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BLACK WOMEN ARTISTS FOR BLACK LIVES MATTER
Black Women Artists: a manifesto 3/23/17
2017
Wall vinyl
Dimensions variable

 

Image of RJ MESSINEO's Divided Light, 2016

RJ MESSINEO
Divided Light, 2016
Oil and gesso on wood
65 x 63 x 2 1/2 in. (165.1 x 160 x 6.3 cm)

 

JCG8964

Image of BEATRIZ MILHAZES's Marotoloco, 2014 – 15

 

BEATRIZ MILHAZES
Marotoloco, 2014 – 15
Acrylic on canvas
31 1/16 x 31 1/4 in.
80 x 80 cm
 
JCG8022

 

Image of ROBERT SMITHSON's Enantiomorphic Chambers, 1965/1999

 

ROBERT SMITHSON
Enantiomorphic Chambers, 1965/1999
Painted steel mirrors
24 x 30 x 31 in.
61 x 76.2 x 78.7
Exhibition Copy

 

RS18927

Image of ROBERT SMITHSON's Enantiomorphic Chambers, 1965/1999

 

ROBERT SMITHSON
Enantiomorphic Chambers, 1965/1999
Painted steel mirrors
24 x 30 x 31 in.
61 x 76.2 x 78.7
Exhibition Copy

 

RS18927

 

Image of LAURA OWENS's Untitled, 2016

LAURA OWENS
Untitled, 2016
Oil, screen printing ink and wheel on linen
69 x 60 x 3 1/2 in.
175.3 x 152.4 x 8.9 cm

 

JCG8958

Image of RUTH VOLLMER's Spun Aluminum, undated

 

RUTH VOLLMER
Spun Aluminum
Undated
Aluminum
Part I: 10 x 10 x 10 in. (25.4 x 25.4 x 25.4 cm)
Part 11: 5 x 7 x 10 in (12.7 x 17.8 x 25.4 cm)

 

JCG8981

Image of MATT MULLICAN's Untitled (Views 4), 2016

 

MATT MULLICAN
Untitled (Views 4), 2016
Acrylic gouache and oil stick rubbing on canvas
39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in.
100 x 100 cm

 

JCG8965

Image of JOSEPH STABILITO's Cocteau, 1991

 

JOSEPH STABILITO
Cocteau, 1991
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
68 x 92 x 1 3/4 in.
172.7 x 233.7 x 4.5 cm.

 

JCG8983

Image of TOYIN OJIH ODUTOLA's Manifesto, 2017

 

TOYIN OJIH ODUTOLA
Manifesto, 2017
Charcoal, pastel and pencil on paper
18 3/4 x 23 3/4 in.
47.6 x 60.3 cm.
Framed: 24 1/2 x 29 3/8 in.
 
JCG8986

 

Image of TREVOR PAGLEN's “Winona" Eigenface; Labeled Faces in the Wild Dataset, 2016

 

TREVOR PAGLEN
“Winona" Eigenface; Labeled Faces in the Wild Dataset, 2016
Dye sublimation metal print
48 x 48 in.
121.9 x 121.9 cm.
Framed: 49 1/2 x 49 1/2 in.
 
 
JCG8969
 

 

Image of CARROLL DUNHAM's Untitled (4), 2011

 

CARROLL DUNHAM
Untitled (4), 2011
Acrylic and pencil on linen
33 3/8 x 26 1/8 in.
84.8 x 66.4 cm
 
JCG8984

 

Image of HANNA SANDIN's​ [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[#][o]][||]][||]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][[[[[[O][:]]][~]][||]]]]][[[[[[[<][D]][D]][D]][|]][[|][|:]]]], 2017

HANNA SANDIN​
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[#][o]][||]][||]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][\]][[[[[[O][:]]][~]][||]]]]][[[[[[[<][D]][D]][D]][|]][[|][|:]]]], 2017
Concrete, oxidized steel, nylon covered steel cable, filter vent, shingles, belt, rubber gaskets, outlet cover, corner dam, foot peds, Time Warner cable wire, poster holder, screen door crossbar, squeegee replacement rubber.

Installation dimensions: 94 x 63 x 36 in.

 

JCG8982

 

Image of ADAM NOVAK's Lotion, Beer, Phone, 2016

 

ADAM NOVAK
Lotion, Beer, Phone, 2016
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 in.
152.4 x 152.4 cm.
 

JCG8963

Image of JACK WHITTEN's Black In Time I, 1980

 

JACK WHITTEN
Black In Time I, 1980
Acrylic on canvas
30 1/4 x 30 1/4 in.
76.8 x 76.8 cm.

 

JCG8972

Image of ALEX DODGE's The music stops,&nbsp;2016

 

ALEX DODGE
The music stops, 2016
Oil on linen
24 x 32 in.
61 x 81.3 cm
 
JCG8985

 

Image of ADAM NOVAK's Steve Drives 2,&nbsp;2016

 

ADAM NOVAK
Steve Drives 2, 2016
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 in.
152.4 x 152.4 cm

 

JCG8961

Image of MARINA ADAMS's Wonderland,&nbsp;2016

 

MARINA ADAMS
Wonderland, 2016
Acrylic on linen
78 x 68 in.
198.1 x 172.7
 
JCG8955

 

Image of PEIXUAN WANG's Melancholia,&nbsp;2016

 

PEIXUAN WANG
Melancholia, 2016
Color pencil on paper
29 x 22 1/4 in.
73.7 x 56.5 cm.
 
JCG8967

 

Image of LUCAS BLALOCK's Bed of Nails,&nbsp;2016

 

LUCAS BLALOCK
Bed of Nails, 2016
Archival inkjet print
19 x 23 in.
48.3 x 58.4 cm
 
JCG9049

 

Image of ROBERT SMITHSON's Untitled [Green vertical square maze and woman with stockings],&nbsp;1964

 

ROBERT SMITHSON
Untitled [Green vertical square maze
and woman with stockings], 1964
Mixed media with stencil on paper
30 x 22 in.
76.2 x 55.9 cm
 
RS12642

 

Image of PEIXUAN WANG's Cockasian, 2016

 

PEIXUAN WANG
Cockasian, 2016
Color pencil on paper
29 x 22 1/4 in.
73.7 x 56.5 cm.
 
JCG8966

 

Image of PEIXUAN WANG's Self-portrait,&nbsp;2016

 

PEIXUAN WANG
Self-portrait, 2016
Oil bar on newsprint
24 x 18 in.
61 x 45.7 cm
 

JCG8968

Image of LUCAS BLALOCK's The Sleepers, 2016

 

LUCAS BLALOCK
The Sleepers, 2016
Archival inkjet print
21 1/2 x 28 in. 
54.6 x 71.1 cm.
Ed. 2/3 + 2AP
 
JCG9050

 

Image of RUTH VOLLMER's Untitled, 1978

 

RUTH VOLLMER
Untitled, 1978
Graphite on paper
22 x 11 in.
55.9 x 27.9 cm.
 
JCG8980

 

Image of JACK WHITTEN's Spiral Jetty: For Robert Smithson, 2016

 

JACK WHITTEN
Spiral Jetty: For Robert Smithson, 2016
Acrylic on panel
30 1/4 x 30 1/4 in.
76.8 x 76.8 cm.

 

JCG8973

Press Release

Vanishing Points - Curated by Andrianna Campbell - Exhibitions - James Cohan

ROBERT SMITHSON
Enantiomorphic Chambers
1965
Painted steel, mirrors
24 x 30 x 31 in. 

Andrianna Campbell in conversation with Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter: Saturday, April 1 at 2 PM
 
Who am I but a sobriquet, a teeth-grinder, grinder of color, and vanishing point?
Dorothea Tanning 
 
Vanishing Points explores traditional perspectival space, fragmentary spatial depictions, and a desktop-publishing aesthetic of leveling in the age of digital-image capture and analysis in works executed in a variety of media. The exhibition asks what does disrupted viewing look like? Can we envision art that addresses multiple racial, gendered, cultural and even digital identifications by playing with these constructions? The exhibition is deeply indebted to the austere eponymously-named exhibition of conceptual art staged at the Moderna Museet in 1984: the original Vanishing Points featured Robert Smithson and Ruth Vollmer among others. Thirty years later, Vanishing Points incorporates Smithson and Vollmer alongside a group of contemporary artists, whose work addresses entanglements of the geometric and the embodied. By circling back to Smithson and Vollmer, Vanishing Points acknowledges the panicked exploration of constructions of space and of bodies in the late-1960s. Today, those former liminal identifications battle to claim the center. The show explores the seemingly ascetic and (at times) abstract geometries that approximate the act of seeing next to far more luxurious gambits in figuration. 
 
From the Renaissance onward, artists used vanishing points in two-point perspective—tapering lines disappearing at a point— to plot three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface thereby suggesting depth. In so doing, artists presented an all-encompassing viewing subject. A subject that until post-modernist and post-structuralist criticism, some assumed to be neutral and most likely coded white and male.  This exhibition builds on and complicates these encodings of identity through the object of attention, the viewing subject, and in representations structured by perspective and by vanishing points. After all, linear vanishing points are invisible, but even they often necessitate an incarnated body to interact with. Formed from our environment, from our opinions, and from our interactions with the world, bodies transform alongside ways of being and seeing. Experience stemming from vision manifests in the flesh of bodies. 
 
This exhibition revels in geometries even while it contaminates their purity. Moreover, it points to areas where bodies are visible, invisible and where they interface. For instance Smithson, whose Enantiamorphic Chambers, 1965 is included, pulls us into a disorientating engagement with perspectival viewing. Finished a few years after the drawings also on view, we get to look into the structure, whereas later works such as Pointless Vanishing Point fail to converge at a point. Refusal of recognition can be seen in Toyin Ojih Odutola’s pastel, which beckons the viewer in with white-brick-mortar lines receding into the background. The dark-brown-skinned figure, whose shoulder obstructs an observation of his face, also turns away from our gaze. Inaccessibility appears as the counterweight to perspective but is often a principal feature. Trevor Paglen’s frontal composition, Winona” Eigenface (Colorized), Labelled Faces in the Wild Dataset, 2016 is a blurred recomposition made from many photographs of the actress, pulled from the Internet, captured by a computer, and merged as data. As an algorithmic aggregate, the photograph flickers between actualization and disappearance. We have no one vantage point on the actress but a multitude of views over a long period of time. In this way, perspective today concretizes its engagement with deception.
 
In its Latinate origins, perspective refers to looking through or to looking thoroughly. Thus traditionally vanishing points approximate the act of seeing, navigation, and thus function as does the hyperlink by a flattened enticement. We rarely get to look through or thoroughly as promised. We are hampered by pictorial constructions or encumbered by bias. It is in this state of incongruity between desire and possibility that the exhibition lingers. No longer modern, we can look at and past Dorothea Tanning’s question about herself as an artist: Who am I but a sobriquet, a teeth-grinder, grinder of color, and vanishing point?  We can look at the struggle within these tense intervals of actualization and de-actualization for a way to model multiple visible identifications and also muse about the waning likelihood of vanishing into anonymity in a world bewitched by surveillance.  
 
Marina Adams, Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter, Lucas Blalock, Alex Dodge, Carroll Dunham, RJ Messineo, Beatriz Milhazes, Matt Mullican, Adam Novak, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Hanna Sandin, Robert Smithson, Joseph Stabilito, Ruth Vollmer, Peixuan Wang, and Jack Whitten 
 
For press inquiries, please contact Jeffrey Waldron at jwaldron@jamescohan.com or 212.714.9500.
 
Please contact David Norr at dnorr@jamescohan.com or 212.714.9500 for further inquiries regarding the exhibition.
 
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