Betty Woodman: Conversations on the Shore, Works from the 1990s
Betty Woodman: Conversations on the Shore, Works from the 1990s brings together a group of fourteen important ceramic sculptures from a crucial, career-defining period in Woodman鈥檚 development as a genre-defying artist, and marks David Kordansky Gallery鈥檚 first exhibition of the artist鈥檚 work in collaboration with the Woodman Family Foundation since announcing its representation of her estate earlier this year. The exhibition is on view in New York at 520 W. 20th Street from October 29 through December 17, 2022. An opening reception will be held from 6 鈥� 8 PM on Friday, October 28, 2022.
Betty Woodman (1930鈥�2018) is recognized not only as one of the most important artists to work in ceramics鈥攁nd one of those most responsible for its inclusion in contemporary art historical discourse鈥攂ut also as an iconoclastic figure whose advances in several mediums made her a major voice in postwar American art. She transformed the functional history of clay into a point of departure, engaging in bold formal experiments in which she acknowledged the central role of the vessel even as she deconstructed, reassembled, and expanded upon it.
As a snapshot of Woodman鈥檚 work during the 1990s, this exhibition synthesizes many kinds of conversations and gives viewers a sense of the ongoing conversation that Woodman had with herself about the ability of ceramic-based art to synthesize modernist ideas about painting and sculpture. It is anchored by Conversations on the Shore, a major installation from 1994 that has not been exhibited since the late 1990s, when it appeared in a traveling solo show which originated at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Featuring floor- and wall-mounted elements, the installation finds Woodman addressing the relationship between negative and positive space with virtuosic aplomb, evoking impressions of architecture, landscape, and the figure while maintaining intense focus on the inherent qualities of her materials. It also telegraphs many of the innovations that would characterize the artist鈥檚 later work, which increasingly grew in psychological reach and formal variation as she began to distinguish less and less between two- and three-dimensional composition.
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Betty Woodman: Conversations on the Shore, Works from the 1990s brings together a group of fourteen important ceramic sculptures from a crucial, career-defining period in Woodman鈥檚 development as a genre-defying artist, and marks David Kordansky Gallery鈥檚 first exhibition of the artist鈥檚 work in collaboration with the Woodman Family Foundation since announcing its representation of her estate earlier this year. The exhibition is on view in New York at 520 W. 20th Street from October 29 through December 17, 2022. An opening reception will be held from 6 鈥� 8 PM on Friday, October 28, 2022.
Betty Woodman (1930鈥�2018) is recognized not only as one of the most important artists to work in ceramics鈥攁nd one of those most responsible for its inclusion in contemporary art historical discourse鈥攂ut also as an iconoclastic figure whose advances in several mediums made her a major voice in postwar American art. She transformed the functional history of clay into a point of departure, engaging in bold formal experiments in which she acknowledged the central role of the vessel even as she deconstructed, reassembled, and expanded upon it.
As a snapshot of Woodman鈥檚 work during the 1990s, this exhibition synthesizes many kinds of conversations and gives viewers a sense of the ongoing conversation that Woodman had with herself about the ability of ceramic-based art to synthesize modernist ideas about painting and sculpture. It is anchored by Conversations on the Shore, a major installation from 1994 that has not been exhibited since the late 1990s, when it appeared in a traveling solo show which originated at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Featuring floor- and wall-mounted elements, the installation finds Woodman addressing the relationship between negative and positive space with virtuosic aplomb, evoking impressions of architecture, landscape, and the figure while maintaining intense focus on the inherent qualities of her materials. It also telegraphs many of the innovations that would characterize the artist鈥檚 later work, which increasingly grew in psychological reach and formal variation as she began to distinguish less and less between two- and three-dimensional composition.
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Betty Woodman: Conversations on the Shore, Works from the 1990s brings together a group of thirteen important ceramic sculptures from a crucial, career-defining period in Woodman鈥檚 development as a genre-defying artist.
