Justin Caguiat / Grant Mooney

On view from September 17 to December 8, 2024, the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at the Center for the Arts presents two concurrent solo exhibitions: Justin Caguiat’s Triple Solitaire and Grant Mooney’s calcis.

Justin Caguiat: Triple Solitaire
Triple Solitaire, Justin Caguiat’s first institutional solo exhibition, includes a triptych of large abstract paintings arranged in a singular panorama. The artist was particularly interested in “locality paradox,” a phenomenon associated with historic panoramic painting wherein a viewer loses awareness of their actual location. Caguiat wondered how might this experience be altered with non-representational imagery. In Untitled (2024), a handmade mirror, Caguiat reverse painted on glass and then applied silverleaf, sandwiching the oil paint and linseed oil inside. Over time the work will turn from a mirror with reflective properties into an oxidized non-reflective painting as these materials interact with the silverleaf. Suspended from the ceiling throughout the gallery are umbrellas broadcasting sound works immersing the viewer in yet another rhythm, a soundtrack to the experience of seeing that itself conditions the viewing experience.

Justin Caguiat (b. 1989, Tokyo) lives and works between New York and California. Recent solo exhibitions include Greene Naftali (2022); The Warehouse (2022); Taka Ishii Gallery (2021); Modern Art (2023, 2020); and 15 Orient (2018). Significant group shows include Greene Naftali (2023); Modern Art (2023, 2021); Lomex hosted by Arcadia Missa (2020); and Clima (2019). His work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum; Hessel Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Performance by Gretchen Lawrence: November 2, 2024 at 2pm / Artist talk with Justin Caguiat: December 4, 2024 at 4:30pm

Grant Mooney: calcis
Grant Mooney’s calcis includes new floor and wall-based sculptural works as well as an installation of temporary walls from the gallery’s inventory which have been treated with limewash. Calcium carbonate is the key chemical component in plaster, in limewash, and in limestone, the fundamental construction material of the CFA. Working with the received conditions of the space, the artist’s work is carefully attuned to the social extensions and technological production of material. On the floor in the center of the gallery is another new work. Cast in bronze and rendered in situ by the artist, Partials i, (Gain c.) (2024) retains some of its plaster shell from the process of casting. calcis continues Mooney’s sculptural practice of attending to the hyper-relational way materials shape and are shaped by their proximal surroundings. For Mooney, artworks are deeply entangled entities. 

Grant Mooney (b. 1990, Seattle, WA) lives and works in New York. He studied art at Central Saint Martins, London and California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Mooney’s work has been featured in recent solo exhibitions at Midway Contemporary (2024), Progetto (2023), Miguel Abreu Gallery (2022/2023), Konrad Fischer Galerie (2021), Altman Siegel Gallery (2019), Kunstverein Braunschweig (2017), Pied-à-terre (2015), and the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art (2015). His work has been included in group exhibitions at Konrad Fischer Galerie, the Whitney Museum (2024), the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College (2022), Braunsfelder (2022), Miguel Abreu Gallery (2021), and the ICA, Los Angeles (2021), among others.

Artist talk with Grant Mooney and Alan Ruiz: November 12, 2024 at 4:30pm

Curated by Associate Director of Visual Arts Benjamin Chaffee with Exhibitions Manager Rosemary Lennox. Installation by Art Preparator Paul Theriault.

Zilkha Gallery is free and open to the public Tuesday through Sunday. Located on the campus of Wesleyan University in Middletown Connecticut, it is situated two hours north of New York.