Matthew Brannon
Robert Barry
Something Which Is Very Near In Place And Time But Not Yet Known To Me. 6 Feb 1971, 1971
print and transfer type on paper
8.5 x 11 inches
(21.6 x 27.9 cm)
Tom Burr
Architectural Digest, (a door), 2010
painted wood and glass door, vintage magazine pages, tape
80 x 32 x 1 inches
(203.2 x 81.3 x 2.5 cm)
Tom Burr
Architectural Digest, (a door), 2010, (detail)
painted wood and glass door, vintage magazine pages, tape
80 x 32 x 1 inches
(203.2 x 81.3 x 2.5 cm)
Commissioned painting after Yves Tanguy's
Qui repondra? (Who Will Answer?), 1948, 2012
oil on canvas
36 x 28 inches
(91.4 x 71.1 cm)
commissioned painting, painted by Ki-Young Sung
Tom Burr
his personal effects (grey, one), 2012
men's t-shirt, upholstery tacks and wood
15 x 15 inches
(38.1 x 38.1 cm)
Frank Stella
Gezira, 1967
1 color lithograph
15 x 22 inches
(38.1 x 55.9 cm)
Edition of 100
Tom Burr
his personal effects (black, five), 2012
men's t-shirt, upholstery tacks and wood
15 x 15 inches
(38.1 x 38.1 cm)
Andrew Cameron
Message Compression (EbnrFrXmpl), 2011
pencil on paper, artists tape
four sheets, each: 11 x 8.5 inches
(27.9 x 21.6 cm)
Louise Lawler
Freud's Shirt, 2001/2003
cibachrome, matted
image: 5 x 4 1/2 inches
(12.7 x 11.4 cm)
mat: 13 15/16 x 11 3/8 inches
(35.4 x 28.9 cm)
Edition of 100
Robert Barry
It Can Be Accessible But Go Unnoticed, 1970
typewriter on paper (index card)
5 x 8 inches
(12.7 x 20.3 cm)
Carol Bove
The Sun, 2007
string and 271 nails
30 x 30 inches
(76.2 x 76.2 cm)
Robert Barry
Something That Cannot Be Put Into Words, 2012
silver vinyl film on paper
22.25 x 29.75 inches
(56.5 x 75.6 cm)
Richard Hamilton
Motel I, 1979
soft ground etching, open-, step bite aquatint, burnisher and scraper on Rives paper
paper: 17.32 x 22.24 inches
(44 x 56.5 cm)
image: 10.94 x 13.78 inches
(27.8 x 35 cm)
Edition of 40
Carol Bove
Seeds, 2007
offset printing,
24 x 36 inches
(61 x 91.4 cm)
framed: 27 1/4 x 39 1/4 inches
(69.2 x 99.7 cm),
unlimited edition
Tom Burr
his personal effects (white, six), 2012
men's t-shirt, upholstery tacks and wood
15 x 15 inches
(38.1 x 38.1 cm)
Wade Guyton
Untitled, 2006
Epson DURABrite on book page
10 x 9.02 inches
(25.4 x 22.9 cm)
Troy Brauntuch
Untitled (Dry Cleaner), 2008
conte on cotton
three parts, each: 71 x 53 x 2.5 inches
(180.3 x 134.6 x 6.4 cm)
overall dimensions: 71 x 159 x 2.5 inches
(180.3 x 403.9 x 6.4 cm)
Morgan Fisher
Scratched European Standard Widescreen, 2005
mirror with sandblasting
24 x 39 13/16 inches
(61 x 101.1 cm)
Edition of 2
Barbara Bloom
Crittall Metal Windows (No. 2), 1972-2010
archival digital print
framed: 33 7/8 x 24 3/16 inches
(86 x 61.4 cm)
Edition of 10
Barbara Bloom
Crittall Metal Windows (No. 5), 1972-2010
archival digital print
framed: 33 7/8 x 24 3/16 inches
(86 x 61.4 cm)
Edition of 10
Barbara Bloom
Crittall Metal Windows (No. 1), 1972-2010
archival digital print
framed: 33 7/8 x 24 3/16 inches
(86 x 61.4 cm)
Edition of 10
Barbara Bloom
Crittall Metal Windows (No. 7), 1972-2010
archival digital print
framed: 33 7/8 x 24 3/16 inches
(86 x 61.4 cm)
Edition of 10
Barbara Bloom
Crittall Metal Windows (No. 6), 1972-2010
archival digital print
framed: 33 7/8 x 24 3/16 inches
(86 x 61.4 cm)
Edition of 10
Barbara Bloom
Crittall Metal Windows (No. 4), 1972-2010
archival digital print
framed: 33 7/8 x 24 3/16 inches
(86 x 61.4 cm)
Edition of 10
Frank Stella
Zambesi, 1967
1 color lithograph
15 x 22 inches
(38.1 x 55.9 cm)
Edition of 100
Michelle Elzay
Psychic Surgery, 2010/2012
video
40:45 minutes
Edition of 3
David Weldzius
No Title, work in progress
oil paint on wood panel
12 5/16 x 12 7/16 inches
(31.3 x 31.6 cm)
David Weldzius
No title ("A1884482"), work in progress
primed wood panel
12 5/16 x 12 7/16 inches
(31.3 x 31.6 cm)
David Weldzius
No title ("A1416858"), work in progress
oil paint on wood panel
12 5/16 x 12 7/16 inches
(31.3 x 31.6 cm)
David Weldzius
No title ("A3015872"), work in progress
oil paint on wood panel
12 5/16 x 12 7/16 inches
(31.3 x 31.6 cm)
David Weldzius
No title ("0842379"), work in progress
oil paint on wood panel
12 5/16 x 12 7/16 inches
(31.3 x 31.6 cm)
David Weldzius
No title ("0132992"), 2012
oil paint on wood panel
12 5/16 x 12 7/16 inches
(31.3 x 31.6 cm)
Adrià Julià
Sunken Rooms, 2011
3 channel video installation
dimensions variable
Edition of 3
Adrià Julià
Sunken Rooms, 2011, (detail)
3 channel video installation
dimensions variable
Edition of 3
Adrià Julià
Sunken Rooms, 2011, (detail)
3 channel video installation
dimensions variable
Edition of 3
Adrià Julià
Sunken Rooms, 2011, (detail)
3 channel video installation
dimensions variable
Edition of 3
Adrià Julià
Sunken Rooms, 2011, (detail)
3 channel video installation
dimensions variable
Edition of 3
I’m explaining myself. I’m talking to you with a drink in one hand. At the open bar in the lobby of the reception for what’s-his-name. Except when I get to my point I pause. There’s a name I’m missing. Maybe it’s yours. What I’ve forgotten is perhaps more important than what I’ve said. And you’re politely waiting. And I stutter some half-sentences that don’t come close to what I meant. But you nod anyway. Later that night at home in bed in the dark I’ll recall just what it was I wanted to say. I’ll open my eyes and look at the ceiling and simultaneously congratulate and berate myself for such a statement.
Robert Barry
Carol Bove
Barbara Bloom
Troy Brauntuch
Tom Burr
Andrew Cameron
Michelle Elzay
Morgan Fisher
Wade Guyton
Richard Hamilton
Adrià Julià
Louise Lawler
Frank Stella
Yves Tanguy
David Weldzius
Drawing a Blank is a group show of works culled from various periods, modern and contemporary, in which the appearance of expressionless vacancy and equipoise may be seen as a foil for troubled thought.
Within the context of Psychoanalysis, the question that one cannot answer is seized as the key. The patient who draws a blank is not exactly oblivious; the language just is not forthcoming. That one gets stopped there in silence, rather than simply making something up and moving on, indicates a self-censoring block, and this in turn indicates to the sensitive nature of what now eludes articulation. To the analyst, the mind that goes blank is not barren, but pregnant with thought. This blank precisely marks out and delimits the space of withholding, and under prolonged scrutiny, it will begin to show through. The analyst’s questions are prescriptive, designed to make something appear in the mind of the patient: words pull on other words, on thoughts and on images. These are the instruments of the psychic surgery that is the talking cure, but here in the context of art we are not talking cure, though we deploy these instruments nevertheless.
In art, drawing a blank has long been standard practice, and here as well one might want to probe a little bit further. Clement Greenberg placed the entire evolution of the avant-garde in service to blankness when he wrote that its first priority was to rid works of meaningful content, as this was “infecting the arts with the ideological struggles of society.” Ostensibly, the course of radical reduction would lead to a succession of ever more evacuated objects that could be understood by anyone anywhere in the same way precisely because there was nothing left in them to understand. Yet even as we approach the zero-degree, and perhaps especially there, questions arise as to just what it is we are left with.
In hindsight, we can see that whatever it is that we most wanted to lose in the void of the emptied-out work has remained behind. The course of radical reduction would lead not only to the positive truth of a medium’s irreducible essence, but to a condition of suggestive mediality, a haunted substrate or screen. The Black Paintings of Frank Stella and Richard Hamilton’s cover design for the Beatles’ so-called “White Album” constitute two of this exhibition’s thematic signposts, for in them the pursuit of the void is explicitly framed in terms of avoidance, and thereby also in terms of confrontation. Increasingly, in the works that follow their recalcitrant lead, this will become the whole point of the operation: to resume the subtractive process as a form of historical excavation, and to draw submerged contents up and out, as though through the blank that first called attention to their vague presence.