Booth 717
Mar 7 - Mar 10, 2019
Press release for exhibition Booth 717
PˑPˑOˑW is
pleased to present historical and contemporary works by Anton van Dalen, Dinh
Q. Le, Hew Locke, Suzanne Treister, Robin F. Williams and David Wojnarowicz.
Anton van Dalen
(b. 1938)
has pursued a lifelong visual investigation informed by the influences of war,
religion, migration, nature, and technological evolution. PˑPˑOˑW will present a monumental unstretched canvas
from 1982, The War Comes Home, which
depicts a tank and fighter jet decimating the Lower East Side, which van Dalen
has documented since the 1970s. Aping triumphal parades for soldiers returning
from active duty, van Dalen’s cityscape reflects the inextricable links between
homelands and foreign conflict zones. This work will be complimented by small
graphite and colored pencil drawings from 1981-84 exploring related themes. Van
Dalen has been included in group exhibitions at notable institutions including
the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; New Museum, New York;
Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, and the New York Historical Society. He
has also been the subject of solo exhibitions: Temple Gallery, Tyler School of
Art, Temple University, Philadelphia; University Gallery, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst; and Exit Art, New York. Avenue A Cut-Out Theatre has
toured since 1995 both nationally and internationally and has been shown at
numerous institutions including The Drawing Center, the Museum of Modern Art,
and The New York Historical Society. Junk Culture, his second exhibition
at PˑPˑOˑW, will open Thursday, March 21.
Dinh Q. Lê (b. 1968) uses photography as both a technology for image making and an apparatus
for distributing ideological narratives. The range of techniques he employs
expand the category of photography to reveal the failings of individual memory
and collective perceptions. We will present a large photo-weaving from his
iconic Vietnam to Hollywood series,
works that combine scenes from popular films such as Apocalypse Now with influential journalistic images published
during the war. Lê has exhibited at the 2013 Carnegie International at the
Carnegie Museum of Art, PA and documenta 13, Kassel, Germany in 2012. His work
has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Carnegie Museum, PA; MoMA
PS1, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, TX; and the Asia Society, NY, among many
others. Dinh Q. Lê: True Journey Is
Return, a traveling retrospective with a recently published full-color
catalog, is currently on view at the San Jose Museum of Art. He is a co-founder
of the nonprofit organization Sàn Art. Lê lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam.
Hew
Locke (b.1959)
utilizes a wide range of mediums to explore the languages of colonial and
post-colonial power. Locke was primarily raised in Guyana and returned to the
UK to complete an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1994. Hew Locke’s
Ghost 2015 depicts the HMS Belfast, a
war ship launched by the British Royal Navy shortly before the outbreak of World
War II. Now decommissioned, this ship is permanently moored in the Thames in
London as a tourist destination celebrating military strength. Commissioned for
an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, Ghost
speaks to the commemoration of violent conflict as a central strategy for
fashioning national identities. Locke’s work is represented in many collections
including the Government Art Collection, UK; Miami Art Museum, FL; Tate
Gallery, UK; the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Perez Art Museum Miami, FL; the Kemper Museum
of Contemporary Art, MO; the RISD Museum, RI; the British Museum, London, UK;
and the Henry Moore Institute Leeds, UK. Locke’s most comprehensive exhibition
to date, Hew Locke: Here’s the Thing,
will open at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, on March 8. Hew Locke: Here’s the Thing will travel to the Kemper Museum of
Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO and Colby College Museum of Art, ME.
Suzanne Treister (b. 1958) has been a pioneer in digital, new media, and web- based media art since
the late-1980s. Her work is often made in elaborate, years-long series of
watercolor diagrams which conjure fictional worlds, international collaborative
organizations, and apocalyptic or regenerative futures. PˑPˑOˑW will
exhibit 45 giclee prints from her ongoing series SURVIVOR (F), an hallucinogenic exploration of a future reality in
undetermined time and space. This series presents manifestations of a fictional
survivor of the human race. Treister studied at St Martin’s School of Art,
London (1978-1981) and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1981-1982)
and currently lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include solo and
group shows at the ICA London; 10th Shanghai Biennale, China; 8th Montréal
Biennale, Canada; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam
(SMBA), Netherlands; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Raven Row, London;
Secession, Vienna; Museum of Contemporary Art (CAPC) Bordeaux and Annely Juda
Fine Art, London. Treister’s work is held in private and public collections
including Tate Britain; Science Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Muzeum
Sztuki, Łódź, Poland and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna.
Robin F. Williams (b. 1984) utilizes a
variety of techniques, including oil, airbrush, and the staining of raw canvas,
to create lush, deeply textured paintings. Fighters 2018, a pastel work on paper depicts two androgynous
cisgender women interlocked in a dispassionate, violent struggle. Updating the
Cain and Abel narrative for the 21st Century, this work uses twin
figures to illustrate the psychology of aggravation and conflict. With three
solo exhibitions at P.P.O.W, Williams has garnered critical recognition for her
contribution to figurative and feminist painting, noting the complexity of her
compositions, masterfully varied techniques and the psychological depth of her
narratives. In her review of Williams' 2017 exhibition Your Good Taste
is Showing, Roberta Smith of the New York Times wrote: "These
painting are timely, but they are also enigmatic, off-putting and out there in
rewarding ways.” Robin F. Williams was born in Ohio and lives and works in
Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She
has been included in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally.
Williams has been honored as the Josephine Mercy Heathcote Fellow at The
MacDowell Colony.
David Wojnarowicz
(1954-1992)
was among the most incisive and prolific American artists of the 1980s and
90s. David Wojnarowicz’s work has been exhibited at The Museum of
Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The American Center,
Paris, France; The Busan Museum of Modern Art, Korea; Centro Galego de Art
Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; The Barbican Art Gallery, London;
and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. His work is in permanent collections of major
museums nationally and internationally and his life and work have been the
subject of significant scholarly studies. Wojnarowicz has had retrospectives at
the galleries of the Illinois State University, curated by Barry Blinderman
(1990) and at the New Museum, curated by Dan Cameron (1999). A third
retrospective, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night,
co-curated by David Kiehl and David Breslin, opened at the Whitney Museum of
American Art in July 2018. The widely acclaimed exhibition has been reviewed in
Artforum, The Guardian, The New York Times and The New Yorker, among others.
The retrospective will travel to the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid in May 2019 and
the Musee d/Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City in November 2019. A
concurrent exhibition of Wojnarowicz’s films and photographs opened at the KW
Berlin in February 2019.