Exhibition
in New York, NY / United States
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- Al Loving: Untitled, 1986, paper collage, 42 x 30 in, 105 x 76 cm
Team (gallery, inc.) is pleased to announce a group show of work by Erica Baum, Shannon Ebner, Louise Fishman, Al Loving, Suzanne McClelland and Albert Oehlen, entitled “mark”.
The study of etymology proves most English words to be tightly-packed envelopes of content, context and historical time. With just a few additional moments of consideration, a word as simple as “mark” dissolves like a lozenge into a panoply of referents.
mark (n): “trace, impression”: The large-scaled canvas titled “My Guernica” by Louise Fishman carries the compositional rigor of its namesake; its abraded surface suggests a more tightly-spun painting that has been scraped away, leaving only the traces and impressions of a previous and different work.
From Old English mearc (n): “boundary, sign, limit, mark”: Erica Baum‘s photographs of erased blackboards belie the dusty, workable surface of their subjects: the boundary between lens and slate is an spectral, imprecise realm. Shannon Ebner’s concrete poetry is rendered similarly – in the unreal space of the black and white print.
Also source of Old Norse mörk (n): “forest”: in ancient Scandinavia, treelines often marked a frontier. Al Loving’s pulped paper works explore similar frontiers: made in the 1980s, these lesser-known shaped works distend the rectangular picture plane and confound the norms of paper-as-support – made of rigid, hardy pulp, the works require no mounting and reside in sculptural space.
mark (n. 2): “unit of money or weight” (from Late Old English): Suzanne McClelland‘s recent work dissolves its linguistic content into active fields of mark-making: the partially-legible script references global culture’s units of human measurement: body size and net worth. The verso of every recent panel reveals a photocopy collage of source material on the painting’s subject (usually an all-too-powerful male figure from politics or pop culture), serving as a key to the active and apocryphal painting surface. McClelland’s work explores mark at its deepest etymological levels.
Mark (v. 1): “to trace out boundaries” (from Proto Germanic “markojan”): “mark” is an exhibition defined by the connective tissue between individual artists. As the word “mark” loses all meaning through repetition and over-analysis, the viewer of “mark” is encouraged to consider the “marks” made by these six artists and trace his or her own boundaries within the exhibition.
Gallery hours Tues-Sat 10 am – 6 pm
Location:
team (gallery, inc.)
83 Grand Street
10013 New York, NY
United States
