La Lisson Gallery in New York presents from February 29 to April 18, 2029 an exhibition of recent paintings and works on paper by New York abstract painter Joanna Pousette-Dart. This is the gallery's first solo presentation with Pousette-Dart.
Born in New York to abstract expressionist painter and founding member of the New York School of Painting, Richard Pousette-Dart, and after studying painting at Bennington College in Vermont with the likes of formal Greenbergers Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski, the experience of Joanna Pousette-Dart as a painter comes from the rich tradition. However, despite this traditional modernist background, her paintings remain unconventional. THE Pousette-Dart shaped paintings are unique in their fusion of formal and poetic concerns and draw inspiration from many sources: Islamic, Mozarabic and Catalan art, Chinese paintings and calligraphy, Indian Maya and American artas well as the landscape itself, to name a few.
The presentation in the Lisson Gallery's Tenth Avenue space features four paintings on multiple large panels, each composed of curved canvases, a format Pousette-Dart has been exploring since 1990 while working in Galisteo, New Mexico. The dynamic configurations of these works evoke the ever-changing light and form, the vastness of the spaces and the sense of curvature of the earth that she experienced there. Works on display such as Plateau (2019), which measures more than 11 feet in diameter, and 2 Part Variation #3 (After Pierrot) (2015) evoke the curvature of the earth, as well as the typically dramatic light experienced in the Southwest.
The shape of Pousette-Dart's canvases is loosely based on parts of hemispheres and is created as an exploration of scale. Early landscape studies in New Mexico began by taking photographs and stitching them into 360-degree compositions, exploring the unbroken, flattened terrain and dramatic changes in light. Pousette-Dart noted: “In hold
the photographs I saw the light change the interrelationship of all the elements from one frame to another as I was shooting. I started making designs with photos in mind, cutting shapes and putting them together and these designs eventually led to the shaped panels.”
I Joanna Pousette-Dart's paintings take many forms, each with its own dynamic sense of expansion and compression, buoyancy and gravity. The painted outlines of the internal forms create greater complexity, sometimes echoing the contours of the canvas and other times challenging them. While the paintings are considered whole in themselves, the painting's rhythm and light are intended to reverberate beyond its curved edges.
Joanna Pousette-Dart was born in New York, New York, in 1947, where she still lives and works today. She holds a BA from Bennington College, Vermont (1968). Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Wiesbaden Museum, Wiesbaden, Germany; Moti Hasson Gallery, New York, NY, USA; Texas Gallery, Houston, TX, USA; Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY, USA; and Susan Caldwell Gallery, New York, New York, USA, as well as a three-person exhibition at MoMA PS1, New York. Philadelphia's Locks Gallery will open a solo show in April 2020 featuring new work. Pousette-Dart has been exhibited in group shows at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA; School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, USA; Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY, USA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, USA, among others. Her works are included in public collections worldwide, including Albright Knox, Buffalo, New York, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York, United States; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, USA; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, USA; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, USA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA.
