Tilton Gallery

Zachary Armstrong: Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole September 6 - October 26, 2022 Reception: Wednesday, September 14th Tilton Gallery is pleased to present Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole, an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Zachary Armstrong. This is Armstrong’s third solo show with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view from September 6th through October 26th, 2022. A reception for the artist will take place Wednesday, September 14th from 5:00PM to 8:00PM. Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole is a title taken from a work by Lawrence Weiner that, for Armstrong, encapsulates his desire in this exhibition to gather a wide variety of interests and areas of conceptual exploration into one show. In this exhibition, Armstrong continues to create his own blend of Americana with art history. The works, densely installed, touch upon multiple aspects of his repertory of imagery. Some paintings are beautiful and complex abstractions, painted in layers of encaustic, his chosen medium for painting. Underlying colors rise through an overlay of primarily blacks and whites and grays, brushstrokes overlaid with dynamic thick lines that seem to dance across the surface and evoke both flatness and depth simultaneously. Figurative paintings depict various of his personalized wide range of realistic images, again created in encaustic brushstrokes, often with an emphasis on the abstract nature of the shapes within. Armstrong’s work requires one to take a leap into the artist’s head, to see what he sees, to revel in detail, in complexity, in the minutia that make up our world, both abstract and realistic. Objects are not only seen as subject, although the meaning of each image is, for Armstrong, usually important in some intensely personal way as a reference to his own history, his own inner library of images that have influenced his vision of the world, or arising from his deep knowledge of art history. Many of the figurative works in this exhibition depict his own version of Americana, whether in an appropriation of a Norman Rockwell painting or in his oversized images of farmyard animals. The choice of images becomes important, not only for these objects’ inherent structure and detailing, and for their personal significance, but for the possibilities they present to the artist: what he can “pack into them.” This is a phrase the artist often repeats. A simple illustration, be it of a head, a figure, a fish, a chicken, or an appropriated, becomes a whole world, packed with a plethora of forms, colors, and brush strokes. Detail and repetition are essential. A few images, such as those of a large engine or sewing machines, are chosen for their simplicity and simultaneous intricacy: they are simple, mechanical and precisely painting. They were perfectly engineered objects before being touched by human hand. With Duchamp’s Coffee Grinder or Man Ray’s sewing machine in mind, the choice of these found objects may also be seen as a nod to the famous Dada description of “a chance encounter of an umbrella and sewing machine on an operating table.” For this exhibition, Armstrong has also made a large sculptural installation that spans the entire east wall of the large second floor gallery, from floor to ceiling, surrounding the room’s fireplace. One hundred and twenty carved and painted fish cover the wall, each with its individual shape and creating an overall symmetrical abstract configuration where the left side mirrors the right. The black and white patterned surfaces of these fish echo the larger abstract paintings in the exhibition. Armstrong feels that this work can be viewed simultaneously as a large sculptural installation and as a large painting. Armstrong’s repeated return to depicting fish stems from Jack Tilton’s recounting a story about Betty Parsons. An artist as well as gallerist, she painted found driftwood in the shape of a fish and would give these sculptures to friends to hang above the entrance of the house to protect their homes from fire. Armstrong has used this inspiration to carve and paint fish to make bronze sculptures, playing with and distorting shapes and sizes. Here, the fish become pattern and ornamentation in this already ornate 1895 ballroom. Zachary Armstrong was born in 1984 in Dayton, Ohio. Solo exhibitions include Grids & Abstracts at The Contemporary Dayton, OH and Bag of Candles at the Faurschou Foundation, Beijing, China, both in 2021. He has shown widely at galleries in London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Armstrong’s work has been included in notable group exhibitions such as Take Up Space at the Pizzuti Collection and Inherent Structure at the Wexner Center for the Arts, both in Columbus, Ohio. Concurrent with his show at Tilton, the Faurschou Foundation, a private museum in Brooklyn, will present Twelve Animals, opening September 10th. Armstrong lives and works in Dayton, Ohio.

Tilton Gallery is pleased to present Surprise!, a group exhibition of emerging artists, co-curated with Tomashi Jackson. The artists Marissa Cote, Isabella De Matteo, Braden Hollis, Matthew Li, Ernesto Renda, Ivan Ríos-Fetchko, and Raya Terran were all Jackson’s former students who continue to make interesting work and expand their practices. This group of artists studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Cooper Union, New York and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. Works vary from paintings to sculptures to mixed media to conceptual installation. Marissa Cote studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014 and Imagery and Color in Jacquard Weaving at Peters Valley School of Craft in 2017. She received her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2018. Her solo exhibition, I promise to stay in touch, will take place at Distillery Gallery in Boston later this year. Cote lives and works near Boston, MA. Isabella De Matteo (b. 1996, Centerport, NY) received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2019. Her solo exhibition, winsomeloving, took place at The Cooper Union that same year. She will participate as a resident in the Vashon Island Residency in Vashon, Washington later this year. De Matteo lives and works in Queens, NY. Braden Hollis (b. 1998, Los Angeles, CA) studied at the Andrew Mellon Curatorial Academy at LACMA in 2018, and received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2020. Hollis was awarded the Sylvia Appelman Painting Award in 2019. Her solo exhibition, Painstaking, will take place in Los Angeles later this year. Hollis lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Matthew Li (b. 1999) received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2022, and is a candidate for his MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College in 2025. His solo exhibitions Memory Impressions and Life In Between took place at The Cooper Union in 2020 and 2022 respectively. Li lives and works in New York, NY and Toronto, ON. Ernesto Renda (b. 1995, New Jersey) received his BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and his BA in Modern Culture and Media Studies from Brown University in 2018. He received the Brown Arts Initiative Student Project Grant in 2017, the Brown Arts Initiative Fellowship at Performa Biennial New York in 2018, and the Silver Arts Projects Residency in 2021. Recent exhibitions include Dithering at Moskowitz Bayse Gallery in 2020, and Christian Franzen / Ernesto Renda at In Lieu Gallery in 2022, both in Los Angeles, CA. Renda lives and works in New York, NY. Ivan Ríos-Fetchko (b. 1994, Los Angeles, CA) received his BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and his BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University in 2018. He participated in the Residency at the Surf Point Foundation in York, ME in 2022. Ríos- Fetchko lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Raya Terran (b. 1996, Marin County, CA) studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK in 2018, and received her BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, NY in 2019. Solo exhibitions include Mother of a Friend at The Cooper Union in 2019, Brethren of The Yard at Rubber Factory in 2020, and Stills from the Migratory Ballad at Yossi Milo Gallery in 2021, all in New York, NY. Terran lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Rebecca Purdum: Selected Works 1986 to 2021 March 8 – May 14, 2022 “Paint is a catalyst for a unique emotional and aesthetic encounter. It requires a kind of surrender, a kind of transparency on the part of the painter to allow paint to have an effect. When that happens, just like when you let anything alone long enough to be what it is rather than what you want it to be, an encounter occurs which I think is the art of abstract painting.” Rebecca Purdum, 2007 Tilton Gallery is thrilled to present a selection of paintings by Rebecca Purdum. They span the years from 1986, when she first exhibited with the gallery, through recent paintings from 2021. This will be her eleventh solo show with Tilton Gallery. Rebecca Purdum is an abstract painter who, from her twenties, has had a clear vision of where her calling lies and has consistently pursued her own path. As an abstract painter, Purdum creates works that are both thoroughly contemporary and uniquely distinguishable from those by other artists. Purdum searches for meaning in the very act of painting. She paints directly on the canvas surface with gloved hands, giving her, as she once said, the equivalent of ten simultaneous brushes and allowing her to work from within the painting, to become part of the painting. Purdum creates timeless, often mysterious paintings that emanate an inner light from within their gently varied, often lush colors. There are shapes, but not shapes that you can name; there is nothing descriptive in these works. In many, colors and paint merge, smoothed over to create a lustrous surface. In others, particularly those of the 2000s, paint strokes hover quietly on the surface and have a textured feel, giving off an almost vibrating sort of light. In recent paintings, somehow both things happen. It is remarkable how, in thirty five years of work, there is no repetition; each painting is its own exploration of paint, of mood, of an abstract representation of the inner energy of life. Purdum’s paintings do what the best of abstract – or any – art should do: her work gives one that unnamable depth of experience that silently contributes to one’s understanding of the world. Purdum’s paintings continue to open our eyes to new possibilities in life and in art and deserve a slow and careful look. Rebecca Purdum, born in 1959 in Idaho Falls, is an artist based in Ripton, Vermont. Her work was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and has been featured in exhibitions, among others, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX (1989), the Carnegie Mellon University Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA (1991), the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA (1994) and the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH(2003). Her solo exhibitions include Art Now: Rebecca Purdum at the Middlebury Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT in 2007 and Breathing Painting at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, New York in 2021. Purdum completed the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Summer Residency in 1981 and received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1991, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 2005 and the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant in 2019. Her work is included in the collections of the Hood Museum of Art, the Fort Worth Art Museum, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University and the List Visual Arts Center, MIT. Purdum has been represented by Tilton Gallery since 1986.

Tilton Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition of portraits in varied media by multi-generational artists. Examples also go back in time to Early American portrait paintings, an Olmec stone head circa 500 B.C., and a carved 19th century ship's figurehead. The face has long been seen as a mirror into the soul. And this is what the best of portraiture is truly about, going deeper into the personality of the sitter (real or imagined), not merely a depiction of the outer physical characteristics. The artists in this exhibition go beyond the depiction of outer appearances to delve into the inner feelings of their subjects and in doing so, search for the meaning of humanity. Some artists like Genevieve Gaignard or Douglas Gordon do so with humor, irony and conceptual acuity. Others, like February James and Kohshin Finley, actively seek to understand and convey human feeling. Marlene Dumas does both: she depicts the human condition through a combination of emotion and conceptual distancing. David Hammons and Timothy Washington use their own images to make social and political commentary, subtle or direct. Titus Kaphar’s portraits from the "Jerome" series show tenderness while also conveying social implications. And Noah Davis searches the core of humanity in his figurative paintings. Early American portraiture like that of Ammi Phillips or William M.S. Doyle was commissioned, but the best of these artists draw the viewer into the sitter’s psyche. Styles and mediums in this exhibition range widely. In all, however, the surface is not merely the surface. This varied group of portraits of diverse modes and periods share an intensity of feeling and impact, be it emotional or conceptual. The artists in this exhibition include: Philip Akkerman, Kai Althoff, Edward Curtis, Noah Davis, Wim Delvoye, William M.S. Doyle, Marlene Dumas, February James, Kohshin Finley, Genevieve Gaignard, Douglas Gordon, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Rebecca Howland, Titus Kaphar, Matvey Levenstein, Ma Liuming, Timothy Washington

Do you remember the trees? I remember when it was covered with trees. I remember when the grasses were taller than me. And yellow, golden. Yeah, and flowering, and then there was…not lamb’s ear, but purslane Purslane, yes. And you could eat it. And I remember, it was really snowy, and really cold. Yes, the cold. And I remember not being able to leave the house, because it was so muddy. And having so many boots for mud. And each one, weighed like twenty pounds. But those memories… it feels like a second ago, but it was already twenty-eight, thirty years ago. Doesn’t seem like so much time to have so much change. - Fragment of conversation taken from Drought How long is lasting long enough? How do we experience climate shift as something that happens to us? What do we do with our grief? Tilton Gallery is delighted to announce the opening on Wednesday, September 15, 2021 of Wild irises grow in the mountains, an exhibition of new work by Martha Tuttle. There will be a reception for the artist from noon till 8 pm. In her third solo exhibition with Tilton Gallery, the artist will present a group of ten large paintings and a video. An interplay between malleability and permanence, fragility and strength permeate the exhibition, ranging from perceptions about the vulnerability of traditional dyes and textile practices to the grief and mourning that strive to encounter the magnitude of climate change. “I think that the question of how to care throughout change—even if that change is distressful—is one that can be seen as symbolized by the object and extending into the realms of the body and the earth,” the artist writes. “How do we learn to create a culture of care that moves with the needs of that which we care for? How do we disentangle ideas of health from desires for infinite usability and production?” Ten wall works continue the artist’s practice of putting textile elements into delicate equilibrium. To make the paintings, Tuttle spins and weaves wool to make a sculptural material that she sews into compositions with silk, which are in turn painted with stone pigments and plant dyes. The paintings are then stretched around aluminum and wood stretchers. For the artist, this incorporation of the industrial avoids a strict separation between the supposedly organic and inorganic. Drought (2021), the artist’s first video, expands her techniques of juxtaposition. The work overlays conversations between the artist and her mother—poet Mei Mei Berssenbrugge— about their experiences of developing drought with footage of the North American Southwest. Martha Tuttle was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1989. She received her BA from Bard College in 2011 and her MFA from The Yale School of Art in 2015. She has held residencies at the Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva, FL, 2019, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in Brooklyn, NY and A-Z West in Joshua Tree, CA, both 2017, and the UCross Foundation in Clearmont, WY, 2016. In 2014, Tuttle received a Josef Albers Foundation Travelling Fellowship as well as a Donald C. Gallup Research Fellowship from The Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Yale University. She has shown widely in the U.S. and internationally, including in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Santa Fe as well as in Brussels, Belgium, Turin, Italy and Tokyo, Japan. Tuttle is represented by Tilton Gallery in New York where she had exhibitions in 2016 and 2018 and by Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, where she had a solo show in 2019. She currently has an outdoor sculpture exhibition, Outlooks: Martha Tuttle, at Storm King Art Center, open through November 8, 2021. Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA and the University of San Diego, CA. Tuttle lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Tilton Gallery is pleased to present “When the Chickens Come Home To Roost,” the first solo exhibition of paintings, watercolors and sculpture by February James in New York. The exhibition will open Friday,May 21st, noon to 8:00pm. February James makes evocative portraits that respond to memory and are located at the nexus between the private self and public persona. They are both profoundly personal and non-specific, imbued with a sense of mystery that allows the viewer to engage with the work and collaborate with it to find their own interpretation.

Tilton Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of photographs by Texas Isaiah, opening Friday, May 21st, noon to 8:00pm. Texas Isaiah is a visual narrator whose photographs, primarily of Black people, especially those of queer, trans, non-binary and gender expansive experiences, create arresting and poignant portraits that are significant both for the subject matter and for their remarkable visual beauty, rich color and soft natural light. Working in black and white and, more often since his move to Los Angeles a few years ago, in color photography, Texas Isaiah captures the essential humanness of his sitters.

Tilton Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new sculpture by Kennedy Yanko, from April 6th to May 15th, 2021. We encourage visitors to call in advance on opening day to assure an even flow and safe viewing experience. Kennedy Yanko continues her ongoing investigation into the combination of the seemingly incongruous materials of metal and paint skins to create voluptuous and unexpected sculptural forms. Salvaged metal, crushed or bent into new forms, is juxtaposed with lushly colored soft-appearing paint skins formulated by the artist to flow organically around or through the harder metal forms, at times seeming to pour out of this less pliant element. Yanko melds the two materials and experiments with her very personal color palette to create works that defy the traditionally static nature of sculpture and that have a sense of continuous movement. In this new body of work, Yanko has added a new element: wires. Straight and taut, they are threaded through the works like drawings in space, exerting pressure on the paint skins while extending the sculptures' essence beyond their perceived boundaries. They become yet another way that Yanko causes the viewer to think anew about the sculptures' relationships to walls and space and in turn to consider our own position in relation to these works within this cultural moment in time. Kennedy Yanko is a Brooklyn-based artist, born in 1988 in St. Louis, Missouri. Yanko's work has been exhibited in group museum exhibitions including Parallels and Peripheries curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit in 2019 and Life During WarTime curated by Christian Viveros at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in 2020. She installed her first public sculpture, 3 WAYS, on the Poydras Corridor in New Orleans in collaboration with The Helis Foundation and the Ogden Museum of Art. Yanko has had solo exhibitions at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Jenkins Johnson Project Space, Brooklyn, NY, Denny Dimin Gallery, New York, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, and Vielmetter Gallery, Los Angeles. Yanko was named Artforum's "Critic's Pick," received a Colene Brown Art Prize awarded by BRIC Arts Media, and was featured in 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow published by Thames & Hudson.

Tilton Gallery is pleased to present a group of Selected Works that hover between abstraction and figurative content. From the straightforward to political to ironic and self-critical, they are a group of favorites to ring in the New Year.

Tilton Gallery is pleased to present Empty Legs, an exhibition of artworks that feature legs, or their conspicuous absence. Working around the globe and across generations, each artist uses legs as a way to say something about their attitudes and concerns, in other words, where they stood. The exhibitions features works by Eduardo Abaroa, Kim Dingle, Huang Yong Ping, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, Ruth Vollmer, Gang Zhao. Empty Legs has been organized by Jacob Billiar. Simultaneous with this exhibition, Tilton Gallery presents a group show of selected works by Egan Frantz, Tomashi Jackson, Yashua Klos, Antone Könst, Jarbas Lopes, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, Joyce Scott, Berend Strik, Martha Tuttle, Cosima von Bonin and Brenna Youngblood.

Zachary Armstrong, Ed Clark, Luca Dellaverson, Fred Eversley, Keltie Ferris, Egan Frantz, Terri Friedman, Ron Gorchov, Rashid Johnson, Sol LeWitt, Richard Nonas, Kianja Strobert, Chris Succo, Martha Tuttle, Richard Tuttle, Stanley Whitney, Kennedy Yanko, Robert Yasuda, Brenna Youngblood

Works by the Studio Fellows at NXTHVN, upon completion of the first year of this Residency Program founded by Titus Kaphar, Jonathan Brand and Jason Price.