Sperone Westwater

Sperone Westwater is pleased to present “Chiaroscuro,” the gallery’s first solo exhibition of artist Jim Gaylord. The show of eight hot-pressed watercolor paper and cast marble and resin works embraces themes of iconography, formalism and geometry. With this body of work, Gaylord departs from his painting practice to create paper constructions that bring his imagery into sharper focus. Using the blade of an X-Acto knife to hand-cut heavy watercolor paper (produced by St. Cuthberts Mill in England), Gaylord defines a precise edge, forgoing the unruliness of the brushstroke. “It attributes a certainty to the forms, and their volumetric construction creates a material presence in space,” explains Gaylord. “There is no ambiguity to their physical shape, yet the elements remain mysterious, neither completely abstract nor representational. Like Louise Nevelson’s painted assemblages made from found wood, the monochromatic surfaces lend an open-endedness to the imagery.” Gaylord’s early experiments with paper cutouts were more two-dimensional, but when he began to notice the interplay between light and shadow across the surfaces, he decided to incorporate this as a visual tool. Chiaroscuro, the show’s title, refers to this phenomenon as an approach to pictorial representation. “I began drawing on the tradition of bas-relief sculpture and references to architecture emerged,” says Gaylord. “Living in New York City, I’m able to observe examples of high and low relief on the façades of skyscrapers, churches and municipal buildings, and certain features have made their way into my work. Through years of exploring the capabilities of the heavy paper I use, I have developed a visual vocabulary that draws references to these architectural motifs, as well as geometry, biology and anatomy. The two cast pieces are fabricated with marble powder suspended in resin, cast from the original paper constructions and recall the surfaces of stone reliefs carved into buildings. Some of Gaylord’s forms resemble glyphs or symbols from ancient cultures, while others seem modern or even futuristic. “I like to think of my compositions as a reference to the past while imagining the future,” he says. “I see parallels between the logic of human design and physical anatomy, plant life and other natural structures. I think of this work as a meditation on these connections, but also an attempt to find harmony among forms that otherwise appear idiosyncratic or strange (like the parts in our own bodies).” Born in Washington, North Carolina in 1974, Jim Gaylord lives and works in New York. He earned his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley (2005) and his BA from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (1997). His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Berkeley Art Museum, the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Gaylord has completed residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program.

Sperone Westwater is pleased to present Joana Choumali’s second solo at the gallery, “I am not lost, just wandering,” featuring new embroidered photographic collages from the artist’s “Alba’hian” series. Every morning, Choumali wakes at 5am and walks for long stretches of time interacting with the land, the buildings and the forms taking shape around her. This routine, one of introspection, takes place even when Choumali travels to other countries. Her habit is to photograph the landscapes which captivate her every morning. “The ‘Alba’hian’ series is about my experience of walking at daybreak in my city of residence Abidjan and other cities such as Dakar, Senegal, Accra, Ghana but also Essaouira, Morocco and Kyoto, Japan),” says Choumali. “In this selection, I broaden my angle of view, the size of the pieces and the characters become larger, as an evocation of inner growth.” Combining collage, embroidery, quilting and photomontage, Choumali builds these images, layering ethereal sheer fabrics and golden paint with multiple photographs from her walks—silhouettes of passersby or quiet empty roads. Her process is slow, as meditative as the walks themselves, and by merging the instant—digital photography—with the time-consuming—embroidery—Choumali explores the relationship between the metaphorical and the physical, evoking moments of revelation, introspection and rediscovery. These contrast the real world and the world of the imagination. The long hours she spends sewing together the different layers and embroidering her motifs and drawings onto the fabrics have become moments of meditation; another ritual by which she is able to observe herself changing through this process, to examine her emotions and reactions and reshape them in a different, clearer way. “I explore my personal landscape facing new horizons,” she explains. “The notion of wandering to know oneself better and to finally meet oneself in the tranquility of the new day.” Joana Choumali was born in 1974 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where she lives and works. She studied graphic arts in Casablanca and initially worked as an art director in advertising before pursuing photography. Choumali’s early practice focused on documentary portraits. Her recent work builds upon the intimacy of her early portraits by incorporating embroidery and textiles directly onto her photographic images. Her work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide, including the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2021-22); Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Marrakech (2019-20); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2019); and the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre (2017). In 2017, Choumali was included in the Côte d’Ivoire Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. She was named the 2020 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University and was awarded residencies with Nirox Foundation, Johannesburg (2017) and the IFITRY Residency, Essaouira, Morocco (2016; 2015). Choumali is the first African winner of the prestigious Prix Pictet (2019), an annual honor for photography and sustainability, which she won for her series “Ça Va Aller.”

Kyungmi Shin, excess of synthesized dream, 2023