NYAB Event - Keith Edmier “Regeneratrix”

Keith Edmier “Regeneratrix”

Petzel Gallery

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Petzel Gallery announces Regeneratrix, a solo exhibition by New York based artist Keith Edmier. This will be the artist’s fifth solo exhibition and his first large-scale exhibition at the gallery in ten years. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog with an essay written by independent curator and art historian Norman Rosenthal.

Keith Edmier’s newest sculptures are monumental. They are intended to allude to a multiplicity of histories including the artist’s recent past, rather than commemorate one particular time or event. Each artwork’s meaning is derived from both the material it is built of and the form that it takes. Thus, the structures exhibited in Regeneratrix refer to a myriad of positions: the languages of flowers, the cycles of life, Cesare Ripa’s personifications, geological strata, ancient and religious goddess myths, new and old empires, and histories of architecture and art.

Regeneratrix is divided into four interconnecting rooms. Penn Station Ciborium (2012–13) was conceived for the exhibition curated by Norman Rosenthal and Alex Gartenfeld entitled Empire State, which premiered at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome in 2013. Edmier drew inspiration for the sculpture from the architecture of the ancient Roman basilicas and baths, the Pantheon, as well as the glass-and-iron exhibition halls of the nineteenth century, of which the Crystal Palace in London is the most indicative. The artist conflates the architectural references with his own studio and its proximity to two railway stations: Grand Central and its famous oyster bar (oysters being indigenous to the New York waterways) and the now demolished Penn Station that was disposed of in the Meadowlands in 1963. The sculpture, in the guise of a ciborium, or canopied altar, acts as a reliquary for the remnants of the artist’s studio that are laid to rest with the train station’s excavated iron and Meadowlands soil.