Video
Mary Weatherford
Virtual Studio Visit with Klaus Biesenbach
In the Virtual Studio Visit series from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, director Klaus Biesenbach digitally connects with artists around the world. Here, he speaks with Mary Weatherford at her working space in Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, South Africa. The pair discuss Weatherford’s show Canyon—Daisy—Eden, at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and her practice in general.
Share
Related News
Artist Spotlight
Mary Weatherford
June 17–23, 2020
Mary Weatherford makes large paintings comprising grounds of spontaneously sponged paint on heavy linen canvases, often surmounted by one or more carefully shaped and placed colored neon tubes. The canvas—prepared with white gesso mixed with marble dust and worked on with Flashe paint, a highly pigmented but readily diluted emulsion—supports startlingly diverse applications of color, while the surface of the paint ranges from matte and velvety to transparent and translucent. Weatherford’s use of color and light is based on her direct experience of specific locations, as well as her memories of such experiences.
Photo: Antony Hoffman
Online Reading
Mary Weatherford
I’ve Seen Gray Whales Go By
Mary Weatherford: I’ve Seen Gray Whales Go By is available for online reading from June 17 through July 16 as part of Artist Spotlight: Mary Weatherford. Documenting Weatherford’s 2018 exhibition at Gagosian in New York, her first with the gallery, it features a new essay by curator and art historian John Elderfield that examines how this body of work evokes not just landscapes, but specific events and narratives. The plate section is interspersed with examples of Weatherford’s varied source material, including a nursery rhyme, a page of sheet music, and an entry from artist Agnes Pelton’s journal.
Mary Weatherford: I’ve Seen Gray Whales Go By (New York: Gagosian, 2020)
Book Signing
Mary Weatherford
Tuesday, February 4, 2020, 5:30–6:30pm
Gagosian Shop, New York
Gagosian Shop will host a book signing with Mary Weatherford to coincide with the exhibition Mary Weatherford: Canyon—Daisy—Eden at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, on view from February 1 through July 12. Weatherford will be signing copies of her new monograph, Mary Weatherford, which features a new text by art historian Suzanne Hudson. Published by Lund Humphries, the book presents an overview of her work from the mid-1980s until today. The artist will also be signing copies of her 2016 book, Mary Weatherford: The Neon Paintings.
Both titles are available for purchase at Gagosian Shop. To attend the free event, RSVP to weatherfordrsvp@gagosian.com.
Mary Weatherford (London: Lund Humphries, 2019)
Rudolf Polanszky: Reconstructions
Gagosian director Ealan Wingate describes his first visit to Rudolf Polansky’s studio outside Vienna and discusses the development of the artist’s practice—from his early works informed by the legacy of the Viennese Actionists to the Reconstructions, an ongoing body of assemblage-type wall works and sculptures.
Rudolf Polanszky
Hans Ulrich Obrist visits the artist at his studio outside Vienna to discover more about the origins of his practice, his experiments in freedom, and the importance of drifting.
Urs Fischer: Lives of Forms
In his introduction to the catalogue for Urs Fischer’s exhibition The Lyrical and the Prosaic, at the Aïshti Foundation in Beirut, curator Massimiliano Gioni traces the material and conceptual tensions that reverberate throughout the artist’s paintings, sculptures, installations, and interventions.
Fruit and Vegetables: Francesco Bonami on Urs Fischer
Fruit and vegetables are a recurring motif in Urs Fischer’s visual vocabulary, introducing the dimension of time while elaborating on the art historical tradition of the vanitas. Here, curator Francesco Bonami traces this thread through the artist’s sculptures and paintings of the past two decades.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2020
The Summer 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Joan Jonas’s Mirror Piece 1 (1969) on its cover.
Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies
Bobbie Sheng explores the symbiotic relationship between the poet and visual artists of his time and tracks the enduring influence of his poetry on artists working today.
Shortlist
Five Books: Urs Fischer
Urs Fischer talks about reading during the pandemic lockdown, sharing five books—both fiction and nonfiction—that he has turned to while in self-isolation.
Mary Weatherford: Train Yards
Mary Weatherford speaks to Laura Hoptman about her new paintings, the Train Yard series. Begun in 2016, this body of work evokes the sights and sounds of railroads and night skies. The series will be shown for the first time in late 2020, in an exhibition at Gagosian, London.
The Bigger Picture
Recess
Gagosian’s Sarah Hoover sat down with Allison Freedman Weisberg, founder and executive director of Recess, and Anaïs Duplan, Recess program manager, to discuss the community arts organization’s evolution, recent programs, and dreams for the future.
Uncanny Delights: Sculpture by John Chamberlain, Urs Fischer, and Charles Ray
Catalyzed by the exhibition Crushed, Cast, Constructed: Sculpture by John Chamberlain, Urs Fischer, and Charles Ray, Alice Godwin examines the legacy and development of a Surrealist ethos in selected works from three contemporary sculptors.
Theaster Gates: Black Vessel
Join Theaster Gates in his studio as he prepares for his upcoming exhibition at Gagosian, New York, this fall. In this video, shot entirely on location in Chicago during the recent tumultuous weeks, Gates reflects on the metaphorical power of materials and process, and on the redemptive potential of art.
How to Renew the Color of Bricks
Social historian Chris Dingwall reflects on Theaster Gates’s engagement with the history of quotidian materials, focusing on the symbolic qualities and function of his brick-based sculpture.