NEW YORK

The Agreement: Chromatic Presences

Curated by William Corwin

April 2 - May 11, 2022

At Zürcher Gallery, New York

William Corwin
Poppy DeltaDawn
Tom Doyle
Daniel Giordano
Remy Jungerman
Shervone Neckles
Ugo Rondinone
Andrew Ross
Nancy Shaver
Kianja Strobert
Lynn Umlauf
Sun You

Curator’s Statement

In the story of Noah and the Ark, after the flood, the creator who has just destroyed almost all the evidence of their artistic practice—aka God—makes a binding promise to never do it again.  They present the world with a gift, one which is unexpected and extraordinary. It is a sculpture: a bow of many colors.  If effect, God is making a bond between themselves and all living creatures through the presentation of an art object.  Whenever this object, this pledge, appears in the skies after a storm, all living beings will know that they are safe, at least from cataclysmic destruction.  “The Agreement: Chromatic Presences” is an examination of the connection the viewer feels towards a polychrome sculpture that shares their space.  It hearkens back to this original notion that these objects, simultaneously real and impossible, symbolize a pact between ourselves and the inscrutable and unknowable.

Sculpture is about presence:  it intrudes into lived space and takes on the role of an obstacle—it has to be acknowledged in passing.  In terms of this surrogate presence, there are two ways to read color in sculpture:  it can be used to reinforce an impostor of the real, slyly persuading the viewer that what they see is not a fabrication, but exists without the hand of the artist; then there is the option which openly declares that one is in the presence of something outside of the real.  (The third path is the indulgence in materiality which has very little to do with the subject of the sculpture itself and much more to do with notions of beauty and the culture surrounding the artist.)

The theme of this exhibition is the acknowledgement that color generates a bond between sculptor and viewer. When an artist creates a sculpture and manifests a brightly polychromed presence, we may judge this to be gaudy and overwrought, but the premise of this show is that it is not.  Color offers its own set of understandings between viewer and creator that reside not only in aesthetics but in the understanding that color enforces a heightened awareness, it signifies a visceral and even a moral response.

The exhibition “Like Life” at the Met Breuer in 2018 considered sculpture that literally mimicked the coloring and presence of other human beings, the aim of sculpture to imitate what already exists—this has more to do with the conquest of death.  This exhibition considers the ability of color to allow sculpture to sidestep the question of life and death and address the notion of presence and what is beyond presence.  We offer the bow of many colors: how do human beings engage with a presence in their environment which does not immediately attempt to mitigate itself by reducing its color, as in Modernist sculpture, for example, or ingratiate itself into our sense of the familiar, but instead demands attention.  In the time that the story of Noah was first composed, the vibrant colors of the rainbow were a momentary and extraordinary occurrence, and a reminder of a divine promise against future violence.  The works in this exhibition are also divine promises.