Betty Cuningham Gallery

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.”

We are pleased to present 24 etchings that Jake Berthot created with the notable publisher and print shop, Simmelink Sukimoto. Simmelink Sukimoto was established in 1988 by Doris Simmelink and Chris Sukimoto as a print shop specializing in the processes of etching and woodcut. Berthot collaborated with Doris and Chris between 1989 and 2002 to create these prints that share the same concerns as Berthot's paintings and works on paper.

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open 'External Drive', an exhibition of new paintings by Greg Drasler. This will be the artist’s sixth exhibition with the gallery, located at 15 Rivington Street, New York, NY. Just as a journey down an open highway offers dramatic changes of scenery, so does Greg Drasler’s 'External Drive', an exhibition of new paintings.

When choosing the spelling of the title for this exhibition, 'Krazy Paradise', John Lees echoes Marlena Dietrich’s German accented voice from the song 'Illusions' (performed in the film 'Foreign Affair'). Regardless of the origin, Lees’ 'Krazy Paradise' moves us into his private universe with a laugh. Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to present John Lees, 'Krazy Paradise', September 9th through October 28th. This is the artists seventh solo show with the gallery. A reception will be held on Saturday, September 9th, from 4 – 6 PM. An illustrated catalog and online viewing room will accompany the exhibition.

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open, ON-SITE, a two-person show featuring major paintings by Rackstraw Downes and Stanley Lewis. Both Downes and Lewis are on-site painters. Both fight for ‘honest’ observation, with a shared interest in the particular and the mundane. However, they differ greatly by method, by subject, by need, and even sometimes by humor. While Rackstraw will travel miles to sites which intrigue him, Stanley stays put and paints where he is. In a 2006 gallery video Rackstraw speaks about his frustration to do it right: “Do it again, Downes, and get it right this time, the way it REALLY is!! And I love that!”

“In the 1970s there was a dialogue and an understanding of what people were doing. And there are still people who are really pissed off at me for changing course and painting a tree!”* - Jake Berthot Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open, What happen to Abstraction? featuring Jake Berthot’s abstract paintings from the 1970’s alongside of his imaginary landscapes completed the last 20 years of his life. This will be the fourth Jake Berthot exhibition at the Gallery since his passing in 2014.

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open Finding Yellow, an exhibition of recent paintings and watercolors by Elizabeth Enders. The current exhibition marks the artists fourth at the gallery.

On Saturday, October 22nd, Betty Cuningham Gallery will open an exhibition celebrating the life and art of William Bailey. The artist passed away on April 13, 2020, three months after the close of his retrospective, Looking Through Time, at the Yale University Art Gallery. The current exhibition marks Bailey’s eighth show with the Gallery. Bailey’s work divides into two lines of concentration: his still-lifes and figures; all are from his imagination rather than observation. The exhibition will include selected paintings, works on paper and prints.

The current exhibition is a departure for Graham Nickson, as it features black and white paintings and drawings. The show includes five canvases and seven charcoal works on paper. Nickson, who has shown in New York since the mid-1970s, is particularly identified by his strong geometric compositions and saturated color. In the absence of color, it becomes clear to Nickson that the disciplines of painting and drawing are equal.

As a painter, I often look straight down at the grass and say that I am going to paint every blade of grass. How it is done is impossible to understand, but it starts at the micro level. ~ Stanley Lewis, 2022 Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open an exhibition of new work by Stanley Lewis. This will be the artist’s fourth show with the Gallery, located at 15 Rivington Street. The exhibition is comprised of twelve paintings and four works on paper, all completed recently.

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce Aftermath, an exhibition of new sculptures by Mia Westerlund Roosen. This will be the artist’s fifth exhibition with the Gallery.

"Drawings" features 9 earlier works on paper and 22 recent interiors of Rackstraw's home studio.

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to present Alison Wilding: Alabaster and Other Stories. The show is comprised of a special series of drawings along with 20 sculptures, some of which are generously on loan from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation. When Wilding states “what you see is absolutely what you get” she is saying the message of her work is in its materials: the frailty of a single feather or silver leaf, the translucence and resistance of alabaster, the softness or liquidity of rubber, the strength of iron. By combining these seemingly opposing materials, the individual materials are transformed, and viewers are drawn in. While one may be inclined to find figurative or narrative qualities in Wilding’s work, the materiality of the sculptures breaks down these findings, thus creating a very intentional tension between the physical piece and the viewer’s experience. The attraction to the work, in the end, is both visual and emotional. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue and an Online Viewing Room.

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to present an abbreviated version of the exhibition Andrew Forge, "The Limits of Sight" which was curated by Karen Wilkin and originated at Fairfield University Art Museum in the Fall of 2020. The exhibition focuses on Forge’s mature work, completed after his move from London to the US in the early seventies. This iteration of the exhibition includes 15 paintings and 6 works on paper dating from 1973 – 2002. It marks Forge’s fourth exhibition with the Gallery. An online viewing room will accompany the exhibition.

This exhibition of new work is comprised of 23 paintings and a major work on paper, "Sitting in One Place," 2001-2021, measuring 95 in length. Lees spends years working and reworking his paintings and drawings; he often leaves a written diary on the front or back of the work as a physical reminder of the time spent. In much of his recent work, Lees incorporates brighter, more upbeat colors and introduces a more complex narrative. He concentrates less on memories and instead focuses his attention on “his life now.” Sandy, 1987-2020, Oil on canvas

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open Crowded Places/Open Spaces an exhibition of paintings by Greg Drasler. This will be the artist’s fifth exhibition with the Gallery, located at 15 Rivington Street, New York, NY. An online viewing room will accompany the exhibition. The paintings in this exhibition split into two distinct themes: crowded places where an overhead view of hats- homburgs, bowlers, fedoras, caps - jam together to fill the picture plane, and open spaces where driverless cars traverse surreal landscapes that seemingly extend forever. In all of his work, the artist relies on patterns to create an infinite sense of time and place that continues beyond his canvases. Although two distinct themes, both find root in the artist’s lifelong interest in film; framing, serializing and sequencing is seen in Drasler’s process as well as his subject. The exhibition includes 30 oil paintings created between 2005 and 2021. Born in Waukegan, IL, Greg Drasler received a BFA and MFA from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana. He has exhibited regularly in the US since the mid 80's. Widely collected privately, Drasler’s work can be seen in the collections of Dow Jones, Inc., New York; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, IL; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; The Fisher Landau Center for Art, Long Island City, New York. Drasler has been the recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2019), John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2015), National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1993) and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (1991). He is currently a Professor at Pratt Institute and previously taught at Princeton University. The exhibition will be accompanied by an online viewing room and will remain on view at the Gallery through March 20, 2020.

Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce Edge, an exhibition of the work of Clytie Alexander. This is Alexander’s third show with the gallery, located at 15 Rivington Street. An online viewing room will accompany the exhibition. Continuing her investigation of space in and around the picture plane, Alexander moves from her previous exhibitions of paper collages (2017) and perforated aluminum Diaphans (2009) to probe the same issues on canvas. In an interview with Jim Long, Alexander states, “It’s about territories, worlds within worlds, suggested by a thin mark or a drawn line on canvas.” As the painted line involves the space around the canvas itself, the natural outcome is to see the work in series. Alexander embraces this inclination and has arranged the work in series that contain between 2 and 9 canvases, where each canvas responds to the next, as well as the space it inhabits. Born in Lawrence, Kansas, Clytie Alexander was educated in Quebec and Bangladesh. She studied art at UCLA and was a member of the influential southern California artist’s community in the 60 and 70s. She is the recipient of awards and grants including: the American Academy of Arts and Letters Hassan, Speicher, Bett and Symonds Art Purchase Award 2013, 2007 and 2003; the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant 2005; the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant 1993 and 2001; and the Elizabeth Foundation Studio Program Award 1998-2018. Her work resides in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Weatherspoon Art Museum Greensboro, NC; Getty Research Institute Library, Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM; Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; and the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art at The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, among others. In 2019, Alexander had an exhibition at Steven Holl’s project space, T Space, in Rhinebeck, NY. Alexander works and lives in Santa Fe, NM. The exhibition will be accompanied by an online viewing room and will remain on view at the Gallery through December 18, 2020.

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.

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.

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.