INQUIRIES
Miguel Abreu Gallery is pleased to announce Sequence 7: one work, one week, an exhibition wherein over the course of one week a single artwork or installation will be on view at our 36 Orchard Street space. This sequencing of objects by various artists articulated over time constitutes a break from the traditional group show in which works are installed in relation to one another in space rather than time.
R. H. QUAYTMAN, The Sun Does Not Move (Dear Johns), Chapter 35
August 25 – 29
As part of Sequence 7, Miguel Abreu Gallery is pleased to present R. H. Quaytman’s new, large-scale painting from The Sun Does Not Move, Chapter 35. This ambitious new work inaugurates the artist’s largest panel size included in her system to date – 52 3/8 x 84 3/8 inches. It will be on view at 36 Orchard Street from Tuesday, August 25th to Saturday, August 29th.
“This somewhat melodramatic painting turned out to be an unusual one for me […] I worked on it from late January to now. It came about after I wrote a short essay on Jaspers Johns’s Flags for his upcoming retrospective at the Whitney and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After writing it, I thought it was only fair that I would try to paint an American flag painting too. I used my system to compose eight sections based on the eight panel measurements all my panels fit into. This enabled me to arrive at this complex composition that otherwise I would never have been able to invent. I hope it reflects somehow the fracture or divisions in our current disunity as a country. I also hope it will provide many diverse interpretations […] It means a lot to me, and I think it goes quite well with not only the other works in The Sun Does Not Move, Chapter 35, but also with Morning, Chapter 30 which was completed right before the election of our current president.”
– R. H. Quaytman
RAHA RAISSNIA, Confound
August 18 – 22
Confound is based on a drawing I made of the same title. The painting engages a few basic elements. From the realm of the manmade, I chose images of technology, specifically circuitry – intrigued by its labyrinthine structures – as well as architecture. From the organic world, I referenced patterns and textures of rock formations and fluids such as water and lava. As the title suggests, my attempt was to evoke an image that would transcend any perceived notions, thoughts, and relations that are prevalent about these elements that make up part of the landscape of our humanity in crisis today. What I longed to achieve was an image that, ironically, would suggest harmony and beauty, one that would be imbued with feelings of wonder; an image that would be at once surprising and subtle. To help me realize this task, I used various techniques that are aleatory in nature, such as misregistration caused by an image transfer process, and the erasure of marks which leave traces that become suggestive of new forms. I also added two new elements to the painting version of the drawing: flesh and flowers.
– Raha Raissnia
VEIT LAURENT KURZ, Plant Fear
July 1 – August 8
Plant Fear suggests an altered world resulting from unprecedented local events that affect imperceptible change on an immense scale. These reverberations of change seep into the biosphere like an ongoing haunting following the initial incident. Drawing on the cultural influence of the 18th-century excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum on the European classical epoch, Kurz interprets volcanic fossils as occult artifacts, suspending in unique material constellations a record of transformation as well as the “spiritual, dematerialized information” of the ruined cities. The ghosts of antiquity remain present by way of the volcanic event. Plant Fear proposes a cyclical historical phenomenon linking the fallout of ancient natural disasters with a modern, synthetic correlative. Here, the artist engages his own childhood in Erbach, Germany and the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl Powerplant meltdown, which he has called a “manmade volcano.” How can the phantom forms of radiation and toxicity dispersed in high concentrations throughout Europe be accounted for? The half-life or gradual breakdown over time of chemical elements ciphers protracted after-effects of the cataclysm. Lasting impacts are evidenced through environmental decay and made manifest in pervasive cultural expressions of fear and chronic syndromes of mental disorder. The paintings and sculptures comprising Plant Fear address the world of invisible agents first through the visual regime of science and diagrammatic communication and arrive at the production of new landscapes mixing memory and mutation. The outgrowth of this landscape is the Dilldapp, part creature and part alter-ego of the artist, who holds the singular capability of navigating this terrain of contamination and resilient vitality.
Veit Laurent Kurz (b. Erbach, Germany, 1985) lives and works in Berlin and New York. He studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Städelschule from 2009-2012 and the Academy of Art and Design, Offenbach from 2005-2009. An upcoming solo exhibitions, The Dilldapp Memorial, will be mounted in October, 2020 at Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan. Other recent shows include Nutrition and Drama at Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin (2019), Metaphors and Mutations, Kunstverein Nürnberg (2019), Haus des Kleinen Brunnens (Trailer), Éclair, Berlin (2018), and The Bavarian Vampire (A Site Visit), The Store Front, Luton (2018). His work was included in the group exhibition Good Moves at The Power Station, Dallas (2019), and his performances have taken place at Kunsthalle Zurich (2019), Real Fine Art, New York (2017), MoMA PS1, New York (2016), Whatpipeline, Detroit (2015), Portikus, Frankfurt and Bordeaux (2013), and Kunsthalle Bern (2013). Artist books and monographs include Dream Baby Dream (Haus Mödrath, 2020), Lava Trilogie (Kunstverein Nürnberg-Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, 2019), RElife (Hacienda Books, 2018), and Kräutergasse (Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, 2017). In 2020, he was awarded The Matteo Olivero Prize and the Battaglia Foundry Sculpture Prize, which is accompanied by a new publication, The Dilldapp Memorial (Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan).
SCOTT LYALL, Superstar
Ink-printed onto large canvasses, Lyall’s Superstars are made by layering photographed flashes of color, the result of the viewer’s retinal encounter from a particular angle with the silver surfaces of his Nanofoil (SLStudio.clone) engravings. The performances of light in each individual Nanofoil are impossible to capture, as they produce a blur of colored patches and flares. Nonetheless, these accidents are gathered and preserved as fragmentary information patterns. Then, by assembling them in printed layers, Lyall transfers them to another format in his work – the painting-object functioning as a screen or mask. Painting thus registers a final transformation. What was once sub-visual has been passed onto canvases as mists and clouds. This total movement from nano-engraving to painting, from latent appearance to atmospheric visual effect is the dialectical passage of what the artist calls Superstar.
