RITA
ACKERMANN: SPLITS AT HAUSER & WIRTH
NEW YORK 22nd
STREET AND 18th STREET
2 May, 2024 – 26 July, 2024
RITA ACKERMANN: SPLITS AT
HAUSER & WIRTH NEW YORK 22nd STREET
2 May, 2024 – 26 July,
2024
New York…On 2 May, Hauser
& Wirth will present Rita Ackermann’s latest series of paintings and prints
in simultaneous exhibitions spanning the gallery’s two West Chelsea locations.
At 542 West 22nd Street, the artist will debut a suite of new canvases
expanding upon the techniques, themes and imagery she has explored over the
course of her career since the early 1990s, while at 443 West 18th Street she
will unveil a series of complex large-scale silkscreens. Heralding a
significant leap in her artistic practice, these prints represent a dramatic
convergence of the technical processes of printmaking with Ackermann’s
sustained exploration of form, movement and erasure.
Dr. Pamela Kort on Rita
Ackermann’s Exhibitions:
SPLITS
Titled ‘Splits,’
Ackermann’s latest paintings mark a pinnacle in the artist’s ongoing concern
with the creation of dynamic, moving images. In these canvases, forms cascade
downward and upward, at times merging seamlessly into one another. To optimize
the potential of such chance transformative processes, Ackermann conceptualized
the canvas as divided into three screens, as she aptly calls them. This enabled
her not only to guide the flow of line and paint, but also to forestall the
coalescence of drawing and painting. No sketch prefigured the images that
surfaced, except those carved into the recesses of her memory. Instead,
Ackermann allowed an instinctive force to guide her hand as it moved across the
fields before her.
The fluctuation between
the screens she populated with diaphanous lines and those carrying weightier,
gestural strokes of color also conspired to infuse the paintings with an
unexpected rhythm. In ‘Shut Eye’ (2023), for example, two screens brimming with
fragments of drawn shapes entice the eye to actively pull open the middle
register and thereby show more of the painted forms within. This occurs even as
the upper and lower screens seem to press inward, creating a dynamic tension
between revelation and concealment. To enhance this impression, Ackermann
occasionally used luminous yellow pigment to further instill in these paintings
a sense of lightness and transparency.
Composed as a sequence of
stacked-up semi-translucent frames, these canvases can also be seen as the
visual equivalent of images imprinted on a film strip. Ackermann, in fact,
draws parallels between the transformative essence of the images in the
‘Splits’ and the dynamic permutations observed when montaged photographic
images are projected in a cinema. In both mediums, meaning opens in the
infinitesimal split between what the eye sees and the elusive. There, a unique
motion also unfolds, one that oscillates between appearance and truth. In all
these paintings, there is mystery, one that hints at the presence of the
profound and unknowable. Through their enigmatic allure, the ‘Splits’ encourage
the viewer to ponder the ineffable, reminding us that while transcendence
eludes sight, its essence can nonetheless reveal itself.
You may click below link
to see Rita Ackermann past exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles ….
https://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com/2023/04/rita-ackermann-vertical-vanish-at.html
2+2=5, 2024
Oil and
Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions:
233.7 x 213.4 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Thomas Barratt
SACRED
INDIRECTION, 2023
Acrylic and
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 238.8
x 218.4 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Thomas Barratt
NOISY FEET,
2023
Oil and
Carpenters Pen on Canvas
Dimensions: 233.7
x 213.4 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Thomas Barratt
SHUTTERS,
2023
Acrylic, Oil
and Carpenters Pen on Canvas
Dimensions: 238.8
x 218.4 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
SHUT EYE,
2023
Oil and
Carpenters Pen on Canvas
Dimensions: 238.8
x 218.4 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Thomas Barratt
MOUCHETTE’S
MANNERS 2023
Oil, Acrylic
and Carpenter’s Pencil on Canvas
Dimensions: 233.7
x 218.4 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
REVERSED
ANGLES, 2023
Acrylic and
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 238.8
x 218.4 x 6 cm
© Rita Ackermann
WITHOUT
NARRATIVE, 2023
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 228.6
x 208.3 x 5.7 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Thomas Barratt
RITA ACKERMANN: SPLITS AT HAUSER & WIRTH
NEW YORK 22nd STREET AND 18th STREET
2 May, 2024 – 26 July, 2024
RITA ACKERMANN AT HAUSER
& WIRTH NEW YORK 18th STREET
2 May, 2024 – 26 July,
2024
SPLITS: PRINTING -
PAINTING
In the thick of bringing
to canvas the metamorphic forms that would become the ‘Splits,’ Ackermann
embarked on a new artistic endeavor, delving into the realm of printmaking. In
the resultant seven large-scale silkscreens, which she produced in
collaboration with master printer Keigo Takahashi, her concern with making
manifest such images became imbued with a related objective: the transformation
of paintings into prints, without recourse to the reproduction of a model.
Though these silkscreens diverge from the compositional principles of the
‘Splits,’ like them they probe the boundaries of optical perception. To
emphasize this, the exhibition includes two recent paintings. One of these—’The
Rule of Nature’ (2023)—which belongs to the ‘Splits,’ even bears the marks of
Ackermann’s concern with combining monotype printing with painting. Viewers who
perceive that will nevertheless find it difficult to distinguish between the
look of the other painting—’Misfit’ (2023)—and the silkscreens.
This visual feat owes
just as much to the artist’s decision to approach the making of these
silkscreens as though she were working on a canvas, as to any sleight of the
hand enabled by their production. Ackermann began by layering drawings onto
paper and then gradually superimposed gestural brush strokes, color stains and
delicate droplets of pigment onto the underlying drawings, welcoming the
occurrence of accidents through this process. This not only made the contrast
between emerging and disappearing forms integral to many of her paintings
visible, but also conveyed a sense of the centrifugal motion that frequently
ensues in them. As such, those who contemplate these first silkscreens by the
artist may well find themselves questioning whether the alleged split between
printmaking and painting is, in fact, purely theoretical.
You may click below link to see Rita Ackermann past exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles ….
https://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com/2023/04/rita-ackermann-vertical-vanish-at.html
MISFIT, 2023
Acrylic and
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 279.4
x 264.2 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
15 TAKES,
2023
15-Color
Screenprint on Saunders Waterford Watercolor Paper 425gsm
Dimensions: 141
x 121.9 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
THE RULE OF
NATURE, 2024
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 195.6
x 190.5 cm
Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer
27 TAKES,
2023
27-Color
Screenprint on Saunders Waterford Watercolor Paper 425gsm
Dimensions: 141
x 121.9 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
11 TAKES,
2023
11-Color
Screenprint on Saunders Waterford Watercolor Paper 425gsm
Dimensions: 141
x 121.9 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
13 TAKES,
2023
13-Color
Screenprint on Saunders Waterford Watercolor Paper 425gsm
Dimensions: 141
x 121.9 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
10 TAKES,
2023
10-Color
Screenprint on Saunders Waterford Watercolor Paper 425gsm
Dimensions: 141
x 121.9 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
19 TAKES,
2023
19-Color
Screenprint on Saunders Waterford Watercolor Paper 425gsm
Dimensions: 141
x 121.9 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
33 TAKES,
2023
33-Color
Screenprint on Saunders Waterford Watercolor Paper 425 gsm
Dimensions: 141
x 121.9 cm
© Rita AckermannPhoto: Sarah Muehlbauer
33 TAKES, 2023 (DETAIL)
RITA ACKERMANN
Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1968, Rita Ackermann currently lives and works in New York. Ackermann’s recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Hidden,’ MASI Lugano, Switzerland (2023); ‘Vertical Vanish,’ Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles (2023); ‘Mama ‘19,’ Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street (2020); ‘Brother Sister,’ Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Switzerland (2019); ‘Movements as Monuments,’ La Triennale di Milano, Italy (2018); ‘Turning Air Blue,’ Hauser & Wirth Somerset, England (2017); ‘KLINE RAPE,’ Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street (2016); ‘The Aesthetic of Disappearance,’ Malmö Konsthall, Malmo, Sweden (2016); ‘Chalkboard Paintings,’ Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Switzerland (2015); ‘MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE-HAIR WASH,’ Sammlung Friedrichshof, Burgenland, Austria and Sammlung Friedrichshof Stadtraum, Vienna, Austria (2014); ‘Negative Muscle,’ Hauser & Wirth New York, 69th Street (2013); ‘Fire by Days,’ Hauser & Wirth London, Piccadilly (2012); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami FL (2012); ‘Bakos,’ Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2011); and ‘Rita Ackermann and Harmony Korine: ShadowFux,’ Swiss Institute, New York NY (2010).
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