Betty Cuningham Gallery

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to present an online exhibition of current sculpture by Alison Wilding. Twice nominated for the Turner Prize, Wilding is known for merging common 'stuff' in uncommon ways to deliver a new message. The recent lockdown, which effectively closed doors, turned out to be an incredibly productive time for Wilding. Many of the works in this Viewing Room were created during this challenging period.

In a bi-coastal collaboration, Betty Cuningham Gallery and L.A. Louver are pleased to present Charles Garabedian: Outside the Gates. Drawing from both galleries' long histories with the artist, this exhibition brings together two dozen paintings from the last three decades of Garabedian's life. The artist’s ability to tap into the collective unconscious renders the work timeless; while many of the figures may be familiar from myth, their staging speaks to our common lot as humans. With distinctive humor and pathos, Garabedian takes us on a trip as he moves toward finding himself in history, mythology, and by accident. Garabedian embraced grand themes in his idiosyncratic and compelling body of work. Inspired by Armenian manuscripts, Biblical stories, and the epic poetry of ancient Greece, his iconoclastic approach to figuration breathes vibrant, pulsating life into these old tales. His works are populated with warriors and gods, bathing beauties and epic journeys. Abstractions lie unsettlingly at the edge of recognition, seeming to take on the unknowable logic of Olympus. A hallmark of Garabedian’s style is his Mannerist approach to the body. Twisted and elongated figures lounge, bend, and stretch across his compositions. That nearly all of his figures from this period are nude reinforces a feeling of otherworldliness. He treats the body as something malleable, something that can be distorted or even truncated. For example, the painting Man in the Brick Wall features a fleeing figure, a brick bust, and a torso with legs but no upper half. Most of the works are on paper, a material the artist embraced for its flexibility and fluidity. As his concepts developed, Garabedian affixed additional sheets to the original page in order to achieve his desired composition. This expansive narrative approach may be seen in works such as You Should have Looked at Me and Outside the Gates, and led to marked vertical and horizontal formatting which is evidenced too in the rare multi-canvas mural-scale painting Willie Snake. According to Garabedian, “I find the paper more liberating, it’s not as formal a concept. I like to think of it as more of a physical experience.”

After several months of lockdown and limited ways to enjoy art in person, Betty Cuningham Gallery is thrilled to open an in-house group exhibition titled Can You Hear My Silent Scream? on Thursday September 10th. Included are 12 artists: Alfonso Fratteggiani Bianchi, Jennifer Bartlett, Rackstraw Downes, Elizabeth Enders, Stanley Lewis, Beverly McIver, Gordon Moore, Graham Nickson, Philip Pearlstein, Joan Snyder, Bill Traylor, and Alison Wilding. The exhibition takes its title from Beverly McIver’s painting of her sister, featured in the exhibition, which asks a universal question that everyone can relate to these days - Can You Hear My Silent Scream? Dating from several different decades, the works on view all push the limit in process and/or concept. Noteworthy, are Stanley Lewis, who in his unique self-correcting style, piles paper on paper creating two brilliantly complex works of his backyard view; Rackstraw Downes, who in his The Arena, Chinati, 9 A.M., Looking North, 1999, distills meticulously only what he sees in the empty Donald Judd gymnasium; Joan Snyder who paints (and writes) about war and peace and her child, in the diptych, Free to Imagine like my Child, 1986; Elizabeth Enders who in three recent calligraphic drawings finds source in the equation for acceleration; Bill Traylor, who in five brilliant yet modest works on found board, documents street life in Montgomery, Alabama between 1939-42; and Alison Wilding who casts light on the past and our unknown future in the only sculpture in the show, Floodlight, 2001.

The Betty Cuningham Gallery has created an online virtual tour of Philip Pearlstein "Nudes and Other Landscapes". The link is the first URL. Video is also in the "Nudes and Other Landscapes" exhibition page. The Betty Cuningham Gallery has also created an online virtual tour of "William Bailey: Drawings" at The New York Studio School. The URL is the second link. The Gallery also wants to show our followers the video made by List Gallery for Rackstraw Downes: A Wider View, which the Gallery partnered with for the exhibition. In addition, List Gallery created a film interview with Robert Storr. The link are the two final URL.