Yombe People, Loango Kingdom~Nail Power Figure, 19th century Wood, iron, resin, glass, fiber, textile and pigment-Height: 31 7/8 inches (81 cm). Image © Schweizer Premodern, New York. Private Collection, Courtesy of Schweizer Premodern, New York.
9¾ x 14½ inches (24.8 x 36.8 cm)
The exhibition includes a selection of Steir’s paintings alongside numerous works the artist has said she “hums to” in her mind—art from centuries past, such as historical Chinese scrolls and Kongo sculpture, and works by artists with whom Steir has engaged in ongoing and inspiring dialogue. Following the January 2019 opening of Pat Steir: Silent Secret Waterfalls at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and in anticipation of the artist’s site-specific suite of works to be unveiled in October 2019 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., this exhibition spans the two main floors of Lévy Gorvy’s landmark gallery.
Central to the works Steir has selected for this exhibition are questions regarding the nature of abstraction. ‘At what point does an image become abstract?,’ she has asked. Since rising to prominence in the 1970s, Steir has channeled inspiration from East Asian art, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, European Romanticism, American Minimalism, and Conceptualism into paintings that masterfully synthesize gesture, process, and reference. As Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu recently conveyed, “Steir’s signature, multilayered canvases have time and time again redefined what it means to be a contemporary painter. Working within a framework that is simultaneously both painterly and conceptual, she has continued to create radical and profound abstractions.”
Courtesy of the artist; 303 Gallery, New York; and Hauser & Wirth, London
Among the artists featured in Visbile Traces are the 18th-century Edo masters Hokusai and Hiroshige, 19th-century Romantic Victor Hugo, and 20th-century contemporaries such as Alighiero Boetti, Sol LeWitt, Cy Twombly, and Agnes Martin, whom Steir visited in New Mexico every August for thirty years. Works by Steir’s peers such as Joan Jonas, Mary Heilmann, Brice Marden, Helen Marden, Julie Mehretu, Ugo Rondinone, Stanley Whitney, and Terry Winters are also included in the exhibition. Together, the paintings and sculptures on view offer a framework in which to consider Steir’s long commitment to the radical freedom that she has explained as “being more attached to the process than the conclusion.” This liberation has been forged through her relationships to other artists and artworks, through what she has learned from and with them about simplicity, chance, and structure. Visible Traces reveals something of this resonant, ahistorical exchange on such abiding concerns as the potential of paint, the nuance of method, and the resonance of affinity.
Visible Traces (Mountain Water Air) will be on view from June 25 to August 9, 2019. Lévy Gorvy Gallery New York is located at 909 Madison Avenue, corner of 73rd Street, NYC.