NEW
Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic
Opens September 13
The Shakers, often celebrated for their minimalist approach to design, will be showcased in a new light with the exhibition Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic. Made by women in the mid-19th century and believed to represent divine messages, the “gift” drawings on display represent a departure from the simplicity typically associated with Shaker material culture.
Opening during the 250th year of Shakerism in the United States, the exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum, features drawings widely considered to be among the finest surviving examples of this rare type. These symbols of love and nature were often given as “tokens” to other Shakers during meetings. Brightly colored and replete with intricate ornamentation, they represent a stunning world of celestial imagery. Compared to examples of Shaker clothing and furniture that will also be included in the exhibition, the vibrancy of the drawings will mark a distinct contrast with the clean lines typically associated with Shaker design.
LAST CHANCE
2. Rose B. Simpson: “Seed”
This commissioned public art exhibition by Rose B. Simpson is on view simultaneously in Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park. “Seed” is part of the milestone twentieth anniversary of Madison Square Park Conservancy’s art program and is the Conservancy’s first collaboration with another New York City public park.
Simpson and other artists of her generation are resetting long-entrenched art historical interpretation around the soaring capacity of figuration. Seed is a formidable platform for this reassessment. The artist creates sentinels in weathered steel and bronze that lead with angularity and durability; industrial bolts fasten masks forged in bronze to sections cut from ten-foot-long steel sheets. But there is implicit tension within: Simpson constructs planar compositions that at only three-quarters of an inch deep have an exquisite fragility, like that of a towering paper doll flattened over generations and held in place by a folded steel stand. She shapes symbolism in each sculpture, where the Native past is enduring and resonant. The sentinels seem to have an acute understanding of their role as contemporary figures.
In Madison Square Park, seven eighteen-foot-high sentinels convene in a circle supporting and nurturing a female form who emerges from the earth. In Inwood Hill Park, one sculpture faces the ancient wood in acknowledgment of Native histories deeply connected to the land; the other looks outward to the Hudson River, part of a trade route that brought settlers who worked to obliterate Native people and practices beginning in the 1600s. Simpson’s work channels the vision of an artist raised in Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico and is installed in two public parks in Lenapehoking, the homelands of the Lenape people. Her sentinels are androgynous; there is fluidity in their bearing.
3. What It Becomes
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What It Becomes is an exhibition of new and rarely seen works from the Whitney’s collection that encourage us to think expansively about what drawing is and can be. Featuring the work of 11 artists, including Darrel Ellis, David Hammons, Ana Mendieta, Catherine Opie, and Wendy Red Star, What It Becomes explores how artists have turned to drawing as a way to reveal the unseen and make the familiar unrecognizable. The exhibition takes its title from the words of artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, who, describing how the act of drawing transforms the source imagery she works from, remarks, “What it becomes is what I’m interested in.” The processes and techniques inherent to drawing play a fundamental role in the creation of the works presented here, whether they take shape on paper, in photography, or through video. Some artists employ maneuvers like inscription and erasure to alter or reclaim existing images. Others emphasize the tactility of the medium by using their bodies as drawing tools or surfaces, transforming their likeness in the process. Harnessing drawing’s relationship to touch and its ability to convey change, the artists explore the malleable nature of identity and the possibility of shaping and redefining oneself.
4. Andrea Cote: To Belong to the World
Opens September 14
For the 2024 Parrish Road Show, Andrea Cote has been invited to create a site-specific exhibition at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton, NY. Composed of uniquely printed fabrics, some of which are suspended as banners from trees and others installed with bamboo structures reaching approximately fifteen feet in height, Cote’s installation will complement and highlight various features of the landscape. Over the last few months, Cote has made a point to frequently visit Bridge Gardens to gather holly leaves, ferns, and bamboo, among other natural materials to converge both elements of nature and the human form in celestial and cellular patterns celebrating our interconnectedness. These visits have been carefully planned to coincide with the different seasons of the year to ensure an annual view of the plant life of the garden.
The cyanotype process is recognizable by its varying shades of blue and is the early photographic process of using light exposure to capture shadow and translucency. In one of the specific installations, banners encompassing the Rose Garden track the sun’s path throughout the year—Cote represents this trajectory by producing prints on specific celestial events. Begun on the Winter Solstice and exposed on auspicious dates throughout the year, this circle will be completed onsite mid-exhibition during the Autumn Equinox.
The title, To Belong to The World is taken from a line in a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (Hush, Middle Creek Publishing 2020).
