Tilton Gallery is honored to present our second solo show of work by Fred Holland (1951-2016). The exhibition takes place from February 25th to April 9th , 2016, with an opening reception on Thursday, February 25th.

For SSAPMOC, Holland created a presentation of recent sculptural work characterized by his use of diverse materials such as glass, copper pennies, bricks, plaster, and pillows, setting an elegant and elegiac tone through meticulous balance and juxtaposition. Lighthearted works such as Buoy and Henry XV embody a kind of elevation – or levitation – of common materials to lightness or immateriality.

As in his previous work, Holland makes visual associations that are understated, but unsettling. For Woman with 1,000 Eyes, Holland fills a glass cast female figure with black-eyed peas, demonstrating the ways in which what is familiar can also retain unknown or mysterious, even at times surreal, aspects. The show’s title is an inversion of Compass, a piece within the exhibition comprised of seven plaster casts of the artist’s own head arranged with their faces turned inward towards a child’s compass that has been smashed.

The works on view examine the poetry of the body and the loss of body and direction, a theme that becomes prescient in the context of the artist’s ongoing battle with cancer. Holland’s amazing spirit is in all these works, clear, poetic and profound, with a playful sense of discovery. Holland passed away one week after the opening of this exhibition of his last body of work.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1951, Fred Holland was trained as a painter at the Columbus College of Art & Design and went on to work in theatre and dance, starting in Philadelphia with The Zero Moving Dance Company, then in Berlin, and finally in New York, beginning in 1983. He created and performed in his own works and collaborated with artists such as Meredith Monk, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Butch Morris, and Robbie McCauley. Holland returned to making visual art in the 1990’s, working mainly with sculptural form. His work has been included in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, The Newark Museum, The Drawing Center and the Albany Art Museum. Holland has received numerous awards and grants including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the National Endowment for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Community Grant, and the Creative Capital Award. Holland lived and worked in Manhattan.