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Artist Spotlight

Mark Tansey

April 19–25, 2023

Each of Mark Tansey’s paintings and drawings is a visual adventure that explores the nature of perception, meaning, and subjectivity. Working with the traditions of figurative and landscape painting, Tansey incorporates his expansive knowledge of history in layers of literary, philosophical, and mathematical references. Distortions of perspective and scale combine with his technical proficiency to complicate what it means to view and understand an image.

Launched in 2020, Artist Spotlight is presented once a month as a regular part of the gallery’s programming. Each Artist Spotlight highlights a work by an individual artist—made available exclusively online for forty-eight hours—together with new editorial features and selected archival content.

Artist Spotlight: Mark Tansey features a new painting by the artist. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.

Photo: DPA Picture Alliance Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

Photo: DPA Picture Alliance Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

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Mark Tansey (New York: Gagosian, 2013)

Online Reading

Mark Tansey

Mark Tansey is available for online reading from April 19 to May 18 as part of Artist Spotlight: Mark Tansey. The publication documents nine paintings made by the artist between 2006 and 2012. The works are painted in ultramarine, a color that combines the depth and complexities of black with the lightness and transparency of blue and that imparts the historicizing feel of the now-obsolescent blueprint. Each work is shown with numerous details, allowing the viewer to discover Tansey’s visual allegories and philosophical references within each composition.

Mark Tansey (New York: Gagosian, 2013)

Mark Tansey, Push/Pull, 2003 © Mark Tansey

In Conversation

Mark Tansey
Peter Drake

Wednesday, January 24, 2018, 6:30pm
New York Academy of Art
www.nyaa.edu

Mark Tansey and Peter Drake will participate in a talk in conjunction with the exhibition they co-curated, Figurative Diaspora. The show presents works of “unofficial art”—subversive, non-state sanctioned art—created by five Soviet artists and five contemporary Chinese artists. It is the first exhibition to trace the direct artistic influences of the USSR on the artists of the People’s Republic of China.

Mark Tansey, Push/Pull, 2003 © Mark Tansey

Helen Frankenthaler, Orange Underline, 1963 © 2020 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Art Fair

Basel Online 2020

In our most significant online sales presentation to date, Gagosian unveils important works by modern and contemporary masters through two separate online platforms—Gagosian Online and Art Basel Online. These individually curated selections offer collectors direct access to artworks of the highest caliber. To experience the presentation in its entirety, viewers will need to visit both gagosian.com and artbasel.com. The works on gagosian.com will rotate every forty-eight hours, for a total of five cycles.

Helen Frankenthaler, Orange Underline, 1963 © 2020 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

See all News for Mark Tansey

Museum Exhibitions

Installation view, Figurative Diaspora, New York Academy of Art, January 16–March 4, 2018. Artwork, left to right: © Vitaly Komar, © Xie Dongming, © Liu Xiadong, © Komar and Melamid, © Oleg Vassiliev, © Yu Hong. Photo: courtesy New York Academy of Art

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Figurative Diaspora

January 16–March 4, 2018
New York Academy of Art
nyaa.edu

Curated by Mark Tansey and Peter Drake, dean of the New York Academy of Art, Figurative Diaspora presents works of “unofficial art”—subversive, non-state-sanctioned art—created by six Soviet artists and five contemporary Chinese artists. It is the first exhibition to trace the direct influences of the USSR on the artists of the People’s Republic of China.

Installation view, Figurative Diaspora, New York Academy of Art, January 16–March 4, 2018. Artwork, left to right: © Vitaly Komar, © Xie Dongming, © Liu Xiadong, © Komar and Melamid, © Oleg Vassiliev, © Yu Hong. Photo: courtesy New York Academy of Art

Richard Artschwager, Cerise, 2002 © 2015 Richard Artschwager/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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Literary Devices

October 11, 2014–March 15, 2015
Fisher Landau Center for Art, New York
flcart.org

Literary Devices, which comprises works representing text, literary themes, and books themselves, explores the tension between language and image. The exhibition features works by over forty artists, including Richard Artschwager, Gregory Crewdson, Neil Jenney, Donald Judd, Mike Kelley, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Mark Tansey, and Cy Twombly.

Richard Artschwager, Cerise, 2002 © 2015 Richard Artschwager/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Mark Tansey, Valley of Doubt, 1990 © Mark Tansey. Photo: Tim Nighswander/Imaging4Art

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Legacy
The Emily Fisher Landau Collection

June 5–September 14, 2014
San José Museum of Art, California
sjmusart.org

Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection presents a selection of works from the historic gift of art pledged to the Whitney in May 2010 by longtime museum trustee Emily Fisher Landau. The exhibition, which includes more than seventy works by thirty-eight artists, traces many of the ideas that have preoccupied artists in the United States, particularly since the 1960s. Questions about the relevance of painting in the aftermath of Minimalism, debates about representation, “culture wars,” and a revived interest in personal narratives are explored. This exhibition has traveled from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Work by Richard Artschwager, Gregory Crewdson, Willem de Kooning, Nan Goldin, Neil Jenney, Vera Lutter, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Mark Tansey, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol is included.

Mark Tansey, Valley of Doubt, 1990 © Mark Tansey. Photo: Tim Nighswander/Imaging4Art

Mark Tansey, Duet, 2004 © Mark Tansey

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The Big Picture
Desiderio, Fischl, Rauch, Saville, Tansey

January 28–March 9, 2014
New York Academy of Art
nyaa.edu

The Big Picture presents monumental canvases by five figurative artists—Vincent Desiderio, Eric Fischl, Neo Rauch, Jenny Saville, and Mark Tansey—who share a connection to the New York Academy of Art. The works included demand the viewer’s attention, making a statement that is at once grand in scale, conceptually ambitious, and specific to their moment.

Mark Tansey, Duet, 2004 © Mark Tansey

See all Museum Exhibitions for Mark Tansey