Opening Reception: Spring Exhibitions

Louise Despont, Energy Scaffolds and Information Architecture (Subtle and Circulatory, Female), 2015. Colored pencil and graphite on antique ledger book pages. 71 ½ × 68 ½, 12 ledger book pages. Courtesy of the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery.
Louise Despont, Energy Scaffolds and Information Architecture (Subtle and Circulatory, Female), 2015. Colored pencil and graphite on antique ledger book pages. 71 ½ × 68 ½, 12 ledger book pages. Courtesy of the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery.

Please join us Thursday, January 21 for the opening reception of Louise Despont: Energy Scaffolds and Information Architecture and Jennifer Bartlett: Hospital.

The event is FREE and open to the public.

ForLouise Despont: Energy Scaffolds and Information Architecture Despont will create a site-specific, large-scale architectural installation in the Main Gallery. While she is best known for her incredibly complex and unique drawings on antique paper, forEnergy Scaffolds and Information Architecture she will be designing two contrasting built structures, both of which are informed by her recent travels to Bali. The first structure will be a rectangular, roofed room, its exterior surface covered with cut dowel pegs. Inside, Despont will install a series of abstract drawings depicting different circulatory systems. The second structure will be an open-roof oval room, its exterior covered by a loosely draped linen cloth. Inside, Despont will install a five foot high by sixty foot long frieze-like drawing that will completely fill the interior walls. This unified drawing will explore and visualize energy paths found in the natural world.

In the Drawing Room,Jennifer Bartlett: Hospital will be on view. Since her first one-person exhibition in New York in 1970, Jennifer Bartlett has been well-known for her process-based works exploring grids and other forms of order, which subvert these systems even as they work within their confines. Alongside this body of abstract work, Bartlett has also produced pastel drawings based on her immediate surroundings. These pastels are essential to understanding Bartlett’s vocal and critical rejection of the rigid distinction between abstraction and figuration, and highlight the fluidity between these ways of working in her practice. TheHospital series of pastels was made during Bartlett’s extended hospital stay. These pastels are based on a series of photographs she took in the hospital that she later cropped and edited in her studio. With these works, Bartlett continues her long-established practice of close observation and responsiveness to her environment.