Walead Beshty
Alexandra Bircken
Sarah Braman
Wolfgang Breuer
Tom Burr
Ernst Caramelle
Andy Coolquitt
Paul Cowan
N. Dash
Tony Feher
Michel Francois
Joe Fyfe
Kim Gordon
David Hammons
Richard Hawkins
Ann Cathrin November Hoibo
Bill Jenkins
Sergej Jensen
Udomsak Krisanamis
Jason Loebs
Agnes Lux
David Moreno
Virginia Overton
Manfred Pernice
Judith Scott
Nancy Shaver
Gedi Sibony
Michael E. Smith
Josh Smith
Shinique Smith
Al Taylor
Bill Walton
Andy Warhol
Hannah Wilke
Philadelphia Wireman
B. Wurtz
Amy Yao
Matthew Higgs
The show seeks to develop the ideas of 'vernacular' or 'everyday' abstraction: "our material culture are transformed and re-purposed into something that is simultaneously familiar and strange.
curated by Matthew Higgs
Walead Beshty,
Alexandra Bircken,
Sarah Braman,
Wolfgang Breuer,
Tom Burr,
Ernst Caramelle,
Andy Coolquitt,
Paul Cowan,
N. Dash,
Tony Feher,
Michel François,
Joe Fyfe,
Kim Gordon,
David Hammons,
Richard Hawkins,
Ann Cathrin November Høibo,
Bill Jenkins,
Sergej Jensen,
Udomsak Krisanamis,
Jason Loebs,
Agnes Lux,
David Moreno,
Virginia Overton,
Manfred Pernice,
Judith Scott,
Nancy Shaver,
Gedi Sibony,
Michael E. Smith,
Josh Smith,
Shinique Smith,
Al Taylor,
Bill Walton,
Andy Warhol,
Hannah Wilke,
Philadelphia Wireman,
B. Wurtz,
Amy Yao
James Cohan Gallery is pleased to present Everyday Abstract – Abstract Everyday, an exhibition curated
by Matthew Higgs, the Director of White Columns, New York. The exhibition will open on Friday, June
1, from 6 – 8 PM and will run through Friday, July 27, 2012.
In a statement about the exhibition Higgs has written:
Four years ago I was invited to Berlin to present a proposal for what would have been the 6th Berlin Biennale. (My proposal
wasn’t accepted - the honors went to curator Kathrin Rhomberg, whose exhibition, “what is waiting out there”, eventually opened
in June 2010.) The project I proposed had the working title Everyday Abstract – Abstract Everyday and sought, in its
most fundamental sense, to consider the complex entanglements between non-representational art and everyday life.
This exhibition at James Cohan Gallery seeks to develop these earlier ideas around what I termed “vernacular” or “everyday”
abstraction: that is artistic practices that actively privilege and operate in the grey area between an essentially non-representational
image/object and the use of quotidian materials and processes.
Collectively the works in Everyday Abstract – Abstract Everyday seem most interested in the point at which the self-
contained rationality of earlier modernist abstraction is ruptured. This sense of “rupture” – both physically and psychologically -
is perhaps the prevailing aesthetic attitude that unites the otherwise highly idiosyncratic artists – and art works – brought together
in Everyday Abstract – Abstract Everyday. In the work of all these artists’ traces of our material culture are
transformed, or perhaps more accurately, re-purposed into something that is simultaneously familiar and strange.
Image: Hannah Wilke S.O.S. Starification Object Series #2 (1975) Chewing gum on rice paper, mounted on rag board, 33 3/4 X 25 1/2 X 2 1/2 in
opening: Friday, June 1, from 6 – 8 PM
James Cohan Gallery
533 West 26th Street - New York
Hours Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 6pm