Fall 2015 exhibitions
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
3750 Washington Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63108
Hours: Wednesday 10am–5pm,
Thursday–Friday 10am–8pm, Saturday–Sunday 10am–5pm
T +314 535 4660
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) is pleased to present its fall exhibition season, featuring two major surveys by acclaimed artists Hurvin Anderson and Sheila Hicks, the first solo museum exhibition by Wyatt Kahn, and a large-scale video projection by Marilyn Minter.
Hurvin Anderson: Backdrop
September 11–December 27, 2015
British artist Hurvin Anderson is best known for evocative paintings that engage with charged social histories and shifting notions of cultural identity. His depictions of lush Caribbean landscapes and urban barbershops explore themes of memory, place, and the indelible connection between the two. Anderson applies paint with deceptive ease, as if eager to capture the scene before it drifts away; figure and ground blend to create compositional spaces where subjects fluidly project forward and recede back into permeable picture planes. The most comprehensive survey of Anderson’s work to date, Backdrop examines the artist’s practice in depth, presenting new and recent paintings alongside previously unseen sculpture, photography, and works on paper.
Sheila Hicks
September 11–December 27, 2015
Paris-based American artist Sheila Hicks has been creating abstract hand-woven, fiber-based installations and sculptures for nearly 60 years. From large-scale commissions to gallery exhibitions, her multifaceted practice spans the worlds of commercial production and fine art while also drawing on indigenous traditions from around the world. CAM’s exhibition maps a cross-section of Hicks’s artistic output from the 1960s to the present, bringing together major works from private and public collections alongside selections from the artist’s ongoing series of small-scale portable weavings, or minimes. Hicks plays with and builds on classical textile techniques to develop her own experimental and idiosyncratic style. Incorporating natural fibers, synthetic blends, and even everyday office supplies, Hicks creates work that expands fiber’s kinship to both painting and sculpture.
Wyatt Kahn: Object Paintings
September 11–December 27, 2015
Object Paintings is the first solo museum exhibition of work by New York–based artist Wyatt Kahn. Containing references ranging from Soviet architecture to Cubism, Kahn’s work explores how paintings can be made entirely without paint and hover between two and three dimensions. The exhibition features the artist’s signature abstract constructions, which he creates by stretching unprimed canvas over irregular, hand-cut wood panels that are pieced together, as well as more recent works, known as “object paintings,” that form recognizable objects—for example, a clock, a drum, a guitar. In addition, the exhibition premieres a new series of large-scale drawings and relief paintings composed of multiple panels of varying depths. Taken as a whole, Wyatt Kahn: Object Paintings investigates how we read signs and symbols and communicate narrative and content through abstract works of art.
Marilyn Minter: I’m Not Much But I’m All I Think About
October 2, 2015–January 10, 2016
I’m Not Much But I’m All I Think About (2011), a single-channel projection by New York–based artist Marilyn Minter, is the latest installment in CAM’s Street Views series of large-scale video works projected on the Museum’s facade. Simultaneously humorous and self-consciously narcissistic, the film features an oozing gray liquid, its mesmerizing undulations evoking the bubbling of a hot spring or pool of molten lava. The letters M and E descend from above and rupture the metallic liquid surface, slowly becoming submerged. This process continues with subtle variations, the letters alternately appearing in silver and gold, as well as in the form of M&M candies. The letters rotate, spelling the word “ME” but also “MM”—the artist’s initials. This work, like much of Minter’s practice, plays with ideas of identity, anxiety, and bravura.
About the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) presents, supports, and celebrates the art of our time. It is the premier museum in St. Louis dedicated to contemporary art. Focused on a dynamic array of changing exhibitions, CAM provides a thought-provoking program that reflects and contributes to the global cultural landscape. Through the diverse perspectives offered in its exhibitions, public programs, and educational initiatives, CAM actively engages a range of audiences to challenge their perceptions. It is a site for discovery, a gathering place in which to experience and enjoy contemporary visual culture.
