Works Exhibited
About
Gagosian is pleased to present Echoes, a cross-generational exhibition that pairs works by gallery artists based on generative resonance: Adriana Varejão with Richard Artschwager, Mary Weatherford with John Chamberlain, and Jeff Wall with Cy Twombly.
Two relief paintings by Varejão, made more than a decade apart, are shown with a painting and sculpture by Artschwager, both artists underscoring the agonistic nature of painterly discourse. The intricate surfaces of Varejão’s Ruína de Charque – Nova Capela (2003) and Bone-White Song (2017), which simulate broken or cracked ceramic tiles, reveal illusionistic flesh and blood within, suggesting a rather more turbulent sequel to the totalizing abstractions of modernism, while Artschwager’s Mirror (1964) and Seat of Judgment (2008) parody hard-edge modernism in surreal domestic readymades made from mimetically patterned Formica.
In a second pairing, Weatherford’s Silver Writing (2018), the first in a series of new paintings, dialogues with Chamberlain’s crumpled metal assemblage TASTEYLINGUS (2010). While Weatherford literally electrifies her gestural abstract canvases with the cool light of neon, Chamberlain employs the found properties of automotive scrap metal in his sculptural assemblages, embracing contingency while bridging Abstract Expressionism and Pop.
Finally, Jeff Wall’s large-scale color photograph Boxing (2011) finds both coincidence and counterpoint with Cy Twombly’s painting, Death of Pompey (Rome) (1962). In Wall’s cinematically composed frame, two youths spar in the close confines of a modern living room, while Twombly’s epic work transposes an epochal assassination in Egypt into schematic notation. Both artists—one rooted in the vernacular present, the other in the classical past—stage the human drama and its histories in unique and inventive forms of narrative, myth, and apologue.
#GagosianEchoes
Jeff Wall: In the Domain of Likeness
The Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, has staged a comprehensive Jeff Wall exhibition including more than fifty works spanning five decades. Here, Barry Schwabsky reflects on the enduring power of and mystery in Wall’s photography.
Mary Weatherford: The Flaying of Marsyas
In conjunction with her exhibition The Flaying of Marsyas at Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice, Mary Weatherford discusses the featured paintings, which are directly inspired by Titian’s late, eponymous masterpiece of circa 1570–76 and reflect her enduring fascination with the painting.
Latin American Artists: From 1785 to Now
To celebrate the publication of Phaidon’s new, expansive survey, we share an excerpt from Raphael Fonseca’s introduction and a few of the more than three hundred artists featured.
Adriana Varejão Selects
To coincide with the release of the first English-language monograph on the career of Adriana Varejão—in which her diverse body of work is explored in depth, from her earliest paintings in the 1990s to her most recent multimedia installations—the artist has curated a selection of films as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph in the theater and online. The program features cinema exploring themes of eroticism, excess, and science-fiction fatalism.
Cy Twombly: Imperfect Paradise
Eleonora Di Erasmo, cocurator of Un/veiled: Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations, a program of concerts, video screenings, and works by Cy Twombly at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome, reflects on the resonances and networks of inspiration between the artist and music. The program was the result of an extensive three-year study, done at the behest of Nicola Del Roscio in the Rome and Gaeta offices of the Cy Twombly Foundation, intended to collect, document, and preserve compositions by musicians around the world who have been inspired by Twombly’s work, or to establish an artistic dialogue with them.
Cy Twombly: Making Past Present
In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, announced their plan for a survey of Cy Twombly’s artwork alongside selections from their permanent ancient Greek and Roman collection. The survey was postponed due to the lockdowns necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, but was revived in 2022 with a presentation at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from August 2 through October 30. In 2023, the exhibition will arrive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The curator for the exhibition, Christine Kondoleon, and Kate Nesin, author of Cy Twombly’s Things (2014) and advisor for the show, speak with Gagosian director Mark Francis about the origin of the exhibition and the aesthetic and poetic resonances that give the show its title: Making Past Present.
News
Artist Spotlight
Jeff Wall
November 18–24, 2020
From his pioneering use of backlit color transparencies in the 1970s to his intricately staged scenes of enigmatic incidents from daily life, literature, and film, Jeff Wall has expanded the definition of the photograph, both as object and as illusion. His pictures range from classical reportage and the direct contemplation of natural forms to elaborate constructions and montages, usually produced at a large scale traditionally identified with painting.
Photo: Andrew Querner
Artist Spotlight
Mary Weatherford
June 17–23, 2020
Mary Weatherford makes large paintings comprising grounds of spontaneously sponged paint on heavy linen canvases, often surmounted by one or more carefully shaped and placed colored neon tubes. The canvas—prepared with white gesso mixed with marble dust and worked on with Flashe paint, a highly pigmented but readily diluted emulsion—supports startlingly diverse applications of color, while the surface of the paint ranges from matte and velvety to transparent and translucent. Weatherford’s use of color and light is based on her direct experience of specific locations, as well as her memories of such experiences.
Photo: Antony Hoffman
