Chelsea, New York
Group Exhibition
Summer Reads
Lelong & CoEtel Adnan, McArthur Binion, John Clang, Petah Coyne, Ficre Ghebreyesus, Sarah Grilo, Alfredo Jaar, Rosemary Laing, Lin Tianmiao, Yoko Ono, Jaume Plensa, Martha Rosler, Tariku Shiferaw, Nancy Spero, Michelle Stuart, Krzysztof Wodiczko Galerie Lelong, New York, is pleased to present the group exhibition Summer Reads. Organized by Grace Hong, Assistant Director at Galerie Lelong, New York, the exhibition largely draws from the gallery's international program and features activations from an ongoing performance series by John Clang. Summer Reads invites visitors to ponder the act of reading in contemporary art, exploring the role of source materials across literature and how the legibility of material informs artmaking. Summer Reads marks the New York debut of the ongoing performance series Reading by an Artist by Singapore-born, New York-based artist John Clang. Most recently presented at the Sharjah Biennial 16, Clang adopts the technique of zi wei dou shu (紫微斗数)--a philosophy dating back to imperial China to forecast life events based on birth timings--to create a metaphysical portrait of an individual sitter. Visitors are welcome to participate during the opening reception in which the artist presents readings of anonymous subjects, or to sign up for individual readings in the gallery. Clang's Testimonial Series, which presents anonymous feedback from participants in his performances and selected photographs from the series Sans the Face (2019) is also view. Inspired by the post-its' everyday use to cover web cameras, the artist photographed participants in Hong Kong during the 2019-2020 protests, their faces hidden whilst graffiti messages, photographed mid-erasure, dot the urban landscape. Literature--associated with seasonal traditions like summer reading lists--is directly referenced by artists Petah Coyne, Yoko Ono, and Nancy Spero. Coyne's artwork titles pay homage to cultural figures such as the acclaimed novelists Kazuo Ishiguro and Kōbō Abe, while Yoko Ono's Le Rouge et Le Noir (2017) is a sculptural copy of Stendhal's 19th century novel rendered in etched, colored glass. In the 1970s, activist and artist Nancy Spero made a body of work based on the tormented writings of the French poet Antonin Artaud, producing the wrought aesthetic and abstract world that dominated her scrolls during the decade. Creating their own visual journals which are now shared with visitors to "read," Lin Tianmiao, McArthur Binion, and Michelle Stuart reflect the passage of recorded time and personal memories. For over three decades, Lin has been internationally recognized for her work with textiles to achieve large-scale installations and sculptures. Following a serious illness in recent years, the artist began making paintings for the first time; capturing her innermost thoughts while using the grid as a critique on crude societal management. McArthur Binion's painting contains images of his self-described "birth house" in Mississippi and refers to its rural address, Route One: Box Two, where he was born and raised in a railroad-style house. A pioneer of Land Art, Michelle Stuart has recorded traces upon the earth as imprints of identity; Petroglyph, Three Rivers, New Mexico (1978) composed of photographs from 1978 are arranged in the same way one would work with line, shape, and form, creating a unified composition but with depth that moves the viewer's eyes back and forth. News media is a source of inspiration both conceptually and formally in works that highlight its role in the circulation of information. Glossy magazines, particularly LIFE, serve as a reference point in the work of artists Alfredo Jaar and Sarah Grilo, while newspapers feature in the work of artists Ficre Ghebreyesus and Rosemary Laing. Whether by referencing actual headlines, utilizing physical publications, or mimicking their aesthetic qualities, these artists invoke the public's familiarity with these news sources to deliver critiques of their impact. In a similar vein, artists Martha Rosler and Krzysztof Wodiczko assess the development of social identities. Rosler's North American Waitress, Coffee-Shop Variety (Know Your Servant Series, No. 1) (1976) utilizes the directional language of diagrams and guidelines to reveal the reduction of women's bodies to a set of regulations, while Wodiczko's Study for Alien Staff (1992) demonstrates the design concept for his interactive instrumentation project Alien Staff: Xenob acul (1993), designed to allow immigrants to share their story with passers-by. The artists Etel Adnan, Jaume Plensa, and Tariku Shiferaw expand this inquiry of text to include the realm of poetry and music. The artist Etel Adnan, who first established her career as a poet, renders her verse in ink on paper in O Moon (c. 1960s)--a rarity in the artist's oeuvre, as she seldom merged her written and visual practices. Plensa draws inspiration from master poets and the formal qualities of language for his works on view, guided by a desire to create unity through connections of the body and collective memory. Shiferaw foregrounds cultural references in his ongoing series One of These Black Boys through direct references to songs from musical genres that have originated in Black communities.