NEW YORK: Senga Nengudi

September 10 - October 24, 2015

DOMINIQUE LÉVY

909 Madison Avenue

Enter on 73rd Street

New York, NY

Dominique Lévy is pleased to present its first exhibition with the artist Senga Nengudi. Organized by Begum Yasar, this selection of recent sculptures and 1970s performance stills inaugurates “The Back Room,” the gallery’s new 3rd floor project space.

Click here to for exhibit info and images.

ON VIEW: Senga Nengudi

Senga Nengudi, Rubber Maid, 2011. Inner tube tire, nylons, sand. 14 x 22 x 3 inches. Image courtesy of the artist, ESSEX STREET, NY; and Thomas Erben Gallery, NY.

Tony Conrad, Senga Nengudi, Toshiko Takaezu

March 12 - April 26, 2015

ESSEX STREET

114 Eldridge Street

New York, NY  

From ESSEX STREET press release:

ESSEX STREET is honored to present an exhibition of recent and historic works by Tony Conrad, Senga Nengudi and Toshiko Takaezu. Each is major. This exhibition focuses on their respective concerns and engagements with surface, with technics, and most significantly with developing an art form that conveys dynamic notions of performativity. Each object in the exhibition curves between the moment of its creation or initial activation and its present state of being awake.

Senga Nengudi emerged from the Southern California Funk of the 1960s and 70s African-American Avant-Garde. In the 1960s Nengudi studied Gutai in Japan, worked as a teacher at both Simon Rodia’s Watts Tower and also at the Pasadena Art Museum in the era of Walter Hopps, Allan Kaprow et al. The works in this exhibition, one first made in 1976 and the other two more recent examples, are performance merged into artwork, their tension and engagement inherent in the rubber and nylons’ torque and stretch. Gravity gives the objects an extant life, as weight struggles with elasticity. Without the performer, the work becomes its own body. They regard the forms and shape of African, Afro-Hispanic, and Native American sources, assembled like a diaspora rearticulated in the here and now: a tire, pantyhose, a shell, sand. They speak new phrases and new subjects in the mysterious language of Bourgeois and Hesse. They are ritual, the more worn the more vital.

Toshiko Takaezu, a master ceramist, was a protégé of Maija Grottel at Cranbrook in the 1950s. The works included in the exhibition are closed forms and moon pots made in porcelain, stoneware and ceramic. Without any semblance to pitchers, vases or bowls, they declare a divergence from traditional craft, asserting both autonomy as sculpture and a disavowal to function. Their oblique face wraps around as a site for painting glazes and treatments. Takaezu was a pioneer of gestural abstraction in ceramics. Their oversize scale and shape convey her exceptional skill in structuring and kilning. Inside each of these works, sealed in darkness, are clumps of extra clay, dropped in just before being fired. Holding one of her pieces rattles these interior and secret masses, producing a sound clattering notes from in to out. Though most of the time this song, like the coordinated forces which determined the shape of these onto themselves vessels, is inaccessible.

Tony Conrad has been reformulating the basis of video, filmmaking, musical composition and performance for half a century. After studying math at Harvard in the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of New York minimalism working with La Monte Young, John Cale, Henry Flynt and others. In 1965 he made one of his first masterpieces of structural film, The Flicker, which consists of only alternating black and white stills. This work goes beyond narrative capacity, beyond medium specificity and definition, into the very mechanics of audience reception, specifically how the brain of a viewer processes what is and is not seen. In 1973 Conrad made the Yellow Movies and the Yellow TVs, the later of which are included in this exhibition. These works boil down the phenomena of movies and television, into a durational screening and a viewing experience. The program of the screening is merely the yellowing of white or fluorescent paint. The making, exposure, exhibiting and screening of these programs are condensed into one ultra-elongated event. The speed of these movies and tvs does occurs, albeit at a rate so much slower than our viewing habits. The program becomes psychedelic, as Diedrich Diederichsen has claimed; a radically deviant temporal relation. In comparison, they make Warhol’s Empire a highly paced interlude.

The objects in this exhibition are ON, even and especially beyond the confines of our visual receptivity. They don’t require just viewing, but a kind of spirit and cognitive unlocking.

This in now, how do it so?

Installation view of Tony Conrad, Senga Nengudi, Toshiko Takaezu, ESSEX STREET, NY.
On left: Senga Nengudi, Rubber Maid, 2011, Inner tube tire, nylons, sand, 14 x 22 x 3 inches; On right: Senga Nengudi, Blue Haze, 2013, Nylons, sand, found objects, 18 x 16 x 2.25 inches. Image courtesy of the artist, ESSEX STREET, NY; and Thomas Erben Gallery, NY.

Exhibit Link

LONDON: Senga Nengudi

Senga Nengudi, R.S.V.P.Reverie "Scribe" (detail), 2014, Nylon mesh, sand and found metals. 94 x 54 x 67 inches. Image via whitecube.com. 

Alt

November 26, 2014 – January 18, 2015

WHITE CUBE BERMONDSEY

144 – 152 Bermondsey Street

London, UK

From whitecube.com:

White Cube is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Senga Nengudi. Nengudi’s pioneering art, developed over a 40-year long career, seamlessly traverses the disciplines of visual arts, dance, and spirituality while at the same time, eloquently dealing with such powerful themes as race, gender and culture. This exhibition, Nengudi’s first ever solo presentation in the UK, will include a selection ranging from the mid-1970s to newly produced ‘Reverie’ works.

Nengudi first came to prominence in the 1970s when she was a Los Angeles-based artist affiliated with Studio Z. This radical group of African-American artists were distinguished by their experimental and improvisational practice, and included amongst them David Hammons and Maren Hassinger, with whom Nengudi frequently collaborated.

Nengudi’s output has always been wide-ranging, although she is perhaps best known for her sculptures and choreographed performances – sometimes merging the two together – which encouraged an active involvement on the part of the viewer. Her free-form, abstract and biomorphic ‘soft’ sculptures incorporated a variety of found materials (such as nylon mesh tights or ‘pantyhose’, everyday objects or masking tape) as well as natural materials like sand or rock. As part of this practice, in the mid-1970s she produced the ‘R.S.V.P.’ series; works that used nylon tights – a material associated with a gendered, female body – stretched, twisted and knotted and then filled with sand. Hung on the wall but stretching out three-dimensionally into the gallery space, the materiality of these sculptures suggests skin, breasts, or bodily organs and places an emphasis on the performative body through its palpable sense of tactility.

Nengudi’s performances, which incorporate sculptural objects with real bodies – either her own or those of others – are powerfully engaging. In R.S.V.P., performed with Maren Hassinger, Nengudi utilised movement to explore ‘feminist issues … a sense of body, how body issues related to self-esteem and self-acceptance … also entanglements – being entangled by my stuff and stretching oneself beyond your limits.’ While it can clearly be positioned in relation to both Minimalism and Feminism, Nengudi’s work resists any defined political or ethnic content, but rather, evokes the fragility and resilience of both mind and body.

Senga Nengudi was born in 1943 in Chicago. She studied in both Los Angeles and Japan, and currently lives and works in Colorado. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions internationally. Solo exhibitions include Senga Nengudi: The Material Body, MCA Denver and Senga Nengudi: The Performing Body, Redline Gallery, Denver (both 2014). Recent important group exhibitions include Blues for Smoke, Whitney Museum and MoCA, Los Angeles (2012-13); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2012); Now Dig This – Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and MoMA PS1, New York (2011-12) and ‘Wack!: Art and the Feminist Revolution’, MoCA, Los Angeles (2007).

Exhibit Link

LECTURE: Senga Nengudi

Senga Nengudi. Inside/Outside, 1977. Nylon, mesh, rubber , approx.: 60 x 24 in. (152.4 x 61 cm).
Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Burt Aaron, the Council for Feminist Art, and the Alfred T. White Fund, 2011.21. © Senga Nengudi

Norma Marshall Memorial Lecture featuring Senga Nengudi

Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 7 p.m.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

Great Hall, 1st Floor

200 Eastern Parkway

Brooklyn, NY

Join the Brooklyn Museum for its first annual Norma Marshall Memorial Lecture, featuring Senga Nengudi, an artist who explores the human body in relation to ritual, philosophy, and spirituality in visual art, performance, and education. Incorporating a variety of natural and unconventional materials, Nengudi’s abstract works activate all the senses, inviting the viewer to participate in the artistic process. Nengudi’s Inside/Outside (pictured above) is currently featured in the installation Unfolding Tales: Selections from the Contemporary Collection.

Honoring the memory of Norma Marshall, a former President of the Museum’s Community Committee, the series brings distinguished artists and scholars to the Museum to celebrate women artists featured in the Museum’s collections and special exhibitions. Spotlight Talks on artworks connected with Nengudi and Marshall precede the lecture. A reception with the artist immediately follows.

This series is made possible by the Norma Marshall Memorial Fund. Tickets are free with Museum admission and can be picked up the evening of the lecture at the Museum’s Visitor Center, or ordered in advance at www.museumtix.com.

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NEW YORK: Senga Nengudi

Senga Nengudi, Performance with ‘Inside/Outside,’ 1977. Silver gelatin print, 40 x 30 inches, edition of 5 ( + 1 AP),

The sculpture Inside/Outside: nylon mesh, rubber foam. Photo: Ken Peterson. Image via thomaserben.com.

January 17 – February 23, 2013

Reception for the artist: Thursday, January 31, 6-8:30 pm

THOMAS ERBEN GALLERY

526 West 26^th Street, floor 4

New York, NY

Thomas Erben is very excited to present an exhibition of photographs documenting performances by seminal artist Senga Nengudi (b. 1943, Chicago, IL), which took place in public or for the camera between 1976 and 1981.

Best known perhaps for her nylon mesh wall pieces and installations, Senga Nengudi is regarded as a core member of the African-American avant-garde – with artists such as David Hammons and Maren Hassinger – as it was concentrated in Los Angeles during the 1970s and early ‘80s. Her 2003 show with this gallery featured her pivotal series Répondez s’il vous plaît, originally exhibited at Just Above Midtown Gallery (1977), combining cut, knotted, twisted and stretched pantyhose with sand and various found materials into sculptures closely connected to the human body, its movements and psyche. Similar pieces are currently part of Now Dig This! at MoMA/PS1, which traveled there from the Hammer Museum, LA, and the installation R.S.V.P. I is currently on display at MoMA as one of their recent acquisitions.

For Nengudi, the employment of used pantyhose instills her nylon mesh pieces with a residue of the body and the wearer, and including this sculptural material in performance work connects it even closer with lived experience. Performance, either solo or in collaboration, has always been a major part of her multi-disciplinary practice, with an emphasis on improvisation and ritual, and Nengudi’s background in dance has also played an important role. While purely documentary at the time, the photographs in our current show now function as independent works; many were reproduced in art publications, but this is the first time a comprehensive, editioned selection is exhibited.

A legendary figure, Nengudi has been included in numerous exhibitions such as NowHere – Incandescent, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (1996); Out of Action: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979, MOCA, Los Angeles (1998); 54th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, and Non Toccare la Donna Bianca, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (both 2004); WHACK! Art & The Feminist Revolution, MOCA, Los Angeles (2007); Under the Big Black Sun, MOCA, Los Angeles, and Dance/Draw, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (both 2011); and Now Dig This! The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and PS1/MoMA, New York (2012). Her most recent solo show was Lov U, Warehouse Gallery, Syracuse University, NY (2012). Nengudi’s work is part of the collections of the Carnegie Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, MOCA Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hammer Museum, and MoMA. The artist lives and works in Colorado Springs, CO – this is her fifth solo exhibition with Thomas Erben Gallery.

Nengudi will also participate in:

Now Dig This! From Los Angeles to New York City Symposium,

MoMA, February 8

A performance of KISS, with Ulysses Jenkins and Maren Hassinger,

MoMA/PS1, February 10