opening reception: Thursday, April 15th 6 - 8pm
Sikkema Jenkins & Co is pleased to present an exhibition of
new works by Amy Sillman titled Transformer (…or, how many
lightbulbs does it take to change a painting?) on view from April
15 through May 15, 2010.
Sillman’s show features a range of new work across mediums,
including large and mid-scale paintings, two different suites of
drawings, and a new edition of her one-dollar ’zine “The O-G.”
The show begins with a simple drawing of a lightbulb. The
lightbulb transforms into a flashlight, which in turn becomes a
medium for self-reflexive investigation. The lightbulb is thus a
pivotal image for illumination, reflection, transformation, the
comic, and obsolescence – a thematic stand-in for the
conditions of painting itself.
In all of her new work, Sillman continues to undertake a fullscale
painterly negotiation between forms of corporeality and
processes of thought. Sillman is known for a rigorous, processbased
language that is realized through additive/subtractive
drawing procedures and a vivid color sense. She continues to
work formally within the frame while simultaneously perforating
painting with issues belonging to discourses adjacent to
painting, such as philosophy, feminism, performativity, and
humor; the latter are incorporated in part through a small-scale
D.I.Y. 'zine, “The O-G,” made especially for the show. For the
past year, Sillman has included a new edition of this ’zine with
every new group of paintings she makes; it is a form that allows
her paintings to speak, while comically subverting the solemnity
that (intentionally or unintentionally) can enshroud shows of
abstract or semi-abstract painting.
Having worked for several years with the dual procedures of
abstraction and portraiture, Sillman is now finding the figure
again within an abstract process. In these paintings, figures
return not as representations per se, but as body fragments and
suggestive gestures that are located in an anxious, anti-heroic
formalism where figuration, color and form intersect in logical
and yet absurd complexes.
Amy Sillman has exhibited extensively throughout the US and
Europe. Her work is in numerous public collections including
the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of
American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston.
