To Cut, To Crease, To Fold.
Exhibition Description
This exhibition To Cut, To Crease, To fold explores play as a method of art making. It recontextualizes how play is perceived, and how different artists unconsciously and consciously utilize play in their work. Drawing inspiration from Richard Serra’s Verbal List, this exhibition highlights the importance of play as an artistic process. It includes artists that work with a wide range of mediums such as painting, sculpture, and video to demonstrate the vastly different ways in which the philosophy of play can manifest itself in the creation of artworks. While the existence of playfulness is sometimes evident in a work’s final form, it can also be a hidden aspect of the process of creation. Playfulness can be drawn from instinct, flexibility of thought and action, movement, intuitive creation, or freedom of exploration. This exhibition demonstrates how artists use methods of play as a means of creation while inviting the audience to engage with the artwork in a way that engages their own sense of imagination.
There is an assumption that play solely functions as a tool in childhood, only to be left behind as we grow old. The lessons we learn on the playground such as sharing toys, negotiating who bats next, and taking turns going down the slide, help us navigate stressful situations for the rest of our lives. To Cut, To Crease, To fold embraces how artists implement play in ways that benefit their practice in adulthood. Society expresses the importance of play in childhood for its ability to enhance cognitive flexibility and aid in stress regulation, but the dialogue around its importance dwindles as we age. Play, something that was once seen as crucial to our development, becomes irrelevant overnight. The exhibition demonstrates how play makes us more present individuals, and focuses on how it allows artists to better navigate the world and uncover difficult truths. In other words, play is a serious matter.
Richard Serra’s Verbal List is the first piece in the exhibition. To cut, to fold, and to crease are actions one might apply to their process when first working with a material. Serra’s work asks viewers to see play as a tool for understanding. Hasani Sahlehe utilizes watercolor, a medium that is heavily associated with childhood, to create abstract works that remind the viewer of a sense of freedom associated with childhood painting. While his works elicit untethered creativity, his watercolors are tools that explore the seriousness of memory and migration. Louis Bourgeois’ installation utilizes the processes of play to better understand and confront her fears of death and the concept of mortality. Her expansive works highlight the intensity of her own psychology by experimenting with and moving through her own bodily forms.
Cindy Sherman’s series depicts a process of self fashioning into different characters and personas, playing with various identities in an effort to better understand herself and the worlds that she constructs around her. Senga Nengundi’s works are playful in their focus on freedom of movement and “glorious exploring.” Her works relate to play through their awareness and connection to the body. In her series “Panty Hose,” Nengundi experiments and engages with her materials in a playful manner, allowing her work to freely develop through limitless experimentation. Mika Rottenberg’s video installations juxtapose different mass produced objects in a nonsensical order. Carried out through playful colors and plastics, Rottenberg constructs an alternative world that critiques capitalism and labor. Rottenberg uses play in a serious way to ask the public questions about the state of our society, visualizing hard truths that we may not otherwise see. Julie Mehretu’s large format canvases deal with charged historical, social and political themes. Through a dynamic and playful use of line, color, and composition, Mehretu creates compositions that serve as an urban landscape. The coexistence of political and historical themes, along with her use of abstraction — which codes into compositions, maps and diagrams— reminds the viewer of the possibility of play in a work that covers complex subject matter. Isamu Noguchi is an artist whose practice focuses on freedom, openness, and a sense of play that works to transcend all else in order to reach a point of profound awareness. His works explore the untethered formation of materials and forms in a way that is crucial to the process of play. Mike Kelly’s work “More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid” consists of assembled handmade dolls and blankets that are reminiscent of childhood play. The piece covers the harsh reality of loving, and the pain that comes from not receiving love in return. By incorporating playful elements, Kelly constructs a composition that works to better understand the pains of giving and receiving love.
John Dewey once said, “Our central and consistent effort is to teach method, not content; to emphasize process, not results; to invite the students to the realization that the way of handling himself amid the facts is more important than the facts themselves”. We hope this exhibition will evoke the feeling of reminisce, to a moment of fun, maybe perhaps that feeling when you are on the swing and for a second at the top, you fly!
Checklist:
Artwork information Image
Louise Bourgeois, “Cell (The Last Climb)”, 2008
Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood
151 1/2 × 157 1/2 × 118 in (384.8 × 400.1 × 299.7 cm
Mike Kelley, “More Love Hours than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin” 1987
Stuffed fabric toys and afghans on canvas with dried corn; wax candles on wood and metal base.
120 3/4 × 151 3/4 × 31 3/4in. (306.7 × 385.4 × 80.6 cm
Julie Mehretu, “Stadia II” 2004
Ink and acrylic on canvas
107 3/8 × 140 1/8 in. (272.73 × 355.92 cm).
Senga Nengudi, “Performance Piece” 1977
Pantyhose
Silver Gelatin Print
31 1/2 × 40 in (80 × 101.6 cm)
Senga Nengudi, “R.S.V.P” 1977/2003
Pantyhose and sand (10 pieces)
Dimensions are variable
Senga Nengudi, Inside/Outside
Nylon, Mesh, and Rubber
60 x 24 in (152.4 x 61.0 cm)
Isamu Noguchi, “The Kite” 1958
Folded sheet aluminum.
62 1/4 x 17 5/8 x 5 1/2 in. (158.1 x 44.8 x 14 cm)
Wood base: 5 x 13 1/4 x 11 1/8 in. (12.7 x 33.7 x 28.3 cm)
Isamu Noguchi, “Lunar Infant”, 1944
Electric components, Magnesite, Wood
22 x 16 x 16 in. (55.9 x 40.6 x 40.6 cm)
Isamu Noguchi, “Contoured Playground”, 1941 (cast 1963)
Metal
24 x 24 in.
Mika Rottenberg, “Cosmic Generator” 2017
Video/Film
Sculpture and video installation; approximately. 27’; dimensions variable; edition 6 of 6 + 1 artist’s variant
Hasani Sahlehe, “Grandmaster” 2021
Acrylic, acrylic gel and paper clay on canvas.
75 x 65 in.
Hasani Sahlehe, “Sunburst” 2021
acrylic and cast acrylic on paper
Hasani Sahlehe, “Abbey”, 2021
oil on canvas
10 x 8 in.
Richard Serra, “Verbal List” 1967
Pencil on two sheets of paper
10 x 8 ½ (25.4 x 21.6 cm)
Cindy Sherman, “Untitled Still #6” 1977
Gelatin silver print
9 7/16 × 6 1/2" (24 × 16.5 cm)
Cindy Sherman, “Untitled Still #2” 1977
Gelatin silver print
9 7/16 × 6 1/2" (24 × 16.5 cm)
Cindy Sherman, “Untitled Film Still #17” 1978
Gelatin silver print
7 1/2 × 9 7/16" (19.1 × 24 cm)
Cindy Sherman, “Untitled Film Still #16” 1978
Gelatin silver print
9 7/16 × 7 9/16" (24 × 19.2 cm)
Artists’ Biographies
Louise Bourgeois
(Paris, France, b. 1911) With a career spanning around 80 years, the French artist is considered one of the most prolific figures of the contemporary art period. Bourgeois was a multidisciplinary artist working with large format sculpture and installation works as well as painting and printmaking. Her works deal with themes of domesticity, motherhood, sexuality, death and the unconscious.
Mike Kelley
(Detroit, Michigan, b. 1954) one of the most influential members of the Conceptual art movement. Kelley worked in different genres and styles including performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, photography, sound works, text, and sculpture. He worked on curational projects and collaborated with other artists and musicians; also left us with much critical and creative writing. Kelley came to fame in the 80s with a series of sculptures composed of common craft materials. https://mikekelleyfoundation.org/mike-kelley/biography
Julie Mehretu
(Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, b. 1970) abstract printmaker and painter. Works in large format canvases that embed abstract and visual idiom with the history of different geographies, cities, and at times personal biography. Her work examines our connection to places and identity through her abstracted landscapes. http://www.artnet.com/artists/julie-mehretu/biography
Senga Nengudi
(Chicago, b. 1943) interested in visual arts, dance, body mechanics and matter of the spirit from an early age. These elements still play themselves in her art. She has always used natural materials such as sand, dirt, rocks, and seed pods; and unconventional materials such as panthose, found objects, and masking tape. She utilized these materials like how a jazz musician uses notes and sounds to improvise. The mission of her art is to share common experiences in abstractions that hit the senses; they also often welcome the viewers to become part of the work.
Isamu Noguchi
(Los Angeles, b. 1904) considered one of the Twentieth Century’s most important sculptors. Throughout his life he created sculptures, gardens, furniture, and lighting designs, ceramics, architecture, and set designs. His work is both subtle and bold, modern and traditional.
Mika Rottenberg
(Argentina, b. 1976) specializes in practice that combines film, installation, and sculpture to explore themes of labor and the production of value in our hyper-capitalist world. She uses traditions of cinema and sculpture and seeks out locations around the world where specific kinds of production and commerce are in place (such as China). Through editing, Rottenberg creates disparate places and things to create elaborate and subversive narratives. By putting fact and fiction together she highlights the beauty and craziness of our existence.
Hasani Sahlehe
(Atlanta, GA, b. 1991) a multidisciplinary artist residing in Atlanta, GA. Sahlehe’s work explores the transfer of information, memory, migration, and the supernatural. They draw influence from abstract expressionism and the visual language of urban art. The work distorts familiar imagery to contemplate the malleability of perception.
Richard Serra
(San Francisco, b. 1938) contemporary Minimalist artists known for his monumental steel sculptures. He also makes paintings and prints. He is very interested in exploring unconventional materials. He hoped to redefine the relationship between art and the viewer by creating space that is "discerned physically rather than optically."
Cindy Sherman
(New Jersey, b. 1954) Sherman was an important member of the Pictures Generation. Her practice of photographing herself under different disguises has produced one of the most influential images. The main theme of her work is the multitude of identity stereotypes that have arisen throughout history of art, advertising, cinema, and media. Sherman reveals these stereotypes through her photos. “I am trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me.” —Cindy Sherman
