CLEVELAND: Tony Lewis

Image via mocacleveland.org.

Tony Lewis: free nomenclature pressure weight movement power

June 6 - September 5, 2015

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CLEVELAND

Toby Devan Lewis Gallery

11400 Euclid Avenue

Cleveland, OH

From mocacleveland.org:

In his expansive drawing practice, Tony Lewis uses action and language to explore communication, presence, and authority. Focusing on graphite powder as a basic material element, his works emphasize the body through scale, tension, and imprint. Tony Lewis: free nomenclature pressure weight movement power is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition. In keeping with the process-driven, non-hierarchical nature of Lewis’ work, the word order of the exhibition’s title will be kept in flux.

The exhibition features six new large-scale works from Lewis' recently begun series of Gregg shorthand drawings. Invented in 1888, Gregg shorthand is a now outmoded phonetic writing system, where particular line forms correspond to spoken sounds. Each of the drawings features one of the words from the exhibition’s title, which collectively speak to the artist's process and concerns. These solitary hand-written characters emphasize the fluid, abstract, and gestural nature of notation. The exhibition will also feature one of Lewis’ floor drawings, which begin as graphite-coated paper floor coverings for entire rooms. After their initial installation, they are pulled up and compressed into sculptural objects, which are transformed each time they are exhibited, accumulating marks, creases, and tears.

Lewis also will install a large text piece, visible from the Museum’s monumental stair. Made with nails, stretched rubber bands, and graphite, this work is part of a series based on excerpts from Life’s Little Instruction Book by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. First encountered by the artist in his mother’s bathroom, this book has gone on to play an influential role in his practice. In isolating and magnifying these “instructions,” Lewis shifts their meaning and reveals the ways in which they assume, exclude, and exert power, while also speaking to personal fears and desires.

 

Tony Lewis (1986, LA), grew up in Cleveland and currently lives and works in Chicago. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Bindery Projects, Minneapolis; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; and Massimo de Carlo, London. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Sharon Hayes, Tony Lewis, Adam Pendleton,Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York (2015); the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; NEXT(2014), The Arsenal, Montreal; and Retreat (2014), organized by Theaster Gates, and presented by Black Artist Retreat, Valerie Carberry Gallery and Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago.

Exhibit Link

NEW YORK: Tony Lewis, Adam Pendleton

Tony Lewis, Time After Time, 2015. Photo courtesy Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL.

Sharon Hayes, Tony Lewis, Adam Pendleton

March 6 - April 25, 2015

Opening reception: Thursday, March 5, 2015, 6 - 8pm

ANDREA ROSEN GALLERY 2

544 West 24th Street

New York, NY

From Andrea Rosen Gallery e-blast:

Andrea Rosen Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of work by Sharon Hayes, Tony Lewis and Adam Pendleton at Gallery 2. The exhibition explores the relationship between the use of language and the formal and social implications of abstraction.

In this exhibition Sharon Hayes presents two works, each a fragment from a banner carried in the Women’s Strike for Equality on August 26th, 1970, that said “WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE!”. The works approximate the scale of the original banner, but the material transformation and presentation of selected letters from the word WOMEN alter the original’s legibility and seemingly straightforward declaration of meaning.

Tony Lewis presents a large graphite work on paper diptych featuring a symbol based on Gregg shorthand. These works continue Lewis's interrogation of language systems. Using the shorthand symbols, these works are at once technically more specific while becoming increasingly gestural and abstract.

Presenting a painting from his well-known body of work "Black Dada" as well as a work from a series layering text and images on mirrored stainless steel, Adam Pendleton's works in this exhibition give material form to the artist's engagement with a dynamic idea of history; one that is ever mutable and reflective of subjective and infinite narrative potentials.

Instrumental in the thinking about this exhibition is a 2006 essay about Felix Gonzalez-Torres's work by Miwon Kwon. In it she argues: "the radicality of FGT's work lies in the insinuation of the particular in the place of abstraction, while simultaneously destabilizing the particular as a fixed positivity. And with this complex move, the artist accomplishes a remarkable reversal: everyone becomes a particularly marked subject, making it impossible for there to be an unmarked, invisible, hierarchy-determining point of reference. Which means that no one is less than public either." Kwon's text provides a useful lens for reading these works as well, offering a possible way for abstraction to engage with specific histories, politics, and identities.

Sharon Hayes was born in 1970 in Baltimore, MD. She has had major solo exhibitions at the Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Art Institute of Chicago, and most recently at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Her work has been widely exhibited in significant exhibitions including The Encyclopedic Palace at the 55th Venice Biennale; the 2010 Whitney Biennial, documenta 12 (collaborative project), Kassel; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; Generali Foundation, Vienna; Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK), Vienna; Artists Space, New York; New Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; and the Istanbul Biennale. Hayes has been recently granted the Alpert Award in the Arts. The artist lives and works in New York.

Tony Lewis was born in 1986 in Los Angeles, California. Recent exhibitions have taken place at Massimo de Carlo, London; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Room East, New York; Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago; and Autumn Space, Chicago. His work was presented in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and will be the focus of an upcoming solo show at Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago. Lewis lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Adam Pendleton was born in 1984 in Richmond, Virginia. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Galleria Pedro Cera, Lisbon; Pace Gallery, New York; Shane Campbell Gallery, Lincoln Park; Travesia Cuatro, Guadalajara; and Pace Gallery, London. Pendleton's work recently included in group exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery, London; 21er Haus and Winter Palace, Vienna; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Pace Gallery, Beijing; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Swiss Institute, New York; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Pendleton lives and works in Germantown, New York, and Brooklyn, New York.

This exhibition is organized by Cory Nomura.

Exhibit Link

CHICAGO: RETREAT

Organized by Theaster Gates

August 22 – October 4, 2014

Opening reception: Friday, August 22, 2014, 5-7pm

VALERIE CARBERRY GALLERY

RICHARD GRAY GALLERY

875 North Michigan Avenue, 38th Floor

Chicago, IL

From press release:

Valerie Carberry Gallery and Richard Gray Gallery in collaboration with Black Artists Retreat, are pleased to announce RETREAT, an exhibition conceived and organized by Theaster Gates.

Artists were invited by Gates to consider how the concept of retreat, either in theory or practice, contributes to a position of strength and perspective in themaking of visual art. Works selected for exhibition communicate both active interpretations of retreat characterized by pressure or force and pssive expressions of retreat that invoke contemplation or meditation. Participating artists – Derrick Adams, Erika Allen, Elizabeth Axtman, Bethany Collins, Tony Lewis , Kelly Lloyd, Valerie Piraino, Mitchell Squire, Wilmer Wilson IV and Nate Young – represent the full range of contemporary art practice in all media, including painting, drawing, photography, installation, body art and video.

A fully illustrated publication with essay contributions by Hamza Walker (Associate Curator and Director of Education at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago) and Romi Crawford (Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) will debut at EXPO Chicago, being held September 18 -21, 2014.

Exhibit Link (Valerie Carberry Gallery)

Exhibit Link (Richard Gray Gallery)

NEW YORK: Tony Lewis and Nate Young

Image via roomeast.com.

March 16 – April 13, 2014

Opening reception: Sunday, March 16, 2014, 6 – 8PM

ROOM EAST

41 Orchard Street

New York, NY

From roomeast.com:

This two-person exhibition of work by Tony Lewis and Nate Young mines the language of installation-based drawing.

1. Three people leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

2. Have rational judgments.

3. Watch irrational judgments at least once a year.

4. Remember formal art is essentially other people’s birthdays.

5. Over tip irrational thoughts.

6. If the artist changes his handshake he compromises the result and repeats past results.

7. The artist’s will is secondary to the process of looking people in the eye.

8. Say “painting and sculpture” a lot.

9. Say “The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept” a lot.

10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually learn to play a musical instrument.

11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily sing in the shower before the next one is formed.

12. Use the good silver for each work of art that becomes physical.

13. Learn to make great chili. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.

14. Plant the words of one artist to another every spring, if they share the same concept.

15. Own a great stereo system, since no form is intrinsically superior to another.

16. If words are used, be the first to say, “numbers are not mathematics.”

17. Live beneath your means if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.

18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus own the best house you can afford.

19. The conventions of art are altered by great books, even if you never read them.

20. Be forgiving to yourself and others. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.

21. Perception of ideas leads to clean jokes.

22. The artist cannot imagine his shoes, and cannot perceive them until they are polished.

23. Mis-perceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art, but still floss your teeth.

24. Drink champagne for no reason at all. Perception is subjective.

25.  Ask for a raise when you feel you’ve earned it. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.

26. In a fight, an artist may perceive the art of others better than his own and hit hard.

27. The concept of a work of art may involve all things you borrow.

28. Teach side effects the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for some kind of class.

29. The process is in some kind of class and should not be tampered with. It should be a mechanical student and run its course.

30. There are many elements involved in a fireplace. The most important and most obvious is never buy a house without a work of art.

31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved buying whatever kids are selling on card tables in their front yards.

32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by a convertible.

33. It is difficult to treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.

34. When an artist learns his craft too well, he learns to identify the music of Chopin, Mozart, and Beethoven as slick art.

35. These sentences comment on art, but are not planting a tree on your birthday.

Exhibit Link

PREVIEW: Tony Lewis

All photos © 2013 BlackArtistNews. All rights reserved. Tony Lewis artwork used with permission of Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago.

BlackArtistNews previews new works by emerging artist  

Several works on paper by Tony Lewis will be on view in the Statements sector at Art Basel, June 13-16^th.

Statement provided by Shane Campbell Gallery:

Tony Lewis's recent work involves generally spare compositions of graphite letters excised from a self-written text that continues to be manipulated and rewritten on four glued paper panels. The language component, in the case of this project, stems from automatic writing and drawing exercises performed in the studio. Through associative wordplay, the nouns "people" and "color" are loosely organized into a poetic compound sentence. Fragments of that sentence are then transcribed in the form of a five line stanza with all of the letters being articulated in hand-drawn Arial font.  Depending on the drawing, Lewis will isolate particular words, letters, or phrases to shuffle meaning across personal, pop-cultural, political, and aesthetic boundaries. The scale of the drawings and fugitive media amount to expressive, visceral documentation of linguistic erasure and the simultaneously poignant and non-sensical possibilities it permits

  

For more information contact the Shane Campbell Gallery.