Altman Siegel

Co-organized by K.R.M. Mooney

Altman Siegel is pleased to present A view from a platform, an exhibition of new paintings by Shinpei Kusanagi. Employing gestural brushstrokes and washes of color on raw, untreated canvas, Kusanagi’s work captures natural ephemerality through observant abstraction.

“As the ground luminosity dawns at death, an experienced practitioner will maintain full awareness and merge with it, thereby attaining liberation.” - Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying Altman Siegel is pleased to present The ground, an exhibition of new paintings marking Liam Everett’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. Engaging with questions regarding the influence of authorship, environment, and collective consciousness, this new body of work represents a significant aesthetic shift for the artist evolving from moments of chaos, growth, and discomfort. Atmospheric and layered, Everett’s paintings search for and amplify a sense of ambiguity, seeking the obliteration of ego.

In 2004, in her final book, Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag considers a question posed by Virginia Woolf’s 1938 reflection on the roots of war, Three Guineas: “How in your opinion are we to prevent war?” Separated by more than sixty years of history and technological advancement, both women considered whether photographs documenting the atrocities of war could be an effective vehicle to prevent future violence. In 2020, an explosion of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut in the capital city of Lebanon marked one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history. In the chaos that descended upon Beirut in the aftermath of the explosion, Hiba Kalache made the decision to leave her family home for the fourth time. Returning to San Francisco, where she earned her Masters of Fine Arts at California College of the Arts in 2005, she set up a studio and returned to work, insistent upon processing this latest chapter of violence through her paintings. Trying to make sense of the cycles of war that led to her displacement, she churned through diverse sources: the writing of Susan Sontag, the poetry of Etel Adnan and the history of art, delving into a study of Islamic miniatures. Reveling in the color and detail of the forms, the familiar patterns of the calligraphy resonated with the gestures that kept appearing in her own work. The vivid blues and yellows that represent prophesy and divinity in the miniature tradition inflected the new paintings that seemed to erupt out of her with an urgency and forcefulness: a will to survive. The exhibition title, ‘belliphonic,’ comes from Martin Daughtry’s term referring to the vast array of sounds that are created by conflict; not only weaponry, but motorized vehicles, sirens, generators, even the propaganda that fills the air in the wake of an insurrection. Kalache’s body carries these sounds just as she has carried new life in her womb. Something of the belliphonic is translated through the act of painting, the memory of a sound inflecting her hand. But there is also a refusal to submit, to collapse in the wake of tragedy. The paintings are abstract, but they attempt to depict something of the moment we find ourselves in today. They are both an act of protest and an attempt at escape. They look for beauty and rebirth in the explosion of blossoms spilling over a casket. They collapse time, pulling from historical references, grasping for answers to unanswerable questions, and challenging us to move forward with empathy and find connection through our shared humanity.

Altman Siegel is delighted to present a selection of work from Trevor Paglen's new series, Unids, which was recently on view at the Neue Berliner Kunstverein. Continuing his decades-long exploration of the relationship between technology and power, with a particular focus on government-sponsored surveillance, Paglen's new photographs capture images of the unknown objects which orbit the earth, referred to as "unids" by amateur astronomers. These objects are acknowledged and actively monitored by the U.S. military, though their purpose and origin are officially unknown. They could be innocuous - nothing more than space debris - or they could be objects of covert surveillance attempting to disguise themselves as debris. There are roughly 350 objects of unknown origin in orbit, some of which are tracked by the U.S. Air Force. The objects which the U.S. Air Force does not publicly track, presumably because they are of classified origins, are sourced and observed by both amateur astronomers and foreign sources. Using the information available from these sources to model the orbits of such "unids," Paglen can predict where and when in the sky he might find a particular object. Because "unids" tend to be fast moving and very faint, Paglen uses a Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt Astrograph (RASA) astrograph to capture 10,000 seconds worth of data for each "unid" sighting. The resulting images, shot using an infrared filter, highlight the various stelliferous and gaseous regions in the sky which are invisible to our eyes. Stunning in their detail; the hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen emissions reveal great cosmic clouds, stellar remnants, and galactic structures that recall Gustave Doré's etchings of The Divine Comedy. Though Paglen's photographs visualize the appearance of these unknown objects, they leave the questions surrounding their existence open ended: Where did these objects come from? Are they harmless? Or is their orbit part of a more sinister, calculated system of surveillance? In questioning the origins of such "unids," Paglen continues to parse the invisible power structures embedded into our modern landscape through technology, highlighting concerns regarding surveillance, privacy, and freedom.

Altman Siegel is pleased to present Read, Write, Own, Simon Denny’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Featuring new paintings from his Metaverse Landscape series alongside sculptures made using white boards from the Twitter office furniture liquidation sale initiated by Elon Musk, Denny examines the developing culture of new technology, drawing inspiration from the objects, documents, and images used and produced by its companies, organizations, and states.

In a special exhibition, Altman Siegel is pleased to present a monumental and historic work by Chris Johanson. Exhibited for the first time since 2000, this painted triptych, Untitled, offers a rare insight into Johanson’s early large-scale works.

Altman Siegel is pleased to present K.R.M. Mooney’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, auxil. Short for auxilary, auxil are incorporations, both musical and technical, to provide support and extend the perceived limits of the body. Contextualized in part by internal drives and currents of flow, be that of air or metal, Mooney charges the interpersonal realm as breath and atmosphere are exerted.

Altman Siegel is pleased to present The End Again, an exhibition of new paintings by Laeh Glenn.

Altman Siegel proudly presents a historical exhibition of works from Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Phantom Limb series, which was created in the 1980s. At the time that it was created, the Phantom Limb collages illustrated the more insidious impacts of mass media and technology on women’s bodies.

At the crux of teetering climate tipping points and mass extinction, widespread ecocide unfolds in the Amazon Basin. Employing his distinctive documentary approach, Richard Mosse travelled to Rio Tigre in the remote northeast of Peru to document oil spills seeping from abandoned pipeline infrastructure on Kichwa Indigenous Territory, deep in the forest.

Altman Siegel is pleased to present From: Know-Here-With-This, Jessica Dickinson’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Time and change, always central concerns throughout Dickinson’s oeuvre, are highlighted for the first time in the installation, as her work will shift and rotate in position four times throughout the duration of the show. The exhibition features four new paintings which were developed simultaneously over the course of the past year. As each work evolves, Dickinson periodically records large-scale graphite rubbings documenting the changing surface. Each finished painting produces a suite of these drawings, or remainders, that record its evolution over time. Rarely exhibited in their entirety due to their scale, the shifting nature of this exhibition will allow for each painting to be presented for a period in the gallery’s main space alongside the full set of remainders. Image: From/With, 2021-2022, Oil on limestone polymer on wood panel, 53 1/4 x 51 1/4 in, 135.3 x 130.2 cm

Altman Siegel is delighted to present Lynn Hershman Leeson’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. For 'About Face', Hershman Leeson takes the question of the self and all its vicissitudes over time as her starting point. Through a selection of career-spanning material, this exhibition presents examples of the ways Hershman Leeson, through re-presentation, reinvigorates modes of self-identification.

Altman Siegel is thrilled to present The Roof is on Fire, an exhibition of new paintings enhanced with augmented reality by Troy Lamarr Chew II. This will be the artist’s first solo show with the gallery.

Altman Siegel is pleased to present Chorus, an exhibition of new work by Sara VanDerBeek, her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Using unique applications of color, cropping and combinatory actions, VanDerBeek adds to her ongoing investigation into the representation of the female form.

Altman Siegel is pleased to announce Siklon, Didier William’s first solo exhibition in San Francisco and his first with the gallery. William’s most recent body of work draws largely on his memories of growing up in Miami after immigrating from Port-au-Prince, Haiti as a young boy. William pulls from Haitian history, mythology, and his personal experiences to explore the legacies of colonialism, resistance and the struggle for agency and identity. Presented is a new series of powerful compositions that combine both painting and printmaking techniques and push the limits of figuration, abstraction and legibility. The exhibition takes its title from the Haitian Kreyòl translation for Hurricane.

Fair Use: What’s Mine is Yours Curated by Alison Gass, Executive Director and Chief Curator at the ICA San Jose with Curatorial Advisor Andy Gass, Copyright Law expert and Partner at Latham Watkins, San Francisco

Organized by K.R.M. Mooney and McIntyre Parker

Inspired to address the increasing isolation and disembodiment of contemporary life (accelerated and exacerbated by the global pandemic), and to support and engage with their artistic communities, Sara VanDerBeek and Chelsea Spengemann co-founded soft network, an experimental cooperative. For their first project, soft network presents a collaborative conversation and exhibition soft network, jointly hosted by Altman Siegel in an Online Viewing Room and by Rachel Comey on her website and in her New York showroom. For the exhibition, soft network, VanDerBeek and Spengemann invited the participation of a group of artists and artist foundations in their existing network: Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Gwen Smith, Sara VanDerBeek, Stan VanDerBeek Archive, Lau Wai, and Yelena Yemchuk. Contributions include streaming digital videos, prints made from paintings made from photographic portraits found online, paintings on photographs, 3D printed figures, early computer- generated imagery and collage. At the center of this presentation, Sara VanDerBeek introduces a new series entitled, "Ancient Woman 2022," in which she incorporates gestural layers of paint and eye shadow onto the surface of her photographs for the first time. She began photographing Roman statuary in 2012 with a residency in Rome at Fondazione Memmo, and continues to work with ancient female figures as an evolving and expanding archive. Returning to images of a sculpture of Aphrodite from the National Archeological Museum in Naples as well as other images of the female form from various international collections, VanDerBeek captures, colorizes and renders these ancient women into new composites of image and action. This act of reclamation and of reverence is meant as both a disruption and a reframing to encourage new perspectives on the past and the present. In addition to their artworks, participants were invited to contribute text and images exploring themes of networked bodies, image networks, and re-surfacing histories. Assembled by soft network and included throughout the soft network Online Viewing Room, this combinatory conversation reflects an interest in experimenting with existing presentation platforms to encourage connectivity. Rachel Comey, an established designer and friend of soft network who has successfully pushed against conventions in the fashion business, will host parallel platforms for soft network’s projects on her website and in her NYC store. By engaging multiple platforms, soft network aims to respond flexibly to economic challenges in the arts, creating opportunities for connectivity beyond conventional art spaces, while expanding audiences for all participants. Including multiple platforms, open forum discussion, a responsive range of items for sale and a dynamic, intergenerational group of makers are all gestures that soft network plans to continue with in future projects.

Laeh Glenn: The Doldrums and a special project by Apogee Graphics