AMONG FRIENDS: THREE VIEWS OF A COLLECTION

JUNE 23-AUGUST 12, 2022

Curated by Cynthia Daignault, Awol Erizku, and Ewan Gibbs

Opening reception: Thursday, June 23, 5:30-7:30pm

Drawn from the collection of Amanda and Glenn Fuhrman, founders of The FLAG Art Foundation, and curated by Cynthia Daignault, Awol Erizku, and Ewan Gibbs, the exhibition includes singular presentations of artworks that reflect each artist’s primary discipline and personal sensibilities: Daignault’s selection stems from painting; Erizku focuses on photography and sculpture; and Gibbs select drawings. Among Friends: Three Views of a Collection is on view June 23-August 12, 2022, and spans the FLAG’s 9th and 10th floors.

“Some of the most dynamic exhibitions in recent memory have been curated by artists, invited by museums and institutions to organize shows from their permanent collections. To see artists remix imagery or make unexpected pairings can transform a work you’ve seen hundreds of times into something completely new,” states Glenn Fuhrman. “Cindy, Awol, and Ewan have each been involved in multiple exhibitions at FLAG over the years and have all become close friends of mine and Amanda’s. I deeply respect their practices and discerning eyes and am excited to have them recontextualize works that I have loved and lived with for the past three decades.”

While the Fuhrmans’ collection of contemporary art is actively made available to curators and institutions worldwide through The Fuhrman Family Foundation, this is only the second time in FLAG’s history (A Secret Affair: Selections from the Fuhrman Family Collection, 2017) that a show has been drawn exclusively from it.

“This presentation is a window into Glenn’s history and taste,” says Cynthia Daignault, “but it also reflects my history and taste, my obsessions, and my interests at this moment in my studio. For that last six months, I’ve been making black-on-black paintings. I’ve been thinking about that history and about what those works mean, about Reinhardt, Goya, and Kerry James Marshall. These artists aren’t in this show, but their influence hovers over it; none of this work exists without them. These works share a mood—that 3 AM feeling—one part sinister, one part sexy, one part dreamlike, and one part sleeping. These works are about night, when the world is quiet. They’re about darkness, about infinity, about the galaxy, the void, sleep, sex, holes, dreaming, blackness, bodies, policing, outer space, spotlight, streetlight, inversion, and the womb.”

Daignault selected: Gina Beavers, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Maurizio Cattelan, Vija Celmins, John Currin, Thomas Demand, Roe Ethridge, Dan Fischer, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Theaster Gates, Rodney Graham, David Hammons, Rashid Johnson, Barbara Kasten, Josephine Meckseper, Donald Moffett, Chris Ofili, Cinga Samson, Peter Stichbury, Piotr Uklański, and Lisa Yuskavage.

“It was exciting to engage with the collection and choose works I’m familiar with by artists who have had a great influence on me, such as Fred Wilson’s black glass chandelier (Speak of Me as I am: Chandelier Mori, 2003) and David Hammons’s rock head (Untitled, 2004),” states Awol Erizku. “I also encountered many surprises—though I’ve known Glenn for over eleven years and have become well versed with his collection—including Ellsworth Kelly’s totem (Untitled [Totem], 2003). The process of selecting artworks and curating them into a group show has a led me to create not only a portrait of an art patron, but to investigate the various dialogues happening in and amongst these particular pieces, which address ideas of beauty, labor, identity, materiality, figuration, etc.”

Erizku selected: David Hammons, Ellsworth Kelly, Wayne Lawrence, Robert Lazzarini, Simone Leigh, Tony Matelli, Paul Pfeiffer, Jeff Wall, and Fred Wilson.

“My selections are predominantly images of people,” says Ewan Gibbs. “The fact that so many of them are portraits and self-portraits of artists reflects Glenn’s decades-long enthusiasm for befriending and supporting artists, which includes Cindy, Awol, and me. I selected still lifes and observations of objects to go alongside depictions of people in and out of doors. There are also the occasional outliers, like Robert Therrien’s No Title (Blue Birds), 1997, which refuses to be pigeonholed. My hope is that the similarities of subject matter and composition may encourage viewers to hone in on different approaches to familiar themes or genres. Most of the works are labor (of love) intensive and I hope the combinations, constellations, and clusters of images reflect my own fascination with mark-making in its many guises and the respect and admiration I hold for my peers."

Gibbs selects: Noriko Ambe, Vija Celmins, Julie Curtiss, Ben Durham, Dan Fischer, Richard Forster, Tom Friedman, Tim Gardner, Franz Gertsch, Gauri Gill, Mark Grotjahn, Karl Haendel, Jim Hodges, Butt Johnson, Ellsworth Kelly, Cary Kwok, Dr. Lakra, Graham Little, Roy Lichtenstein, Christian Marclay, Brice Marden, Tom Molloy, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Jonathan Owen, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, Richard Phillips, Alessandro Raho, Charles Ray, Ed Ruscha, James Siena, Lorna Simpson, Ken Solomon, Robert Therrien, Wayne Thiebaud, Jim Torok, Cy Twombly, Justin Wadlington, Mark Wagner, Kehinde Wiley, and Steve Wolfe.

Peter Stichbury5 March 2015

Art Basel Hong Kong 2015 / Michael Lett / Booth 1C40

Steve Carr
Shane Cotton
Martin Creed
Jacqueline Fraser
Simon Denny
Paul Lee
Peter Stichbury

Peter Stichbury9 February 2015

Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2015

Peter Stichbury16 January 2015

Richard Dolan: Why UFOs Matter

Peter Stichbury3 January 2015

Anatomy of a Phenomenon @ Tracy Williams, Ltd. NYC, until 15 November 2014

Barbara Robbins, Westall High, 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — Barbara Robbins, Westall High, 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

Balwyn, 1966 (Von Neumann Probe), 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — Balwyn, 1966 (Von Neumann Probe), 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

Mona Stafford, 1976, 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — Mona Stafford, 1976, 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

Rhodes, 1947, 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — Rhodes, 1947, 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

Marco Eli Chereze, 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — Marco Eli Chereze, 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

O'Hare Incident, 2006, 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — O'Hare Incident, 2006, 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

Gordon Cooper, 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — Gordon Cooper, 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

Kirtland Air Force Base, 1980, 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — Kirtland Air Force Base, 1980, 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

Experiencer, Ariel School, 1994, 2014Oil on linen23.6 x 19.7 inchesPhoto: Jason Mandella — Experiencer, Ariel School, 1994, 2014
Oil on linen
23.6 x 19.7 inches
Photo: Jason Mandella

Peter Stichbury11 November 2014

Anatomy of a Phenomenon Zine24 Pages, 14.5 x 20.5 cm, b/w Digital, Edition of 100, 2014 — *Anatomy of a Phenomenon* Zine
24 Pages, 14.5 x 20.5 cm,
b/w Digital, Edition of 100, 2014

Peter Stichbury20 October 2014

Peter Stichbury15 October 2014

‘I feel that I could go before a committee of scientists and convince them that there is overwhelming evidence that the UFO phenomena exists and that it is an unrecognized, unexplained phenomenon for science, but something that I think I could prove. My personal contention is that the phenomenon is the result of an intelligence that it is a technology directed by an intelligence, and that this intelligence is capable of manipulating space and time in ways that we don’t understand. I could convince a committee of my peers that the phenomenon is real, that it is physical, and that we don’t understand it. I could not convince them that my speculation is correct; there may be alternative speculations. The essential conclusion I’m tending to is that the origin of the phenomenon of the intelligence is not necessarily extraterrestrial.’

Jacques F. Vallée
(Interview with Christopher O’Brien)

Peter Stichbury7 October 2014

Peter Stichbury
Anatomy of a Phenomenon
16 Oct- 15 Nov 2014
Preview: 16 October, 6-8 pm

Tracy Williams, Ltd.
521 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011
T. 212.229.2757

NEW YORK, NY.- Tracy Williams, Ltd. announces Anatomy of a Phenomenon, Peter Stichbury’s third exhibition with the gallery. The show is titled after the computer scientist and astronomer Jacques Vallée’s 1965 book, investigating and appraising data collected on unidentified aerial phenomena from 1947 until 1964. In this exhibition of oil on linen paintings, Stichbury examines the data and culture associated with unidentified aerial phenomena. Japan Airlines, Alaska, 1987, explores a case in which pilot Captain Kenju Terauchi transmitted information of an immense walnut shaped object flanking his flight over Alaska. It and two other objects were tracked on radar from the ground as well as from the plane itself. Terauchi was subsequently grounded. Mona Stafford, based on the famous Stanford Kentucky Abduction case of 1976, considers the three women who claim to have been taken from a quiet Kentucky road by a UFO and examined by its non-human occupants. Harvard Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. John Mack, who studied the controversial area of alien abduction and coined the term ‘experiencers’, was wholly convinced by the veracity of certain abduction claims; however, conflicting interpretations pervade this area of investigation, including assertions of witness confabulation, sleep paralysis, and false memory syndrome. Around 95% of ‘sightings’ emerge as homemade tributes to the genuine phenomena, employing a range of props, from barely visible strings, to digital manipulation to produce an image of a sighting. Multiple factors have derailed widespread scientific investigation into the subject: daily reported hoaxes, the Hollywood-esque portrayal of the subject in cinema and wider popular culture, academic ridicule, and government investigations including the 1968 Condon Report. The resulting demotion of the subject to folklore status leaves behind the flimsy shell of a subject, permeated by half-truths, hoaxes, misidentification and government disinformation, while the truth is pushed further out of reach. General Nathan Twining, Head of U.S. Air Force Materiel Command wrote in The Twining Memo, September 23, 1947, “The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” Jacques Vallée agrees that the reality of the phenomenon is undeniable, but posits that its origin may challenge popular interpretations, suggesting it could be inter-dimensional, rather than extra-terrestrial in nature. Other evaluations consider it could be military deep black stealth projects, co-opting UFO folklore to cloak it from public knowledge. Stichbury uses the tension between the eccentric world of ufology and serious academic inquiry to consider more universal human drives: the push to comprehend fully the human species’ place in the universe, to address the perception of isolation, to demystify and quantify the unknown. From these issues emerges the consideration of where absolute truth ultimately lies, amongst motive, memory, and strategic positioning.

More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/73959/Anatomy-of-a-Phenomenon--Peter-Stichbury-s-third-exhibition-with-Tracy-Williams-Ltd--opens-in-New-York
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Peter Stichbury2 October 2014