黑料不打烊

Pace Gallery is pleased to present Blackness in Abstraction, an exhibition curated by Adrienne Edwards tracing the persistent presence of the color black in art, with a particular emphasis on monochromes, from the 1940s to today. Blackness in Abstraction is on view from June 24 to August 19, 2016 at 510 West 25th Street, with an opening reception on Thursday, June 23 from 6 to 8 p.m. A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition with a cover designed by artist Adam Pendleton and text written by Edwards.

Blackness in Abstraction considers the use of black as a method, mode and material in works by twenty-nine artists who have explored the expressive and symbolic possibilities of black as a color. Featuring works鈥攐ver a third of which are newly created鈥攂y an international and intergenerational group of artists, the exhibition explores blackness as a highly evocative and animating force in various approaches to abstract art. The exhibition looks at the role of the color black across a range of practices, spanning Geometric Abstraction, Minimalism and Conceptualism to its use in the present.

Included in the exhibition is the work of Louise Nevelson, who explained her commitment to black, saying 鈥淔or me, the black contains the silhouette, the essence of the universe.鈥� Also included will be works by Sol LeWitt, whose painted wood and wall structures of the early 1960s explore black through a conceptual framework, and Ad Reinhardt, who considered his black paintings 鈥減ure abstract, non-objective, timeless, spaceless, changeless, relationless, disinterested.鈥� Revisiting manifestations of the black square and tracing its evolution over time to a more layered and frayed entity are a new suite of paintings by Ellen Gallagher riffing off of Kazimir Malevich鈥檚 Black Square on a White Ground (1915), mixed media works by Turiya Magadlela, a bound fabric wall sculpture by Laura Lima, and Jonathas de Andrade鈥檚 photographic iterations of the black square, which use plastic tarp to reference the movement of land occupation and the square form as a historic reference to capitalism. Further, the exhibition observes black in the context of other colors, heightening our attention to the ways in which black functions among them in the paintings of Jack Whitten and Ulrike M眉ller.

Many of the works on view were made specifically for the exhibition, including a new site-specific wall painting by Wangechi Mutu that takes as its base a black pulp material made from magazine pages. 鈥淭his color so indescribable isn鈥檛 just or even a color, it鈥檚 a conclusion, a condition and a combined existence of matted meaning and mushed matter,鈥� Mutu describes. Also creating new work for the exhibition is Adam Pendleton, whose Black Dada works draw on traditions of absurdist poetry with minimal compositions based on letters, lines and shades of black, both abiding by and resisting historical concepts of language as image or material. Glenn Ligon鈥檚 contribution includes a newly created group of seventeen screenprints of James Baldwin鈥檚 1955 essay Stranger in the Village. Pope.L realizes three new works in varying media for the show, including two site-specific installations.

Blackness in Abstraction will look beyond painting to explore the ways that black abstract work exists in other media including sculpture, video, photography and installation, opening blackness beyond a purely optical dimension and positing its theatrical possibilities.

Intended to prompt a three-way exchange between artist, artwork and viewer, the assembly of works will raise questions about the meaning and function of the black art work. Leaving space for interpretation through unexpected and unintended reverberations between artists and objects, the exhibition will resist chronological emphasis to open and foster new lines of thought. Blackness in Abstraction artists include Terry Adkins, Jonathas de Andrade, Rasheed Araeen, Kevin Beasley, Sergio de Camargo, K艒ji Enokura, Ellen Gallagher, Robert Irwin, Sui Jianguo, Rashid Johnson, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Laura Lima, Turiya Magadlela, Steve McQueen, Ulrike M眉ller, Oscar Murillo, Wangechi Mutu, Louise Nevelson, Lorraine O鈥橤rady, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Fred Sandback, Jack Tworkov, Carrie Mae Weems, Jack Whitten, and Fred Wilson.