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15/2/2006

Michal Rovner

Pace Wildenstein, New York

Fields of Fire

The exhibition includes works from 2005-2006 created after the artist’s 2004 journey across Central Asia. At Rovner’s final stop on that trip, a remote oil drilling camp in The Republic of Kazakhstan, she found and filmed the elements from which she composed various works. Rovner used the jet of flame, which shoots from the tops of oilrig smokestacks as natural gas is bled off of the well, as her primary subject.

The largest piece, Fields of Fire (2005) was on view last year in the artist’s solo show at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. New works are being exhibited for the first time including video pieces from two series entitled: Postcards and Hybrid Fields.

Rovner is primarily known for her use of highly abstracted human figures as the building blocks of images that recall systems as diverse as writing or laboratory cell cultures. In the current work, for the first time, the artist utilizes the undulated contours of the flame to create the work.

The artist recently remarked about Fields of Fire, “I went to the oilfields because after all it is in the center of the world’s attention. In the course of the process I understood that the oilfields are not the issue, but just some kind of an undercurrent, an optional point of reference. For me the work relates to a timeline of changes, a seismograph of life, private or global or another form of life with the consecutive changes which occur. Most of my works deal with situations, which are not changing. Here it is a situation, which is not stable even for one second, and its consistency is expressed in an endless, unstoppable tension between what is predicted and what seems to be unknown."

In Fields of Fire, Postcards, Hybrid Fields, and the recent paintings, Rovner harnesses the ethereal, yet voracious nature of her subject in her ongoing examination of processes, which consume, regenerate, reorganize and decay.

Michal Rovner (b. 1957, Israel) studied cinema, television, and philosophy at Tel-Aviv University and received a B.F.A. in photography and art at the Bezalel Academy. In 1978 she co-founded Tel Aviv’s Camera Obscura Art School for studies in photography, video, cinema, and computer art. Ten years later, she moved to New York City.

Some of many Rovner’s video installations include Overhang (2000), a site-specific installation at the Chase Manhattan Bank on Park Avenue in New York City; Overhanging (1999) at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Mutual Interest (1997) at the Tate Gallery, London, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and P.S.1, New York (1999). Her films have been screened internationally at several museums. Notes (2001), a collaboration with composer Philip Glass, was screened at the Lincoln Center Festival 2001, New York and the Barbican Theater, London. Rovner’s film Border (1997) premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and received over a dozen subsequent screenings at major international venues including the Tate Gallery, London; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Michal Rovner’s work is in several permanent collections worldwide including: The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Muse'e de l’Elyse'e, Lausanne; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

PaceWildenstein
534 West 25th Street - New York

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On view

Agnes Martin

Closing the Circle: Early and Late

February 10, 2006 — March 4, 2006

PaceWildenstein is honored to present an exhibition of work by Agnes Martin (1912-2004), entitled Closing the Circle: Early and Late, at 32 East 57th Street, New York, from February 10 through March 4, 2006. On view are thirteen rarely seen paintings and one work on paper from 1957 to 1965 and nine paintings from 1999 to 2004 that demonstrate how Martin’s work came full circle in the last years of her life with her decision to reengage the geometric shapes and irregular grids that characterize the paintings of 1959 and 1960.

PaceWildenstein has represented Agnes Martin since 1975, when the composition of her work was already based on a regular grid. In the intervening years a subtler grid evolved where her brushstrokes and horizontal lines formed the composition. While many of the works on view in Closing the Circle are painted in her signature square format: 72" x 72" or 60" x 60", five vertical canvases of triangles and rectangles from the late 1950s are also included in this exhibition.

Although Martin is known to have been a painter since the mid 1930s, virtually no work survives from before 1957. This is due entirely to the artist’s decision to destroy everything she made prior to her discovery of geometric abstraction. The early work included in this exhibition represent the first examples of Martin’s use of geometry and the grid to create the framework for her quest for beauty and perfection.

Martin culminated her final cycle of paintings, which had begun in 1993, when the artist created seven 5’ square blue canvases, which now hang in The Harwood Museum in Taos, NM. Over the course of that decade, the artist allowed the work to become increasingly colorful and complex, finally reaching the stage exemplified by the work in this exhibition. Here the same forms and compositions that led the artist into four decades of meditations on beauty serve to finish that process.

Arne Glimcher, Martin’s long-time friend and dealer, received a letter in 1981 from the artist, who wrote, “We live a short time in this life and then we are gone from it without a trace, like last summer’s leaves. Anyone familiar with inspiration knows that this is true…The work is preserved only because of the response. If the response is one of greater awareness of beauty and reality, the work will be very carefully preserved…"

Agnes Martin’s work is also currently on view at DIA: Beacon in To the Islands: Agnes Martin’s Paintings 1974-79 (on view through June 26, 2006) as part of its on-going five-part retrospective exhibition. The series recently included “…unknown territory…" Agnes Martin’s Paintings from the 1960s (2005) and opened with “…going forward into unknown territory…" Agnes Martin’s early paintings 1957-67 (2004-2005).

Agnes Martin studied at Western Washington College of Education, Bellingham, WA, prior to receiving her B.S. (1942) from Teachers College, Columbia University. A few years following graduation, Martin matriculated at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, where she also taught art courses before returning to Columbia University to earn her M.A. (1952). Since her first solo exhibition in 1958, Martin’s work has been the subject of more than 85 solo shows and two retrospectives including the survey Agnes Martin organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, which later traveled to Milwaukee, Miami, Houston and Madrid (1992-94) and Agnes Martin: Paintings and Drawings 1974-1990 organized by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, with subsequent venues in France and Germany (1991-92).

In 2002, The Menil Collection, Houston, mounted Agnes Martin: The Nineties and Beyond. That same year, The Harwood Museum of Art at the University of New Mexico, Taos, organized Agnes Martin: Paintings from 2001, as well as a symposium honoring Martin on the occasion of her 90th birthday.

In addition to participating in an international array of group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (1997, 1980, 1976), the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial (1995, 1977), and Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1972), Martin has been the recipient of multiple honors including the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the Women’s Caucus for Art of the College Art Association (2005); the Governor’s Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts given by Governor Gary Johnson, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1998); the National Medal of Arts awarded by President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Arts (1998); the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement by the College Art Association (1998); the Golden Lion for Contribution to Contemporary Art at the Venice Biennale (1997); the Oskar Kokoschka Prize awarded by the Austrian government (1992); the Alexej von Jawlensky Prize awarded by the city of Wiesbaden, Germany (1991); and election to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York (1989).

Agnes Martin’s work can be found in numerous public collections throughout the United States and abroad including: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Chinati Foundation/La Fundacio'n Chinati, Marfa, TX; Dia Center for the Arts, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; The Menil Collection, Houston, TX; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Muse'e national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; The Museum of Modern Art New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, NY; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

PaceWildenstein
32 East 57th Street - New York

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On view

Alexander Calder

From Model to Monument

February 3, 2006 — March 4, 2006

PaceWildenstein, in collaboration with the Calder Foundation, is pleased to announce that Alexander Calder: From Model to Monument, an exhibition investigating the development of the artist's large-scale monuments and commissions over three decades will be on view at 545 West 22nd Street, New York from February 3 through March 4, 2006. The public is invited to attend an opening this week on Thursday, February 2nd from 6 to 8 p.m.

Alexander Calder: From Model to Monument consists of over 30 stabiles from 1956 to 1976. The majority of these rarely exhibited works are the unpainted maquettes that Calder used to develop all of his large-scale work.

Also on view will be three intermediate maquettes from 1967, including Trois Pics for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble; Gwenfritz, for the Smithsonian Institution Museum of History and Technology; and Monsieur Loyal also sited in Grenoble, and commissioned for Lyce'e Jean Bart. Although the commissions are unrelated, the works are not—each one experimented with planes that cut or pierced each other.

The Calder Family has also loaned the 1:3 model of Jerusalem Stabile (1976), one of the artist’s last works. This 24' long sculpture will be exhibited with both a highly detailed engineering maquette and the original, unpainted model.

After receiving a degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute, Hoboken, New Jersey in 1919, Alexander Calder (1898-1976) worked as an automotive engineer and as a draftsman at the New York Edison Company. In the summer of 1921 he worked for a hydraulics engineer in Connecticut and shortly thereafter he did fieldwork in Ohio. These experiences, combined with his family’s artistic history—his father and grandfather were prominent academic sculptors in Philadelphia, the latter made the statue of William Penn which still sits atop City Hall—exposed him to traditional enlargement techniques and their connection to public art.

In 1960, the artist remarked, “There’s been an agrandissement in my work. It’s true I more or less retired from smaller mobiles. I regard them as sort of fiddling. The engineering on the big objects is important; they are mostly designed for a particular spot, and they have to fit properly or support themselves properly…"

In his catalogue essay, Marc Glimcher notes, “Calder’s invention of the stabile set the stage for a major revolution. The nature of his compositions along with the materials and construction allowed the idea of abstraction to expand beyond the gallery, the studio or the museum and spill out onto city streets…This unprecedented accomplishment simultaneously restored the place of monumental, public art and claimed it for abstraction. Scores of artists in the following generations have taken up the challenge of monumental abstraction, and in doing so have generated many of the ground-breaking developments seen in the last forty years of contemporary sculpture."

Alexander Calder: From Model to Monument is one in a series of gallery exhibitions focusing on a particular invention or revelation within the artist's work. Previous shows included Calder '76: Cutouts (2002); Earthly Forms: The Biomorphic Sculpture of Arp, Calder, Noguchi (2000); Alexander Calder: The 50’s (1996); Alexander Calder: Stabiles (1989); Alexander Calder: Bronzes (1987); and Calder’s Calders (1985).

PaceWildenstein
545 West 22nd Street - New York

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