Fine Art PR Publicity Announcements News and Information
Fine Art PR Publicity Announcements News and Information

Black & Whiteworks – A Group Exhibition at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts

Ronald Feldman Fine Arts will exhibit works in black and white by more than thirty artists, many of whom have been associated with the history of the gallery, which was founded in 1971. The exhibition highlights how these artists use the qualities of black and white and includes sculpture, painting, drawings, prints, and photography. On exhibition through 31 July, 2009.

The exhibition features several sculptures, including a recent chair and desk fabricated from white chalk by Tavares Strachan, which contrasts in mood and surface texture with the glossy vulva-shaped ceramics of Hannah Wilke, the machine-produced Scumaks by Roxy Paine, and a Mylar newspaper sculpture by Warhol.

Incorporating political content, Magic Sticks, 2009 by Rico Gatson and KGB, 1975 by Komar & Melamid exploit the graphic power of black and white; the elegiac sculpture, Ascending/Descending, 2008 by Pepón Osorio, accesses its spiritual dimension. Cones of Silence, 2000 by the conceptual and minimalist artist, Terry Fox, is evidence of his subdued palette and poetic complexity. Committed to using stock materials, Allan Wexler focuses on architectural forms and archetypal figures. David Opdyke works with shadows, and Elaine Angelopoulos, Marcus Brown, James Castle, and Joe Graham-Felson are inspired by the natural colors of rope, porcelain, soot, and burnt wood.

Photographs by performance-oriented artists from the 70’s, when black and white was the common form of reproduction, include Eleanor Antin’s king persona, Chris Burden’s Shoot, Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Touch Sanitation project, and S.O.S self-portraits by Hannah Wilke. Warhol is represented by two prints, Birmingham Race Riot from 1964 and a Joseph Beuys portrait. Works by Beuys include a 1952 woodcut, 1962 collage cut-out drawing, and a 1982 interpretation of thinking.

Other works include abstractions by Carl Fudge, who explores the silhouette and negative space, and Bruce Pearson, who discovers tonalities within the non-color spectrum. Leon Golub’s black and white work parallels his brutal subject matter. Using current photography technology, Keith Cottingham discovers new realities, Jason Salavon uncovers America’s cultural past, and Peggy Kaplan incorporates artists’ drawings. The complexity of the line is expressed in diagrams by Justin Amrhein, Kelly Heaton, Brodsky & Utkin and R. Buckminster Fuller. Scott Campbell uses charcoal and graphite to combine the natural environment, the urban grid, and a microscopic view of penicillin molecules.

Acknowledging the close relationship of black and white to text, other works include the alphabet-based constructions of Edwin Schlossberg, Christine Hill’s rubber-stamped posters, Todd Siler’s research into creativity and the brain, and the drawings of Stephanie Van Zandt Nelson, whose journals documenting her daily struggle for most of her adult life were discovered after her death in 2003.

Featured artists : Justin Amrhein, Elaine Angelopoulos, Eleanor Antin, Joseph Beuys, Brodsky & Utkin, Marcus Brown, Chris Burden, Scott Campbell, James Castle, Keith Cottingham, Joe Graham-Felson, Terry Fox, Carl Fudge, Rico Gatson, Leon Golub, Kelly Heaton, Christine Hill, Peggy Jarrell Kaplan, Komar & Melamid, Stephanie Van Zandt Nelson, David Opdyke, Pepón Osorio, Roxy Paine, Bruce Pearson, Jason Salavon, Edwin Schlossberg, Todd Siler, Tavares Strachan, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Andy Warhol, Allan Wexler, and Hannah Wilke.

Ronald Feldman Fine Arts / Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 – 6. Monday by appointment. July: Monday – Thursday 10 – 6. Friday, 10 – 3. For more information, contact Sarah Paulson (212) 226-3232 or [email protected] . Website : www.feldmangallery.com