Cy Twombly

Bronze unifies the thing. It abstracts the forms from the material. People want to know about what the material constituents are; it helps them identify the work with something. But I want each sculpture to be seen as a whole, as a sculpture.
—Cy Twombly

Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new bronze sculptures by Cy Twombly, coinciding with the inauguration of Gagosian’s Athens gallery with Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves, an exhibition of the artist’s new paintings. Two major museum exhibitions—Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000–2007, which inaugurated the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Cy Twombly: Sensations of the Moment at Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna—are on view through October 2009.

Since 1946 Twombly has fashioned sculptures from everyday materials and objects, usually painted with white gesso. In 1979 he began casting some of them in bronze, thus unifying, preserving, and transforming them into cohesive wholes independent from the original bricolages. The surfaces and patinas of these cast bronzes evoke weathered artifacts that have been exhumed from the earth, an effect that is heightened in those that have been coated in white oil paint.

Some of these sculptures contain allusions to the static, closed forms of Egyptian and Mesopotamian sculpture, as well as to other architectural and geometric references such as the repetition of rectangular pedestals and circular structures. Others refer to historical representations, such as Untitled (The Mathematical Dream of Ashurbanipal) (2000–09), which alludes to the scholarly Assyrian king whose military prowess was the subject of a rival king’s dream in which his eventual submission to Assyria was predicted. While the components of these sculptures have been partially merged and abstracted by the casting process, in works such as Untitled (2004–09) a progression of precariously balanced objects—in this case, a broom inside a funnel that rests on a cylindrical pedestal—is clearly demarcated. Twombly’s continued play between fragility and obduracy, figuration and abstraction, ancient and modern imbues each work with its characteristic tension.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Kate Nesin.