NYAB Event - "Cellblock I" Exhibition

"Cellblock I" Exhibition

Andrea Rosen Gallery (525 W 24th St)

This event has ended.

Andrea Rosen Gallery presents Cellblock I a group exhibitions curated by Robert Hobbs.

Cellblock I, at the Gallery's primary and expanded space, brings together a compelling group of four important artists – Peter Halley, Robert Motherwell, Sterling Ruby and Kelley Walker – by presenting a selection of significant paintings with additional works by Alice Aycock and Robert Smithson. The complex ideas behind the show and Hobbs' very deliberate choice of work suggest further layers of reading while remaining open to the viewers' own abstracted relationships with the works and their unique experiences. As is characteristic of shows at the Gallery, Cellblock I affords the opportunity to look at these familiar artists in a new way and with more depth, both in relation to each other and in regards to their individual practices.

While these are four artists Hobbs has championed individually, it's compelling how this show and subject bring together his scholarship in a culminating and unexpected way with artists whom he has known, studied, and written about over the length of his career, forming a meeting point of sorts.

The Gallery will also feature Cellblock II: An Essay in Exhibition Form as the first show at its second space (544 West 24th Street), which will newly house its Gallery 2 program, known for content-driven, experimental and historical one time exhibitions. Andrea Rosen conceived Gallery 2 in 1999 as a liberating arena in which to consider new ideas and create parallel perspectives to the Gallery's primary program, and as a means of fulfilling the Gallery's responsibility to broaden visual references and education for its audience. Cellblock II is a perfect first show for the new location as its basis is a key principle of Gallery 2 – combining works and/or artists one might know, including historical artists as well as those of a younger generation, to create unexpected relationships and significant dialogues around a subject that has not been explored in such depth.

Cellblock II features works by a greater range of artists such as Vito Acconci, Alice Aycock, Marcel Broodthaers, Tom Burr, Jean Genet, Robert Gober, Peter Halley, Nancy Holt, Will Insley, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Bruce Nauman, Beverly Pepper, Ad Reinhardt, Sterling Ruby, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Jackie Winsor and Artur Żmijewski. Cellblock II is a dense exhibition combining historical material with an increased number of works and mediums, incorporating wall text, diagrams and video. It offers background information and contextual references that flesh out Hobbs' Cellblock concept without becoming didactic, since its goal is to stimulate viewers to draw their own conclusions. Cellblock II affords Cellblock I the opportunity to be a more visceral experience. Although still experiential, Cellblock II affords a more cerebral experience.

While the show brings together work that addresses containment, enclosure, and imprisonment, it also questions the frequently unexamined assumption that modern and contemporary art's contents are eminently assessable to viewers either empirically or epistemologically by finding the right key, so that almost by magic an open sesame takes place. Countering this myth of art's ease of access, these shows look at the power of refusal, both formally and in terms of subject matter, when works of art deliberately withhold their contents so that viewers are left with enduring mysteries and disquieting conundrums. A text by Hobbs, describing the deeper intellectual content of Cellblock I and II, is also included for reference.

The foundational concept of Cellblock is very purposefully presented as two distinct shows, representing two completely different yet complementary perspectives. The physical separation of Cellblock I and Cellblock II clarifies their different orientations.

[Image: Peter Halley "Rectangular Prison with Smokestack" (1987) acrylic, Roll-a-Tex/canvas, 72 x 124 in.© Peter Halley, Courtesy Mary Boone, New York]

Media

• Painting
• Drawing
• Other
• Video installation

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