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Stand still like the hummingbird
Curated by Bellatrix Hubert
June 28–August 3, 2012
Press preview with the curator: Thursday, June 28, 10am
525 & 533 West 19th Street
This exhibition takes its title from a collection of short stories and essays by American writer Henry Miller, published in 1962. Known equally for his mysticism and dark humor, Miller proposed the idea of “flying backwards, standing still like a hummingbird” as a lighthearted antidote to the frantic pace of modern society.
In borrowing Miller’s title, the exhibition also embraces the paradox at its heart: the hummingbird, of course, only appears inert because we cannot visually process its wing beat quickly enough. Hubert has gathered a careful selection of paintings, sculptures, and videos by artists who engage with contradictions, impossibilities, and the absurd. They also share a concern with understated gestures and formal restraint, which finds its historical starting point in the exhibition with Marcel Duchamp’s Comb (1916/1964). Along with the artist’s other readymades from the early twentieth century, the gray steel comb signaled a dry, deadpan aesthetic, which came to influence a century of art-making. The works in the show are subtle iterations of this lineage, their matter-of-factness alternating between the poetic, funny, and unnerving.
Artists included in the show: Tomma Abts, Francis Alÿs, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Carol Bove, Marcel Duchamp, Morgan Fisher, Robert Gober, Rodney Graham, On Kawara, Ruth Laskey, Sherrie Levine, Gordon Matta-Clark, John McCracken, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland, Jim Nutt, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Alan Uglow, Christopher Williams, Mason Williams, and Martha Wilson.
Read the full press release here.
People Who Work Here
Curated by Rawson Projects
July 11–August 10, 2012
519 West 19th Street
As its title suggests, this exhibition features a group of artists who actually work at David Zwirner in various roles. Curated by Rawson Projects, a Brooklyn-based gallery co-founded in 2010 by James Morrill and Chris Rawson who also work at David Zwirner, this exhibition bridges the emerging and established gallery scenes, two sides of the art world that are commonly thought of as isolated from one another. In turn, it plays on notions of inside and outside, art and work, center and periphery, while at the same time testifying to the interconnectedness of the New York art world and the relationships that exist between new and established artists and galleries in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Artists included in the show: Cy Amundson, Justin Davis Anderson, Ben Berlow, Josh Brown, Aidan Sofia Earle, Joel Fennell, Brent Harada, Sam Martineau, Chris Medina, Dave Miko, Clive Murphy, Liz Nielsen, David Ording, Justin Phillipson, Ramon Silva, and Aengus Woods with John Holten.
Read the full press release here.
For all press inquiries and to RSVP to the June 28 press preview with Bellatrix Hubert, please contact Ben Thornborough at David Zwirner: 212 727 2070 or bthornborough@davidzwirner.com.
