Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents Informal Get Together

July 9, 2022

JESSICA STOCKHOLDER Informal Get Together [JS 623] 2014

July 14 – August 19, 2022

Informal Get Together, a show combining painting and sculpture by Keltie Ferris, Joanne Greenbaum, Arlene Shechet, and Jessica Stockholder, will be on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash from July 14 until August 19, 2022. Informal Get Together, which takes its name from a sculpture by Jessica Stockholder from 2014, contrasts the three-dimensional, structural painting of Greenbaum and Ferris with the painterly approaches to sculpture taken by Shechet and Stockholder.

Keltie Ferris uses a range of techniques, such as a spray gun, dry pigment, and hand-painted fields, to create his flamboyant and intricate style of abstract painting. The three pieces on display in this show cover the last ten years of Ferris’ career. Ferris’s signature pixelated backgrounds and eerie foregrounds can be seen in a pastel painting from 2012 titled (WVVW). )))(((sounds)))((, a more contemporary painting, is a densely constructed, grisalle composition that brims with contradiction. It is both meditative and anxious, visually expanding and contracting.

Joanne Greenbaum has developed a recognizable abstract visual language over the past thirty years that is characterized by an unorthodox stacking of forms in an intricate pictorial space. Greenbaum frequently starts her paintings with a sketch, creating a crucial interaction between the two techniques that ultimately reflects her own distinctive lexicon of line and volume. Three large-scale paintings from 2003 are on display in Informal Get Together. The underlying geometric shapes blend the intuitive with the systematic by evoking architectural features like staircases or scaffolding.

Arlene Shechet combines formal concerns with a humorous sense of corporeality to reveal long-standing tensions between object and base, inner and exterior, figure and space. Shechet creates painted ceramic sculptures that resemble twisted bodies or monsters from the deep sea and are covered in glaze that drips and crackles. Five tentacle-like arms that spiral downward from the sculpture’s center in Show Off, a small wall-mounted piece, give the impression that the piece is hanging precariously from the wall. The viewer is forced to evaluate the sculpture in the round by a variety of surface treatments, which challenge preconceived notions about the solidity of a sculptural piece. These treatments range from glossy and textured to monochrome and matte.

The artwork of Jessica Stockholder has been essential in developing the conversation between sculpture and painting. She frequently combines seemingly unrelated, common materials to create compositions that make sense as a whole while taking into account the architectural context in which the work was produced. She frequently use everyday products to create an intersection of pictorial and physical space by utilizing their aesthetic and formal aspects. In an effort to draw attention to the boundaries of knowing, she explores how meaning is derived from physicality and embraces the sensuality and pleasure created by color and formal organization.

About Mitchell–Innes & Nash
Founded by Lucy Mitchell–Innes and David Nash, who previously headed the worldwide Contemporary and Impressionist & Modern Art divisions of Sotheby’s, Mitchell–Innes & Nash places exemplary contemporary artists within a historical context, revealing a continuity of ideas and aesthetic virtuosity from the Modern era through the present day. Lucy Mitchell–Innes is also a member of the selection committee of Art Basel and a former president of the Art Dealers Association of America. Mitchell–Innes & Nash’s renowned exhibition program fosters excellence within artistic practice, while forging an informed dialogue between emerging and established internationally recognized artists. From acclaimed surveys of 20th century masters, such as Jean Arp, Anthony Caro, Jay DeFeo, Willem de Kooning, Leon Kossoff, Kenneth Noland, Roy Lichtenstein, and Nicolas de Stael, to solo exhibitions of Sarah Braman, Keltie Ferris, Daniel Lefcourt, Eddie Martinez, Pope.L, Martha Rosler, and Jessica Stockholder, Mitchell–Innes & Nash has proven expertise in both advancing the careers of emerging artists and maintaining the superior standard set by established artists.