Artist Spotlight
In his paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Mark Grotjahn interweaves and revitalizes various historical modes of abstraction, probing the limits between gesture and geometry, impulse and exactitude. His works unfold according to precise yet mutating rubrics, resulting in an expansive vocabulary of visual motifs that migrate from one series to the next in almost obsessive permutations. By finding variations within his immediately identifiable style, Grotjahn reveals the complexities of authorial gesture.
Created in response to the covid-19 pandemic, the Artist Spotlight series highlights individual artists, one week at a time, whose exhibitions have been affected by the health crisis. A single artwork by the artist is made available with pricing information for forty-eight hours only.
Artist Spotlight: Mark Grotjahn features a recent work by the artist. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
#GagosianSpotlight
Photo: Olivier Zahm
Related Exhibitions
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In Conversation
Mark Grotjahn
Andrew Fabricant
Monday, October 10, 2022, 6:15pm
Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London
Join Gagosian for a conversation between Mark Grotjahn and Andrew Fabricant, the gallery’s chief operating officer, on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition Backcountry at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London. The pair will discuss Grotjahn’s long-standing exploration of the formal and expressive possibilities of paint, his ongoing experimentation with abstract mark making, and events in his professional and personal life that have informed the new works on view.
Mark Grotjahn in his studio, Los Angeles, 2022. Artwork © Mark Grotjahn
Online Reading
Mark Grotjahn
Casa Malaparte
Mark Grotjahn: Casa Malaparte is available for online reading from May 27 through June 26 as part of Artist Spotlight: Mark Grotjahn. The book documents a presentation of paintings and sculptures by the artist at the landmark modernist house designed by writer Curzio Malaparte on the Italian island of Capri. The exhibition marked the first presentation of Grotjahn’s Capri paintings.
Mark Grotjahn: Casa Malaparte (New York: Gagosian, 2017)
Fundraiser
Artist Plate Project 2022
Coalition for the Homeless
Launching May 22, 2023, 10am edt
Limited-edition bone china plates produced by Prospect and featuring artwork by more than forty artists—including Virgil Abloh, Derrick Adams, Harold Ancart, Georg Baselitz, Amoako Boafo, Mark Grotjahn, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, Ed Ruscha, Anna Weyant, and Jonas Wood—will be sold through Artware Editions to raise funds for the Coalition’s lifesaving programs. The funds raised by the sale of the plates will provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and instability. The purchase of one plate can feed one hundred homeless and hungry New Yorkers.
Takashi Murakami, Gargantua on Your Palm, 2018 © 2018 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved
Museum Exhibitions
Closed
A Dark Hymn
Highlights from the Hill Collection
March 1–April 13, 2024
Hill Art Foundation, New York
hillartfoundation.org
A Dark Hymn celebrates the five-year anniversary of the Hill Art Foundation by examining the collection through the lens of Valentin Bousch’s sixteenth-century stained glass window, The Creation and the Expulsion from Paradise (1533), which is permanently installed in the foundation’s Chelsea building. The exhibition places work from the four major categories of the collection—Renaissance and Baroque bronzes, old master paintings, canvases and sculptures by modern masters, and contemporary art—in dialogue with the window. Work by Willem de Kooning, Mark Grotjahn, Albert Oehlen, Ed Ruscha, Rudolf Stingel, Sarah Sze, and Christopher Wool is included.
Installation view, A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection, Hill Art Foundation, New York, March 1–April 13, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Robert Gober, © Caroline Kent, © Sarah Sze. Photo: Matthew Herrmann
Closed
Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog)
November 18, 2023–April 7, 2024
The Broad, Los Angeles
www.thebroad.org
Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) is drawn entirely from the Broad collection and showcases works by Los Angeles–based artists. Titled after a work by John Baldessari, the exhibition includes reflections on Los Angeles as a city in flux and turmoil, and on societal issues that extend far beyond the city. Featuring more than sixty works made from 1969 to 2023, it brings together photorealistic painting, photography, sculpture, and political signage by twenty-one artists across varying generations. Work by Mark Grotjahn, Alex Israel, Ed Ruscha, and Jonas Wood is included.
Ed Ruscha, Honey . . . . I Twisted Through More Damned Traffic to Get Here, 1984, The Broad, Los Angeles © Ed Ruscha
Closed
The Milton and Sheila Fine Collection
November 18, 2023–March 17, 2024
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
carnegieart.org
Milton and Sheila Fine have been longtime advocates and supporters of the arts in their philanthropy throughout the Pittsburgh region. Promised to Carnegie Museum of Art in 2015, their collection of contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and drawing reflects their interest in American and German art from the 1980s to the 2000s. This exhibition, which is presented as a celebration and remembrance of Milton Fine, who passed away in 2019, foregrounds the importance and impact of the gift. Work by Richard Artschwager, Georg Baselitz, Mark Grotjahn, Donald Judd, Brice Marden, David Reed, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Jeff Wall, and Christopher Wool is included.
Ed Ruscha, Victory, 1987, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh © Ed Ruscha
Closed
Ecstatic
Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection
June 10–August 27, 2023
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
hammer.ucla.edu
Presented in conjunction with the unveiling of the Hammer’s building expansion, Ecstatic highlights acquisitions made since 2005—the year the institution began collecting contemporary art. The exhibition is organized around two distinct installations of sculpture and works on paper that emphasize the role each medium plays within the scope of the museum’s collection. Work by Mark Grotjahn, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, and Jim Shaw is included.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Someday, 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles © Nathaniel Mary Quinn. Photo: Jeff McLane