Between Matter & Illumination

Kwamé Azure Gomez, Mike Henderson, Sheree Hovsepian, Leiko Ikemura, Dora Jeridi, Martha Jungwirth, Leonid Lerman, Muna Malik, Julie Mehretu, Maja Ruznic, Kikuo Saito, Alexander Tovborg, Tianyue Zhong Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Between Matter & Illumination, a group exhibition organized by Marianne Boesky. Featuring work by thirteen artists—spanning mediums, generations, and geographies—Between Matter & Illumination explores the inextricable relationships between life and art. Between Matter & Illumination draws on Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso’s famed declaration: “We are nothing but a play of light.” Existence, in Rosso’s view, was neither monumental nor eternal—but rather small, mutable, and inextricably entangled within the very movement of time and space. “Art,” he believed, “must be nothing else than the expression of some sudden sensation given to us by light. There are no such things as painting or sculpture. There exists only but life.” Between Matter & Illumination brings together a group of artists who articulate this dance of form and formlessness—of revelation and dissolution—that, to Rosso, embodied the very heart of expression. Attuned to the alchemy and sensitivity of their materials, these artists mine the blurry edges of consciousness, acknowledging the transience of being through poetic interplays of light, material, and perception. Throughout their work, fleeting figurative details glimmer within abstract surfaces on the brink of transformation. Suspended between emergence and disappearance, perpetually in flux, the substance of these timeless works is suggestion rather than certainty.