NYAB Event - Mark Wiener “Double Retrospective”

Mark Wiener “Double Retrospective”

chashama (1155 6th Ave.)

This event has ended.

chashama presents an exhibition of works by the late New York artist Mark Wiener (1951-2012), featuring two distinct groups of paintings representing new directions taken by Wiener in his last decade. Curated by Janusz Jaworski, the double retrospective in the Durst Organization’s lobbies at 1133 and 1155 Avenue of the Americas, runs through November 20th with viewing hours 8am-7pm, Monday through Friday.

The section of the exhibition titled “Times Square and Beyond” consists of selections from Mark Wiener’s two residencies at chashama and coincides with the 10th anniversary of his first residency and exhibition at chashama’s TIXE artspace (at the site of the current One Bryant Park) under the direction of Janusz Jaworski. The 2003 works represent what the artist described as an “unfolding” of the tightness and density of colors and strokes in his earlier work. During the second residency, at 40 Worth Street, he continued this reductive divergence in his mainly colorful works, eventually leading to an exploration of calligraphic and gestural abstraction, and a focus on urban landscape that carries through much of his later work.

In 2007, painting exclusively in black and white, Wiener began to explore what he called the “cross narrative” between action painting and minimalism, a dialogue between geometric shapes, painterly strokes, and tonalities Each mark is a response to the ones before, building rhythmic layers of abstract narrative. One of Mark’s final projects at his studio at 551 West 21st Street in Chelsea, an unfinished series titled “Street Markings,” talks to the textures and tones of the roads and sidewalks of New York City.

Also well known as a photographer, designer and illustrator, Mark Wiener studied under Bauhaus influences at the Philadelphia College of Art. He painted full time towards the end of his career, and his abstract work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions internationally, at numerous corporate and public venues and galleries including the Housatonic Museum of Art, Danese, Adam Baumgold Gallery, Sideshow Gallery, Elga Wimmer PCC, chashama, the Emily Harvey Foundation, Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery, Pink Gallery Seoul and Religarei Art Center in Delhi. Monumental reproductions and original murals from his solo exhibition “Gesture Pools” covered the façade of MontBlanc for 2006’s edition of Madison Avenue’s “Where Fashion Meets Art,” and he created large-scale installations for Project Room at the Chelsea Art Museum and The Lab (for Installation + performance art) at the Roger Smith Hotel.