Dawn Clements, Upstairs at the McIver's (The Cobweb, 1955), detail, 2016, watercolor on paper, 23 x 128 inches © Dawn Clements. Courtesy the artist and Pierogi Gallery
PLACE: Monumental Drawings by Dawn Clements, Cynthia Lin, Gelah Penn, Fran Siegel
May 4 - June 18, 2016
Curated by Gelah Penn and Jonathan Rider
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 14, 6-8pm
Closing Reception: Friday, June 17, 6-8pm
Equity Gallery, 245 Broome Street, NY, NY 10002
Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 11am-6pm; Sunday, 1pm-6pm
Press release (PDF)
Q&A with the Artists, moderated by Jonathan Rider (PDF)
Exhibition checklist (PDF)
Equity Gallery is pleased to present PLACE: Monumental Drawings by Dawn Clements, Cynthia Lin, Gelah Penn, Fran Siegel, curated by Gelah Penn and Jonathan Rider, on view from May 4 to June 18, 2016.
PLACE focuses entirely on large-scale, immersive drawings that command the gallery’s space and illuminate different approaches to the idea of “territory” in each of the artists’ respective practices. Dawn Clements exposes the byways of cinematic angst and the ontological weightiness of intimate domestic spaces. Cynthia Lin fashions monumental drawings of skin and scars, exposing the vulnerable topography of the human body and psyche. Gelah Penn examines the mediated marks of an abstract, noirish, interior landscape, teeming with perceptual incident. Fran Siegel elucidates shifting urban geographies and communities in grandly dizzying and fragmented aerial views.
The exhibition will also feature a sequential collaborative piece by Clements, Lin, Penn and Siegel, which will be shown alongside their works. This collaborative work performs a call and response, wherein each artist was asked to “invade and claim” the territory of the previous artist’s contribution. This work involves particular zones of conflation in which all the artists’ rich geographies become enmeshed in various ways.
Dawn Clements is an artist living and working in New York City. Clements received a BA from Brown University, Providence, RI, and an MFA from the State University of New York, Albany, NY. Clements’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Brown University, Providence, RI; the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; and Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ. She has received fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2015); Civitella Ranieri (2014); and the Guggenheim Foundation (2012); among others. Clements’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Drawings/Watercolors, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY (2015); Mother’s Day, Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY (2015); Sint Trudoabdij, Bruges, Belgium (2011); and Home Sick, Acme Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2010). Group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial, curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari (2010); Dialogues: Drawings and Works on Paper, Satellite Contemporary, Las Vegas, NV (2015); Community of Influence, Spencer Brownstone, New York, NY (2015); and Come Like Shadows, Zurcher Studio, New York, NY (2014). Clements and her work have been featured in reviews and articles in Artforum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, New York Magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Village Voice.
Cynthia Lin is an artist living and working in New York City. Lin received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, and an MFA from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. Lin has received awards and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts/Finalist in Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts (2014); MacDowell Colony (2014); Yaddo (2014); Djerassi Resident Artist Program (2014); Brown Foundation Fellows Program at the Dora Maar House (2014); and the Guggenheim Foundation (2006); among others. Lin’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Drawings of Skin, Michael Steinberg Gallery, New York, NY (2008); Devin Borden/Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX (2001); Curious Pleasures, DiverseWorks Subspace, Houston, TX (2001); and Meadows Museum of Art, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX (2000). Group exhibitions include Works x Women, VanDeb Editions, Queens, NY (2016); I am a Lie and I am Gold, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY (2015); Drawing in Silver and Gold, Garvey/Simon Art Access, New York, NY (2015); The Intuitionist, The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2014); Borderline, Garis & Hahn, New York, NY (2013); and It’s New, It’s Now, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN (2012). Lin and her work have been featured in numerous reviews and articles in The New York Times, The New Yorker, TimeOut New York, Hyperallergic and Art Observed.
Gelah Penn is an artist living and working in New York City. Penn received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA. Penn’s work is in the collections of the Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA; the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; the Brooklyn Museum Library, New York, NY; and the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH. She has received fellowships from Yaddo (2015) and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation (2010/11); among others. Penn has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Polyglot Y: Unhinged, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, Open Window Project, New York, NY (2015); Double Indemnity & Polyglots, Foley Gallery, New York, NY (2015); Shadow of a Doubt, Carl Berg Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2010); and Clash By Night, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT (2009). Group exhibitions include Seeing Sound, Odetta Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2015); Diphthong, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, New York, NY (2015); and Art on Paper 2014, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC (2014). Penn and her work have been featured in reviews and articles in Art in America, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, artcritical.com and Sculpture Magazine. Recent curatorial projects include object’hood, co-curated with Inna Babaeva, Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, NY (2015); and Diphthong, co-curated with Stephen Maine, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, New York, NY (2015).
Fran Siegel is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Siegel received a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA, and an MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT. Siegel’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation (2015); Camargo Foundation/Bau Institute (2014); and the Siena Art Institute (2012); among others. She represented the US in the IX International Biennial of Cuenca, Ecuador (2007) and her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Infrastructure, Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, NY (2016); Transaction and Overlay, Art, Design, and Architecture Museum at UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA (2013); and Overlap, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA (2007). Group exhibitions include Demarcate--Territorial Shifts in Personal and Societal Mapping, ICA San Jose, CA (2016); LA Constructs, Art in Embassies Program, ASEAN, Jakarta, Indonesia (2015); Up to and Including the Horizon, Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2015); and Recent Acquisitions, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2013). Siegel and her work have been featured in reviews and articles in Art in America, ARTnews, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Sculpture Magazine.
About Artists Equity
New York Artists Equity Association, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1947 by artists and art patrons with the mission to promote opportunities for artists. It operates Equity Gallery, an art space located on the Lower East Side of New York City. For more information, please visit www.nyartistsequity.org.
Jonathan Rider (b. 1983) is an artist and curator living and working in New York, NY. Rider received a BA from Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, in 2005, and a MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, in 2011. His work has been shown in recent exhibitions, including Barely There, Lesley Heller Workspace, New York, NY (2015); 2015:1947, Equity Gallery, New York, NY (2015); A Palace with a View, The Pool NYC, Venice, Italy (2015); you know it when you feel it, Art in General, New York, NY (2014); Drawing Up!, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York, NY (2013); among others. Rider is the Assistant Director of The FLAG Art Foundation, a nonprofit contemporary art space located in Chelsea.
