Petah Coyne at Mass MoCA
Exhibition Opens May 29
By: Ariel Petrova - May 04, 2010
Viewers will be transported when entering the MASS MoCA galleries this summer. Petah Coyne's baroque works, delicately combining tinted, waxed flowers and taxidermy, will rise up from the floor, and hanging sculptures will descend from the ceiling, taking full advantage of the multiple vantage points of MASS MoCA's vast gallery spaces. The exhibition titled Everything That Rises Must Converge (after a short story by Flannery O'Connor) will open on Saturday, May 29, with an opening reception from 5-7 PM.
A selection of Coyne's work from the past two decades, along with two new works, will be on view at MASS MoCA. As a sculptor, Coyne has been an important presence in the international contemporary art scene since the 1980s. At a time when conceptualism in art reigned supreme, Coyne was never afraid to bring an overabundance of beauty alongside meaning in her work. MASS MoCA is proud to present her largest retrospective of works to date including her two most recent sculptures, showcasing for a wide audience the impact of Coyne's diverse works.
The works in this exhibition begin with Coyne's sculptures from the late 1980s, when the artist shifted from organic materials (straw, mud and fish) to metal and black sand (a by-product of pig iron casting). Works like Whirlwind (1989) seem to spin in front of the viewer, referencing flowing forms despite their material heaviness. In addition to these mid-career works, selections from Coyne's latest series based on Dante's Inferno will be on view. Central to this series is Untitled #1180 (Beatrice) which transforms Dante's love into a monumental sculpture of silk flowers dipped in black wax, subtly colored, as well as velvet and taxidermy birds diving in and out of the towering form.
Much of Coyne's work references literature, including Sawako Ariyoshi's The Doctor's Wife and Yasunari Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties, and films like Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte and Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice. The writings of Flannery O'Connor are a continual influence on Coyne's recent work, both for their Catholic symbolism and beautiful darkness. This is particularly evident in Coyne's two new works for the exhibition. Untitled #1176 (Elisabeth-Elizabeth) is made of exotic Chinese and South American pheasants, silk flowers and black wax and will hang high in the gallery. Coyne's other new work, the centerpiece of the exhibition, is Untitled #1336 (Scalapino Nu Shu), a 14-foot tall craggy apple tree, covered in black sand and seventeen hanging pheasants. Perched above the pheasants at the top of the tree are ten peacocks waiting to take flight.
The peacock is rich in references, both for the artist and throughout history. Peacocks are a Christian symbol of immortality, renewal and transformation, and are known as the "eyes" of the Catholic Church. Prized for their beauty, they were a bird that O'Connor loyally raised, lived with, and wrote about. The title of the work also references nu shu which is a centuries-old secret writing taught to pairs of young Chinese women so that they could communicate over their lifetimes, often across great differences. The added reference to Leslie Scalapino, a poet and friend of the artist, speaks of a similarly special bond between two women.
An entire section of the exhibition will be dedicated to Coyne's seldom exhibited photography - enchanting explorations of movement and tone. Upon first glance they seem to be black and white but just as the colors of flowers emerge from the black wax works, here subtle shades poke through these blurred figures of children, Buddhist monks, and brides. Unlike many contemporary artists who focus on social or media-related issues, Petah Coyne imbues her work with a magical quality to evoke intensely personal associations. Her sculptures convey an inherent tension between vulnerability and aggression, innocence and seduction, beauty and decadence, and, ultimately, life and death. Coyne's work seems Victorian in its combination of an overloaded refinement with a distinctly decadent and morbid undercurrent. Her innovative use of materials includes dead fish, mud, sticks, black sand, shredded car parts, wax, satin ribbons, artificial flowers and birds, birdcages, taxidermy animals, Madonna statues, and horsehair.
Petah Coyne was born in Oklahoma City in 1953. She lives and works in New York and New Jersey . Recent solo exhibitions include Vermilion Fog at Galerie Lelong, NY; Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin organized by Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, traveling to Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ; and Petah Coyne: Hairworks at Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH. Selected group exhibitions include Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotionorganized by the Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TX, traveling to Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NY, and the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; Uncontained, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Material Actions, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA. Coyne's work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, and many more. She is represented by Galerie Lelong , NY .
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog co-published by MASS MoCA and the Yale University Press. This unique book will feature color illustrations of the works in the exhibition as well as texts by exhibition curator Denise Markonish , an interview between the artist and cultural critic Rebecca Solnit, and a new piece of fiction by author A.M. Homes that places Coyne's work in the context of MASS MoCA's hometown, North Adams , Mass. The 128-page catalog will be available July 2, 2010.