For this year’s edition of Frieze New York, Lehmann Maupin (C12) will present a thematic booth featuring the work of female, Californian artists Mary Corse, Liza Lou, and Catherine Opie. Spanning two generations, these artists all utilize the language of minimalism to explore light, color, form, landscape, place, and identity.
One of the few female artists associated with the 1960’s Light & Space Movement in Southern California, Mary Corse is known for her monochromatic paintings, which explore light, color, and perception. Corse’s practice is rooted in the viewer’s experience of looking and standing in front of a painting; she creates works that seem to shift and transform as the viewer moves in front of them. Using her unique technique of mixing acrylic paint with microspheres—tiny reflective glass beads commonly used in the white lines of lane dividers on highway—reflective vertical bands of paint appear and become illuminated, or recede and darken as the viewer and the lightings shifts in relation to the painting. Lehmann Maupin will present a solo exhibition of Corse’s work at their Chelsea location, opening September 7, 2017.
Liza Lou’s work is a meditation on labor and process that welcomes variation and chance in order to illuminate repetition. From working alone on large-scale sculptures to developing a communal practice that involves a community of women in South Africa, she investigates the beauty of labor, challenges the accepted definitions of art and craft, and addresses the socio-political issues of gender, class, race, and community. Lou first gained attention in 1996 when her room-size sculpture, Kitchen, was shown at the New Museum in New York. Representing five years of solo labor, this groundbreaking sculptural tableau introduced her trademark medium of glass beads and is now a part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection.
Known for her social, political, and historically charged photographs, Catherine Opie examines various facets of American life, from the identities of individuals to subcultures and communities, to urban settings and majestic natural surroundings. Opie has remained true to the medium of photography and avoids any postproduction. She is concerned primarily with the formal properties such as light, composition, and color, which is all addressed the moment the photograph is taken. Opie’s abstract landscapes defy any recognition of their geographical location. Capturing pinnacles of the American landscape, by manipulating the focus, Opie reduces the images to blurred light and abstracted form to elicit visceral reactions that resonate with oblivion, the sublime, and the unknown. The resulting photographs transcend the ubiquity that typically surrounds depictions of these natural wonders in a mode reminiscent of the American Pictorialist style, which sought to not simply capture, but to create a sensorial experience of the location and thus a unique photographic image.
Concurrent Exhibitions & Events
Teresita Fernández, Fire (America), through May 20, 2017, Chrystie Street, New York
Erwin Wurm, Ethics demonstrated in geometrical order, through May 26, 2017, West 22nd Street, New York
Nari Ward, G.O.A.T., again, April 29–September 4, 2017, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City
Artist Walkthrough & Brunch: Teresita Fernández
Friday, May 5 | 11AM | 201 Chrystie Street
#teresitafernandez | #fireamerica
Best known for her immersive installations and public projects that explore the various historical and psychological implications of the genre of landscape, Teresita Fernández’s most recent exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, Fire (America), debuts a 16-foot glazed ceramic wall panel depicting a nocturnal landscape engulfed in flames, as well as a new series of abstract landscapes made from burned paper. Fernández has also created an immersive, 100-foot panoramic drawing on site comprised of built-up, dimensional layers of solid charcoal applied directly to the gallery’s walls. On the occasion of Frieze Week, the gallery will host a brunch as part of the Lower East Side Morning on Friday, May 5 from 10 AM to 12 PM. Fernández will give a walkthrough of her exhibition at 11AM.
One Minute Sculptures Activation: Erwin Wurm
Saturday, May 6 | 6–8 PM | 536 West 22nd Street
#erwinwurm | #oneminutesculptures | @churchofthemillennials
As part of the Frieze Chelsea Night on Saturday, May 6 from 6–8 PM, theater company Church of the Millennials will perform at the gallery, activating Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures. For each work, Wurm employs mid-century modern furniture accompanied by a drawing or specific text directing the audience to pose with the object for a short time. By asking for the audience’s participation in a way that could make them feel uncomfortable, One Minute Sculptures offer a moment of visceral introspection as a means of provoking an examination of one’s own insecurities, thus turning them into subversive “thinking sculptures.”