Dublin, Ireland) currently lives and works in Dublin. Forthcoming solo exhibitions include The Model, Sligo (2011) and The Musée d'art moderne de Saint Etienne (2012). Recent solo exhibitions include Clocks and Seasons and Promises, Gallery Side 2, Tokyo (2010); Turning Point, Permanent Public Artwork for Terminal 2, Dublin Airport, commissioned by the DAA (2010); on a perilous margin, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2009); The Paradise [29], Gallery 2, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2008). Nolan represented Ireland at the 2005 Venice Biennale in a group exhibition, Ireland at Venice 2005, which was subsequently presented at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, in 2006. Recent group exhibitions include King Rat, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2010); Coalesce: Happen-stance, Smart, Amsterdam (2009); Through the Lens: New Media Art from Ireland, Beijing Art Museum of the Imperial City (2008); Order, Desire, Light, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2008).

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Anne Truitt
Works from the Estate

Stephen Friedman Gallery is delighted to present Anne Truitt: Works from the Estate, an exhibition conceived in collaboration with The Estate of Anne Truitt and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. This is the first solo presentation of Anne Truitt's work to be held in Europe and brings together a rare selection of sculptures and paintings by this important, mid-twentieth century, American artist.
  
Anne Truitt was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1921. Her career as a painter and sculptor spanned over forty years, during which time she was the subject of major solo presentations at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974; the Baltimore Museum of Art, 1992; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2010.

Truitt's early practice found resonance with the American Abstract Expressionists, formulating itself around a core interest in colour - albeit from a sculptural standpoint. From hesitant experiments with clay, wire and cement, to elegant wooden, totem-like sculptures and monochromatic paintings, Truitt's work successfully re-defined the boundaries of American Abstraction. She is now recognised as one of the movement's leading proponents.

Presented in this exhibition are seven paintings and five sculptures. The sculptures have been carefully selected from key periods throughout the artist's career with the earliest shown here from 1962 and the most recent from 2004. Fabricated from wood and painted with monochromatic layers of acrylic, these works resemble sleek, rectangular columns or pillars. In their unique combination of colour and form, the sculptures are the culmination of Truitt's endeavour to articulate her life experiences, having stated, "...everything I make in the studio is a distillation of direct experience, sometimes even specific visual experience". (Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journey of An Artist, p.40)

In these compelling works, the artist sought to remove any trace of her brush, sanding down each layer of paint between applications and creating perfectly finished planes of colour. Standing self-supported in the gallery space, this purity of tone becomes even more pronounced and the sculptures' life-sized scale more evident. Indeed, the painstaking attention that Truitt paid to each of her totemic works in their conception, belies a physical encounter that was of great importance to the artist: "[T]he fact that I have to use my whole body in making my work seems to disperse my intensity in a way that suits me." (Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journey of An Artist, p.43)

This physicality is also encountered in Truitt's paintings. Of the seven presented here, six are from the Arundel series, her most developed and recognisable body of works on canvas. Characterised by subtle graphite lines drawn onto expanses of bright white paint, this work became a central aspect of the artist's practice throughout her career, as she describes below:

"The Arundel series of paintings was begun in 1973; I continue to make them from time to time, and my feeling is that I will do so for some years to come. I use only pencil and a very little white paint against a field of action I render at once active and inert by making it entirely white. In these paintings I set forth, to see for myself how they appear, what might be called the tips of my conceptual icebergs in that I put down so little of all that they refer to."
Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journey of An Artist, p.99

So striking are these paintings in their white luminosity, they almost appear to move, humming softly against the walls on which they hang. They are constrained only by the thin, freely drawn graphite lines rendered in pencil atop the white surfaces. As the artist describes above, each of these lines is referential, signifying a wider stream of consciousness or thought process. In this manner, the markings are thus evidence of a very specific time and place. Indeed, the works' titles further emphasize this crucial aspect of Truitt's work: Arundel is taken from the name of Anne Arundel County, Maryland - the state in which Truitt was born.

Scale and placement is integral to Truitt's work and to understanding her wider endeavour as an artist. The author of three autobiographical books, Truitt constantly grappled with what it meant to be a practicing artist whilst maintaining a home and family. Through her eloquent, diaristic writing, it becomes increasingly clear that, whilst often associated with the Minimalists, her work was actually defined by a powerful emotional and autobiographical reflex. In this sense, her sophisticated approach to sculpture and painting and their combination, belies simple art historical categorisations.

Anne Truitt: Works from the Estate is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, which includes an in-depth essay by Art Historian Dr. Anna Lovatt.

Anne Truitt (1921 - 2004) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including Anne Truitt: Sculpture 1962-2004, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (2010); Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2009-2010); Anne Truitt: Sculpture, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, N.Mexico (2000); Anne Truitt: A Life in Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art (1992); Anne Truitt: Sculpture and Drawings, 1961-1973, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, touring to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (1973 - 1974); Truitt, André Emmerich Gallery, New York (1963). Recent notable group exhibitions include The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009); Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976, The Jewish Museum. Traveled to Saint Louis Art Museum, St Louis, and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. (2008); A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2004).

Stephen Friedman Gallery is participating in Frieze Art Fair with a solo presentation of new work by Huma Bhabha, stand D5, 12 - 16 October 2011.

For further details please contact Alice Walters on +44 (0)20 7494 1434

Image: Mark Garry and Isabel Nolan

Private view: Tuesday 11 October, 6 - 8pm

Stephen Friedman Gallery
11 - 25 - 28 Old Burlington Street London W1S 3AN
Gallery hours are: Tuesday to Friday, 10am - 6pm and Saturday, 11am - 5pm

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