NYAB Event - Cy Twombly "Eight Sculptures"

Cy Twombly "Eight Sculptures"

Gagosian Gallery Madison Avenue

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Gagosian Gallery announces an exhibition of new bronze sculptures by Cy Twombly. This exhibition will coincide with the inauguration of Gagosian's Athens gallery with an exhibition of new paintings by Twombly entitled "Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves". Two major museum exhibitions, "Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000-2007' that inaugurated the new wing of The Art Institute of Chicago, and "Cy Twombly: Sensations of the Moment" at Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, run through October 2009.

Since 1946 Twombly has fashioned sculptures from everyday materials and objects, usually painted with white gesso. In 1979 he began casting some of them in bronze, thus unifying, preserving, and transforming them into cohesive wholes, independent from the original bricolages. The surface and patina of these cast bronzes evoke weathered artifacts that have been exhumed from the earth, an effect that is heightened in those that have been coated in white oil paint.

Some of these sculptures contain allusions to the static, closed forms of Egyptian and Mesopotamian sculpture, as well as to other architectural and geometric references such as the repetition of rectangular pedestals and circular structures. Others refer to historical representations such as Untitled (The Mathematical Dream of Ashurbanipal) (2000-2009), an allusion to the scholarly Assyrian king whose military prowess was the subject of a rival king's dream in which his eventual submission to Assyria was predicted. While the components of these sculptures have been partially merged and abstracted by the casting process, in works such as Untitled (2004-2009) a progression of precariously balanced objects is clearly demarcated, in this case a broom inside a funnel that rests on a cylindrical pedestal. Twombly's continued play between fragility and obduracy, figuration and abstraction, ancient and modern imbues each work with its characteristic tension.

[Image: Cy Twombly "Untitled (The Mathematical Dream of Ashurbanipal)" (2000-2009) Bronze 41 1/8 x 20 7/8 x 21 5/16 in.]