exhibition: Richard Wentworth: ‘motes to self’
dates: 17 April – 31 May 2014
Peter Freeman, Inc, New York, is pleased to present ‘motes to self’ by Richard Wentworth. This is the gallery's third exhibition with the artist, and the first devoted to his photographic series “Making Do and Getting By” (begun in 1974).
Wentworth, widely recognized for his sculptural repositioning of ordinary objects, is a keen observer and chronicler of daily life. His extensive series of photographs, taken while walking through city streets - primarily his own hometown of London but also urban settings far from home – captures the provisional ways in which people modify the world they inhabit. Wentworth's project is simultaneously that of a wanderer and archivist, walking among, encountering, and recording happenstance, creating unpeopled landscapes full of the evidence of human life in all its oddities, adjustments, shortcuts and elliptical solutions. Each image captures particular local eccentricities of the city in which it was taken, but more so reflects a human capacity to deploy inventive and creative means to assemble the world.
In the artist’s words: “I am not a photographer and have never much been drawn to its possible ‘preciousnesses’. There are photographers I admire, but it's content driven. There are artist's archives which I recognize, but probably only know at a distance. Smithson/Rauschenberg. Walker Evans/Bechers. Charles Sheeler/Paul Nash. Assorted Germans - Sander/Richter.”
This exhibition comprises hundreds of images from the past eight years both on the wall and displayed on tables. The full-gallery, wall-to-wall accumulation of images here offers the viewer an immersive, direct engagement with a small example of the artist's way of looking and experiencing. Importantly, amassing the pictures in this way allows for connections to be made by the viewer. For the artist it is not so much the images as the "gaps between that seem to be where energies flow. The 'mortar' proposes some friction, the 'bricks' just 'are'."
Richard Wentworth was born in 1947 and lives and works in London. He attended the Royal College of Art in London from 1966-70 and taught at Goldsmith’s College, University of London from 1971-87. In 2002 he became Master of Drawing at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, and in 2009 was appointed Professor and Head of the Royal College of Art’s Sculpture Department. In 2011, Richard Wentworth was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Past exhibitions include solo shows at Serpentine Gallery, London (1993), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994), Bonner Kunstverein (1998), Tate Liverpool (2005), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010), and most recently “Black Maria,” a major public commission, installed for a month in King’s Cross, London (2013). Group exhibitions include the 25th Bienal de São Paulo (2002), the 50th and 53rd Venice Biennales (2003, 2009). He was awarded the Mark Rothko Memorial (1974) and the Berlin DAAD Fellowship (1993-94). Wentworth’s work is also in the permanent collections of many international museums such as Tate Modern (London), Wadsworth Athenaeum (Connecticut), Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico), and Israel Museum (Jerusalem). His work is on view in “Curiosity: Art & The Pleasures of Knowing,” originated by London’s Southbank Center and next travelling to de Appel Arts Center in Amsterdam (27 June – 14 September 2014).
A reception for the artist will be held Thursday 17 April from 6 to 8 pm.
Parallel to Richard Wentworth's exhibition, Peter Freeman, Inc. is pleased to present the exhibition “Charlotte Posenenske: Early Works.”
For reproduction requests, interviews with the artist and general inquiries, please contact the gallery at 212-966-5154 or info@peterfreemaninc.com.
dates: 17 April – 31 May 2014
Peter Freeman, Inc, New York, is pleased to present ‘motes to self’ by Richard Wentworth. This is the gallery's third exhibition with the artist, and the first devoted to his photographic series “Making Do and Getting By” (begun in 1974).
Wentworth, widely recognized for his sculptural repositioning of ordinary objects, is a keen observer and chronicler of daily life. His extensive series of photographs, taken while walking through city streets - primarily his own hometown of London but also urban settings far from home – captures the provisional ways in which people modify the world they inhabit. Wentworth's project is simultaneously that of a wanderer and archivist, walking among, encountering, and recording happenstance, creating unpeopled landscapes full of the evidence of human life in all its oddities, adjustments, shortcuts and elliptical solutions. Each image captures particular local eccentricities of the city in which it was taken, but more so reflects a human capacity to deploy inventive and creative means to assemble the world.
In the artist’s words: “I am not a photographer and have never much been drawn to its possible ‘preciousnesses’. There are photographers I admire, but it's content driven. There are artist's archives which I recognize, but probably only know at a distance. Smithson/Rauschenberg. Walker Evans/Bechers. Charles Sheeler/Paul Nash. Assorted Germans - Sander/Richter.”
This exhibition comprises hundreds of images from the past eight years both on the wall and displayed on tables. The full-gallery, wall-to-wall accumulation of images here offers the viewer an immersive, direct engagement with a small example of the artist's way of looking and experiencing. Importantly, amassing the pictures in this way allows for connections to be made by the viewer. For the artist it is not so much the images as the "gaps between that seem to be where energies flow. The 'mortar' proposes some friction, the 'bricks' just 'are'."
Richard Wentworth was born in 1947 and lives and works in London. He attended the Royal College of Art in London from 1966-70 and taught at Goldsmith’s College, University of London from 1971-87. In 2002 he became Master of Drawing at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, and in 2009 was appointed Professor and Head of the Royal College of Art’s Sculpture Department. In 2011, Richard Wentworth was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Past exhibitions include solo shows at Serpentine Gallery, London (1993), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994), Bonner Kunstverein (1998), Tate Liverpool (2005), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010), and most recently “Black Maria,” a major public commission, installed for a month in King’s Cross, London (2013). Group exhibitions include the 25th Bienal de São Paulo (2002), the 50th and 53rd Venice Biennales (2003, 2009). He was awarded the Mark Rothko Memorial (1974) and the Berlin DAAD Fellowship (1993-94). Wentworth’s work is also in the permanent collections of many international museums such as Tate Modern (London), Wadsworth Athenaeum (Connecticut), Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico), and Israel Museum (Jerusalem). His work is on view in “Curiosity: Art & The Pleasures of Knowing,” originated by London’s Southbank Center and next travelling to de Appel Arts Center in Amsterdam (27 June – 14 September 2014).
A reception for the artist will be held Thursday 17 April from 6 to 8 pm.
Parallel to Richard Wentworth's exhibition, Peter Freeman, Inc. is pleased to present the exhibition “Charlotte Posenenske: Early Works.”
For reproduction requests, interviews with the artist and general inquiries, please contact the gallery at 212-966-5154 or info@peterfreemaninc.com.