Image: Portia Zvavahera, Title to be confirmed, 2021. © Portia Zvavahera. Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner.
David Zwirner will present four exhibitions, each opening on November 4th in its Chelsea locations. Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible at 537 West 20th Street; Seen in the Mirror: Things from the Cartin Collection at 537 West 20th Street; Neo Rauch: The Signpost at 533 West 19th Street; and Portia Zvavahera: Ndakaoneswa marimba at 525 West 19th Street.
Beginning with Seen in the Mirror: Things from the Cartin Collection ~ Since he began collecting in the 1980s, Mickey Cartin has assembled a remarkable and singular collection of works—including paintings from the last six centuries, drawings, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts, early printed books, artists’ books, and old master prints—that reflects his own expansive curiosity and his interest in the philosophical nuances he often discovers in them. Cartin’s thoughtful approach to collecting is informed by his fascination with beauty, knowledge, and the miraculous, as well as what curator Luke Syson calls the “taxonomies of the subjective and the irrational.”1 A general focus on certain genres, such as portraiture and self-portraiture as well as landscape painting, establishes links between works from disparate periods, as do conceptual and philosophical throughlines, such as numerology and seriality, which make for exciting and unexpected connections.
Included among this selection of works are engravings by Dürer and Rembrandt; self-portraits by celebrated modernists and proto-modernists like Josef Albers and Vilhelm Hammershøi; still lifes by Giorgio Morandi; a group of works by Albert York, whom Calvin Tomkins called the “most highly admired unknown artist in America”2; a significant drawing by Adolf Wölfli and works by other reclusive twentieth-century figures such as Joseph Cornell and Morris Hirshfield; works by self-taught artists including Forrest Bess, Joseph Yoakum, and Martín Ramírez; and art from notable contemporary artists, including a monumental self-portrait by Joe Coleman, a group of early drawings by Sol LeWitt, and a Charles LeDray ceramic installation. Several of Cartin’s rare books and manuscripts will also be featured such as the singularly unique Augsburg Book of Miracles (c. 1552)—a famed illuminated manuscript that is also the subject of a 2013 Taschen publication—as well as iconic postwar artists’ books and editions such as Ed Ruscha’s Stains (1969) and Alighiero Boetti’s conceptually monumental Dossier postale (1969–1970).
The selection of works will offer a unique opportunity to view a rare and truly original collection that spans many periods, while also providing insight into Cartin’s keen connoisseurial eye, his deeply personal connection to the creative drive that has compelled artists throughout time, and his deft ability to find beauty and truth in often overlooked places. As it is for many great patrons of the arts going back generations, Cartin’s collection is at once a testament to the humanistic spirit and a vivid self-portrait of the collector himself.
Seen in the Mirror: Things from the Cartin Collection will be located at the 537 West 20th Street location, opening on November 4, 2021.
David Zwirner will present an exhibition of new paintings by Neo Rauch (b. 1960) at the gallery’s 533 West 19th Street location. The presentation follows the artist’s 2019 exhibition at David Zwirner Hong Kong, Neo Rauch: Propaganda, and will mark his ninth solo show with the gallery since joining in 2000.
Rauch’s last solo exhibition in New York was Neo Rauch: Aus dem Boden/From the Floor, which was presented at The Drawing Center in 2019, after first being shown at the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa. Also in 2019, Rauch was the subject of a solo exhibition focusing on his work from 2008 to 2019 at Palazzo Pitti, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. From March to September 2021, Neo Rauch: Der Beifang is on view at Gutshaus Steglitz, Berlin.
Neo Rauch: The Signpost will be located at the 533 West 19th Street location, opening November 4, 2021.
Image: Portia Zvavahera, Title to be confirmed, 2021. © Portia Zvavahera. Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner.
David Zwirner is pleased to present its first exhibition with Portia Zvavahera (b. 1985) since announcing representation of the artist earlier this year. Titled Ndakaoneswa murima, which translates from Shona to English as ‘I was made to see the dark side,’ and taking place at the gallery’s 525 West 19th Street location in New York, the exhibition will feature a series of new paintings. In these works, the Harare-based artist continues to develop her subject matter by joining her carefully charted dream worlds with her lived experience and daily rituals. Zvavahera expands her practice with new motifs and narratives, populated by symbolic creatures that become powerful conduits for interpreting her spiritual visions and contemplating our earthly existence. This body of work also builds upon her interest in combining varied painting and printmaking techniques to produce intricate designs and delicate lacelike patterns across her vast canvases. This will be Zvavahera’s first solo presentation in New York and her second exhibition with David Zwirner.
Portia Zvavahera: Ndakaoneswa marimba will be located at the 525 West 19th Street location, opening November 4, 2021.
Image: Imogen Cunningham, Ruth Asawa, Sculptor, 1968 (detail)
David Zwirner will open its doors to Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. Organized by Helen Molesworth, this exhibition will situate Asawa’s iconic looped- and tied-wire sculptures in the context of her extraordinary drawings and her lesser-known sculptural forms, offering viewers one of the most comprehensive looks at this artist’s work to date. This larger context illuminates an artist in pursuit of form as a means to reshape how we see and perceive the world as well as offering a model for thinking about the avant-garde’s long-held desire to place art and life in a permanently dynamic conversation.
An influential artist, devoted activist, and tireless advocate for arts education, Asawa is best known for her extensive body of hanging wire sculptures. These intricate, dynamic, and sinuous works, begun in the late 1940s, continue to challenge conventional notions of sculpture through their emphasis on lightness and transparency. Relentlessly experimental across a range of mediums, Asawa also produced numerous drawings and prints that, like her wire sculptures, are built on simple, repeated gestures that accumulate into complex compositions. Asawa moved effortlessly between abstract and figurative registers in both two and three dimensions, creating a vast and varied oeuvre that, despite its visual heterogeneity, reflects above all her belief in the total integration of artistic practice and family life.
The Estate of Ruth Asawa has been represented by David Zwirner since 2017. The gallery’s inaugural solo exhibition of the artist’s work took place the same year in New York, and was accompanied by an extensive publication that includes texts by Tiffany Bell and Robert Storr and features an illustrated chronology. In 2020, the gallery’s London location presented Ruth Asawa: A Line Can Go Anywhere, which was the first major presentation of the artist’s work outside of the United States.
Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible will be located at the 537 West 20th Street location, opening November 4, 2021.
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