Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present the group exhibition Horizon, featuring works by gallery artists Billy Childish, Tracey Emin, Teresita Fernández, Angel Otero, and Juergen Teller opening January 15, 2015. The selection of works feature both traditional and abstracted representations of landscapes depicting various forms of the exterior world as well as our internal or psychological relationship to nature. Like a horizon line, which is not physically tangible and can only be perceived, these artists’ constructions of landscape extend beyond representation into the realm of subjective and personal reflections.
Childish’s imagery draws inspiration from subjects close to his emotional and physical world, including family and his hometown of Chatham, England, where he continues to live and work today. Frozen Estuary-Off Chatham, 1895 (Version Y) (2012) references a historical photograph of this area combined with his own iconography and personal memories.
Fernández’s Horizon (Halo) from 2011 is an installation comprised of small, individual hand-hewn chunks of graphite stretching across the wall in a horizontal line. Each piece features a hand-drawn graphite mark, trailing from its side. From a distance the marks combine to evoke a horizon line, separating two halves of an imagined landscape.
Portrait from the past (2014) by Emin portrays a figure in the classical reclining nude pose. The artist’s quick gestural lines approach abstraction, appearing to situate the body within a subtle landscape. This unique embroidery on cotton mimics Emin’s drawings, which evoke the raw emotion and poignancy typical of her work.
Macondo (2014), a silicone and graphite painting by Otero, was inspired by a personal photograph from his birthplace of Puerto Rico. The artist digitally distills the image down to a line pattern traditional to woodcut techniques, traces the outline onto linen using silicone, and then covers the entire adhesive surface with graphite dust. The resulting abstraction serves as a metaphor for memory. It hints at something familiar, but like a recollection, is not completely recognizable or tangible.
Teller's photographs from his Nürnberg series (2005) capture weeds growing against the stone architecture of his hometown of Nürnberg, which has a complicated history as the location of Germany's National Socialist Party in the 1940s and subsequently the trials that followed WWII from 1945-46. The weeds struggle to break through, portraying the psychological transformation of this brutal place from hard fascism into romantic ruin, and offer a metaphorical interpretation of reinvention.
*Image: Teresita Fernández, Horizon (Halo) (2011), graphite, magnets, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.
