The writer and historian Wallace Stegner called national parks “The best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” At a time when these public spaces are being threatened, and protests are erupting across the country, this iconic quote takes on new importance and meaning.
In response, this exhibition presents a selection of etchings that are depictions of nature and wilderness. Included are works by Hernan Bas, Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Lonnie Holley, Chris Johanson, Caroline Kent, Kerry James Marshall and Shaun O’Dell.
When Henry Taylor arrived at the Paulson Fontaine Press studio earlier this year, he was met with much anticipation. It had been five years since I stood in front of Taylor’s work at the Venice Biennale in 2019. I was at the Arsenale, transfixed by a large triptych measuring about 7 x19 feet. The first panel was a portrait of Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution. The second was a painted replica of the artist Glenn Ligon’s text painting titled, “Remember the Revolution #1”, 2004 from his series dedicated to Richard Pryor’s stand-up routines. And lastly, was a painting based on a photograph of mourners at the funeral for Carol Robertson, a victim of the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.
This piece perfectly encapsulated Taylor’s breadth of view, showcasing his deep concern with American and art history, the universal grappling with mourning and loss, and the dark humor developed to cope with these human experiences and conditions.
In 2020, we began a discussion about making prints together, and since then, the momentum of Henry Taylor: B Side has taken the world by storm. Henry Taylor: B Side is the largest exhibition of Taylor’s work to date and it traveled from MOCA, Los Angeles to The Whitney Museum in New York, surveying thirty years of his work in painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation.
Fast forward to 2024. When Taylor first arrived at the press, he began experimenting with sugarlift by painting portraits of our team and it was a beautiful icebreaker. In the words of Alicia Keys, “When Henry walks into a room, he lights up the whole space.” With the energy you might expect from viewing his style of mark making, he experimented with soapground, spitbite, softground, and drypoint. Ultimately, it was the immediacy of the positive mark provided by sugarlift that Taylor ran with. Over the course of the next week, he created a self-portrait, revisited a painting of his late mother and his daughter, and started a piece based on a photo he had taken years ago of a group of men on the streets of downtown L.A. In the print titled History is Everywhere, Taylor pays tribute to Huey P. Newton and the city of Oakland where he took his first printmaking class at Laney college in the late 70’s.
One day in the studio, after a conversation at lunch about the state of the world, Henry asked if we had a plunger and proceeded to paint it with the words, “It about to Go Down.” During a second visit to the studio in August, inspired by painter Max Beckmann, he rendered a gorgeous still life of a bouquet of roses we had placed in the studio on his behalf. It’s this voracious vacillation that makes his work so exciting and compelling.
The writer Zadie Smith wrote about Taylor, “If it has been the tendency of African-American artists to stray heedlessly over academic borders and genre demarcations (rap is popular poetry; jazz produces improvised symphonies; gospel is the sexual sacred), then Taylor is firmly grounded in the African-American aesthetic tradition. His greatest subject is human personality, although in his portraits, personality is not a matter of literal representation but rather a vibe, a texture, a series of vertical block colors laid out on a horizontal plane. This restates the obvious fact that seeing is never objective, but the intense level of empathy we meet with in Taylor’s portraits, especially between the artist and his African-American subjects, determines everything we see from brushstroke to framing to gaze.”
Henry Taylor is one of the most significant artists of his generation, and we are honored to publish ten new editions introducing his first major print project.
Martin Puryear’s Lookout—Storm King’s newest site-specific commission—is a structure created from layers of red clay bricks laid using thin-shell masonry techniques. Rather than straight lines and vertical walls, however, the work curves inward and upward, opening to allow entry from one side while producing a swelling form on the opposite end. The twenty-foot-tall sculpture is shaped by a series of nine segments: at the open end, the first of these segments emerges visually and structurally as an arch, set perpendicular to the ground plane. Each successive segment is set against its neighbor at an increasingly acute angle, sweeping upward until the bricks of the final segment are laid in the form of a dome at the summit of the artwork.
Lookout marks the artist’s first use brick as a material, recognizing brickmaking as a once-primary industry in the Hudson Valley and referencing the vernacular structures that dot the local landscape. The work emerges from Puryear’s exploration of traditional masonry forms, including the daring techniques of Nubian vault-building without formwork that the artist witnessed in Mali; classical Roman arches and domes; the curved and tapered forms of bottle kilns at the ceramics factories of Stoke-on-Trent, in England; and the curved entablatures of the Squadron A Armory on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which seem to defy gravity. To achieve this ambitious and unconventional use of the material, Puryear worked closely with several trusted collaborators, including structural engineers, architects specializing in Guastavino vaults, kiln-builders, and expert brick- and stonemasons.
Inside, Puryear uses the work’s form and setting to encourage a heightened sense of presence. Facing southwest, the masonry arch frames a sweeping view of Storm King’s landscape, with the contours of Schunnemunk Mountain in the far distance. The brick surface is punctuated by a constellation of ninety circular openings created by tubes of fiberglass-reinforced concrete in varying sizes. The tubes, or oculi, act as apertures, creating pinhole vignettes of the surrounding trees and sky. The “sweet spot,” indicated by the paving pattern, enables visitors to see out of all of the oculiat once.
Puryear describes the title of the work, Lookout, as simultaneously “a physical place, an invitation to observe and engage with the natural world, and a warning.”
Monumental Form features work by Torkwase Dyson and Martin Puryear, two artists known for large scale abstract sculpture and installation.
Torkwase Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Dyson’s abstract works are visual and material systems used to construct fusions of surface tension, movement, scale, real and finite space. With an emphasis on the ways black and brown bodies perceive and negotiate space as information. Dyson looks to spatial liberation strategies from historical and contemporary perspectives, seeking to uncover new understandings of the potential for more livable geographies.
Martin Puryear employs wood, mesh, stone and metal to create organic forms rich with psychological, cultural, and historical references that resist identification. His objects and public installations are a marriage of minimalist logic with traditional ways of making. “I think there are a number of levels at which my work can be dealt with and appreciated,” he has said. “It gives me pleasure to feel there’s a level that doesn’t require knowledge of or immersion in the aesthetic of a given time or place.” Puryear represented the United States at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1989, where his exhibition won the Grand Prize.
Markers of Time includes works by Ross Bleckner, Woody De Othello, Chris Johanson and Martin Puryear.
Ross Bleckner’s etchings: Early Every Morning, Early Every Evening, Eclipse, Shadow, Spinning and Winter are all observations and meditations on shifting shadows and light, mapping changes in nature.
Woody De Othello’s interior scenes playfully collapse into themselves through layers of bright color and domestic form. Clocks, light switches, lamps and hourglasses point to the passing of time and the reverie of both the Surrealists and California Funk artists.
Shoulders State 1 and State 2 are characteristic of Martin Puryear’s etchings. He often creates editions in stages, keeping his original plates to return to later. His sculpting process is often reductive, and with the etchings the removal of copper with acid becomes additive, pushing the image further into new space.
Chris Johanson’s work grapples with the energetic immediacy of the present, the hope of the future, and the expansiveness of forever. Often using text, his free-flowing messages cut through time and place and leave us to consider our human experience.
The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) today announced the addition of 13 new members from across the country: Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York), Canada Gallery (New York), Catharine Clark Gallery (San Francisco), Anat Ebgi Gallery (Los Angeles), Eric Firestone Gallery (New York), Gitterman Gallery (New York), Mignoni (New York), Ortuzar Projects (New York), Parker Gallery (Los Angeles), Paulson Fontaine Press (Berkeley), Perrotin (New York), RYAN LEE Gallery (New York), and Skoto Gallery (New York). With these additions, the Association now surpasses 200 members, furthering its reputation as the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for fine art dealers and galleries. Membership in the ADAA attests to a gallery or dealer’s achievements in artistic connoisseurship, intellectual rigor, and professional distinction. Offering crucial services to member galleries over the last 60 years, the ADAA continues its dedication to providing members with technical, legal, and business resources, as well as guidance regarding the ever-evolving nature of the art market.
“This milestone is an exciting moment in the history of the ADAA,” said Executive Director, Maureen Bray. “We continue to strengthen the support for our members, helping them navigate the challenges of the current market. ADAA offers a unique community that members can look to for encouragement and solidarity across all aspects of their business practices.”
The Association’s 13 new members represent a wide range of mediums, specializations, and curatorial approaches. To guarantee that new members share the ADAA’s commitment to industry best practices and advancement, candidates undergo a year- long application process that begins with a nomination by an existing ADAA member and includes a thorough vetting procedure. The membership votes on the slate of new candidates, before receiving the Board’s final approval. All new members must have been in business in the United States for at least five years, demonstrate a record of accomplishment, and have made significant contributions to the art community through activities such as organizing exhibitions, generating scholarly publications, and actively engaging with museums.
“This new class of ADAA members represents the dynamic spirit of contemporary American galleries. The wide variety of programming approaches, artist representation, and exhibition styles shown by our Class of 2023 demonstrates the innovation within the industry that our organization seeks to champion,” said Robert Grosman, ADAA Membership Committee Chair.
“The rigorous peer review process of being admitted to the organization ensures a high level of connoisseurship, engagement, and diligence that all members bring to their trade,” says Anthony Meier, ADAA President. “This stellar cohort of new members, who have already helped shape the landscape of the art market, will add to the vibrancy of the organization as a whole.”
Wholesome Encounters explores themes and motifs present in Paulson Fontaine Press’s newly released edition by William Scott, Untitled (Future Inner Limits). Scott’s extensive painting practice includes portraits and cityscapes that imagine Black figures—mainly celebrities, civil rights leaders, and members of the artist’s community—in a more equitable society. Scott develops alternative realities and visions for the future centered around the mission to “promote peace on earth and good wholesome human behavior.” In Untitled (Future Inner Limits), Scott depicts a group of people aboard a train and describes the passengers as “wholesome, humorous, peacemakers building a better world for the 21st century. No more scary people, monsters, horrors.” While his works are hopeful projections for a bright future, Scott simultaneously confronts the viewer with a reminder that in our current society, the inequality, tragedy, and loss that the passengers are escaping still exist.
To expand on the vision William Scott puts forth, presented are prints from a variety of artists whose work, in one way or another, embodies his alternative ideal future. Each piece in the show touches on a form of utopia, escape, or idealism, doing so with an enticing color pallet and inherent otherworldliness. These prints point toward a bright future and the dawn of a new generation. Depictions of fresh flowers, a pristine home, and energy bursts contribute to this sense of optimism. These prints don’t deny the existence of the messy, complicated, unjust, and even scary facts of life, in fact, they are more powerful because of them.
David Huffman’s Basketball Pyramid confronts the duality of basketball and it’s symbolism. On one hand, the sport represents African American dreams realized and community for young men and women, and on the other, the objectification and exploitation of those same bodies. In Spencer Finch’s Back to Kansas, a colorful abstraction of the film The Wizard of Oz, the vivid colors of Oz and Munchkinland are placed next to the green of the Wicked Witch and the gray of smoke that billows in her presence. As a passenger aboard William Scott’s Future Inner Limits, the viewer of Wholesome Encounters is ushered in by Chris Johanson’s Energy 1, a burst of positive intentions and infinite possibilities. As we move into the future these works choose beauty, peace, comfort, compassion, and community because imagining a brighter future is the first step in attaining one.
Untitled (Future Inner Limits), 2021
Spencer Finch, Back to Kansas, 2015
Louisiana Bendolph, History, 2007
Kota Ezawa, Flowers, 2009
Salomon Huerta, Untitled (Pink House), 2001
Woody De Othello, About That Time, 2021
Alicia McCarthy, Z, 2018
David Huffman, Basketball Pyramid, 2007
Chris Johanson, Energy 1, 2018