Gallery Wendi Norris

"In Mukherjee’s work, paintings, animations ('hybrid films' as she calls them), and installations operate as meeting points through layers, materials, pigments, and textiles; her colors as contexts, places, times, and histories. The artist finds herself in a diagonal: that line which is neither vertical nor horizontal, neither weft nor warp. The body that is not only human but also tree and (why not) also extinct bird carrier of seeds, that now can only fly again through the ...layers of a painting." "Ranu Mukherjee: Diagonal Roots" by @CarolinaMagisWeinberg for @revistadelauniversidaddemexico #decolonization issue. Link in bio to full text in both English and Spanish. #ranumukherjee @ranumukherjee

Just Arrived! This 1940s artwork on Amate by Wolfgang Paalen, a bark paper created in Paalen's adopted home of Mexico, mounted on wood, becomes an artifact of the artist's making. One sees the parabola-shaped 'Cosmogons' introduced, the mosaic-like patterning creating motion, the transition from his remaining ties to Surrealism to an influential precursor to Abstract Expressionism. "...[W]e have to reach a 'potential' concept of reality, based as much on the new directives o...f physics as on those of art, a concept that I call 'dynatic' (from the Green word to dynaton: the possible). A Philosophy of the Possible which would understand art as a rhythmic equation of the world, indispensable complement of the logical equation that science makes." Wolfgang Paalen, from an interview with Carter Stone published as "During the Eclipse" in Dyn, issue 6 (April 1944) p. 20. #wolfgang #paalen #wop See more

Curated by Jasmine Wahi, Holly Block curator of Social Justice, Born in Flames: Feminist Futures, opens today at The Bronx Museum in New York. The first in a year-long series of exhibitions celebrating the institution’s 50th anniversary and legacy as a museum dedicated to social justice, This group exhibition of femme-identified artists critically examines current struggles for equity by exploring strategies for justice and equality through multifaceted futurisms. Feature...d in this exception exhibition is Chitra Ganesh's new print suite, shown here. Ganesh’s deliberately non-linear narrative centers on themes of reflection and regeneration in times of uncertainty, while considering the power of collective dreams, collective consciousness, and collectively held archetypes that are both primordial and future-facing. Born in Flames: Feminist Futures, is on view now through September 12th. Link in bio for full curatorial statement and exhibition images. #bronxmuseum

Counter-Landscapes shows how, in the process of overcoming the extraordinary obstacles they faced as women, artists working in the landscape in the late 20th century developed inventive methodologies that have profoundly influenced younger artists and have changed the face of the art world. Ultimately, the works underline and emphasize the pervasiveness of the feminist legacy, which is too often neglected, marginalized, and undervalued, writes Jennifer McCabe, curator of SMoCA’s Counter Landscapes: Performative Actions from the 1970s-Now. We are delighted to have this outstanding exhibition catalog in hand here at HQ! Congratulations to @j.mccabe.morales , @_smoca, featured artist @anateresafernandez, and all the women involved in this groundbreaking publication. #SMoCA #AnaTeresaFernandez

We are thrilled to announce our participation in The Armory Show for its 2021 edition, with a two-artist presentation of works by Ranu Mukherjee and María Magdalena Campos Pons. The fair will take place from September 9-12, 2021. Stay tuned in the months to come as we share insight into our contribution. We look forward to seeing you in September! #thearmoryshow

In celebration of #earthday2021 the Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry has pledged to acquire an environmentally themed artwork for the collection of the Smart Museum of Art. Four works are short-listed, to be voted on by University of Chicago students, including Ranu Mukherjee's hybrid film, "Radiant Chromosphere (move towards what is approaching)" (clip above) as well as works by Edward Burtynsky, Minerva Cuevas and Binh Danh. Mukherjee's "Radiant Chromosphere" meditates o...n human society’s transition from an agricultural landscape to a post-industrial technologized landscape through a slow-moving animation where a Tree of Life emerges from images symbolizing flora, fauna, and various items of technological progress. This program is presented in collaboration with the @uchicagocollege and UChicago ECo, a platform aimed at fostering connection among and support for the @uchicago Environmental Community. #smartmuseum #uchicagoarts #earthday #earthweek #edwardburtynsky #minervacuevas #binhdanh #ranumukherjee Artwork details: Ranu Mukherjee, Radiant Chromosphere (move towards what is approaching), 2012 (detail), Hybrid Film, 5:00 minutes, Ranu Mukherjee

At almost 8-feet tall, #WolfgangPaalen's 1945 "Projet pour un monument" is his largest and most important sculpture. Paalen's interests in the Cycladic Islands off Greece, in the matriarchal indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest coast, and his life in Mexico, culminated in the creation of this grand personal totem. It is said that he wanted to realize something similar into a major public art work in Mexico, and perhaps for him it would have served as a universal symbol ...of how the world's cultures share so many commonalities. The piece was included in the significant Dynaton exhibition in 1951 at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now @sfmoma) and most recently in the solo exhibition of the artist at the palatial @belvederemuseum in Vienna in 2019-2020. Images: Projét pour un monument, 1945, carved wood, 94 x 15 x 7 7/8 inches (239 x 38 x 20 cm); installation view "A New Vision-Paalen, Mullican, Onslow-Ford: Dynaton," San Francisco Museum of Art, January 23 March 4, 1951.

truth is, no one has the key to my mind. Or yours or yours... or yours... OR yours. under your meadow. Chitra Ganesh's "Key to my mind" incorporates poetry with intricate imagery and collage and is double sided. Swipe for the back. "Key to my mind," 2020, mixed media on paper with watercolor, ink, pastel, collage, 18 x 12 inches (45 x 30 cm) @chitraganeshbkny #chitraganesh

Alice Rahon created a visual vocabulary over the course of her career as a painter that can be seen as a continuation of her written work as a Surrealist poet. Like her poetry, Rahon’s paintings are thick with mythology and magic, memory and meaning. Compelled as deeply by prehistoric cave paintings as by the Surrealist milieu in which she lived and worked, Rahon wove symbols, colors, and textures together in delicate combinations of figuration and abstraction. Modern analogs... to the petroglyphs that inspired them, Rahon’s paintings are expressions of an artistic sensibility that reaches from the blank canvas of the present into the cavernous recesses of prehistory. Images (swipe left for complete work): Un día alegre (A happy day), 1947, oil and sand on canvas, 11 1/8 x 33 1/2 inches (28.3 x 85.1 cm) #AliceRahon #Surrealism

Wife and Son of Badr Mansoor is the largest work in @ambreen.butt's "Say My Name" series. The towering triptych pays homage to a family of three, presented with pillar-like scale and strength. Its bursting firework-like patterns of deep magenta and cherry red emanate with energetic force. The wife and the son, whose names we do not know, are the victims, remarks Butt, But in this case, the person left behind, who is living, is also a victim, so I chose to represent them... as a triptych. Swipe to see its details up close, and then to its adaptation as a public artwork installed at Gallery Wendi Norris HQ, for our rotating #INTHEWINDOW series. Images: Ambreen Butt, Wife and Son of Badr Mansoor, 2020, printed text on tea-stained paper, 55 x 30 inches each; approximately 55 x 90 inches total (139.7 x 76.2 cm each; 139.7 x 228.6 cm total) #AmbreenButt #SayMyName

When I was starting to make this work I was thinking about this idea of motherhood as a form of futurism. - @ranumukherjee In "futurism," for example, set against a background of stars and Banyan roots, a pregnant woman hovers, suspended in space. In this inverted abstraction of reality, the tree’s roots grow up the canvas. The figure of the woman is almost indistinguishable from the tree and the cosmic background. She becomes part of both, existing within cosmological time... and expressing the will to live and grow. In this painting, the future is embryonically present. This painting is a statement of the present moment, full of possibility, and a symbol of strength. Images: Ranu Mukherjee, "futurism," 2020, pigment, ink, Cristalina, UV inkjet print and silk and cotton sari fabric on linen, 72 x 42 inches (182.9 x 106.7 cm) #ranumukherjee #ranumukherjeehasbeenverybusy

Chitra Ganesh on Utopia, Futurity, and Dissent, a conversation with Jareh Das for @ocula.art On the occasion of her most recent public art installation in New York at @leslielohmanmuseum, Chitra Ganesh discussed her work’s trajectory over the last two decades, the influence of Bollywood, global histories of migration, queer power, collaboration with fellow artists and much much more. The idea of shadow narratives that shape experience but are excluded from mainstream politi...cal discourse, has been a foundational aspect of my practice. Read the full interview via link in bio. @chitraganeshbkny #chitraganesh

Back in January, in blissful pre-pandemic ignorance, we got to spend some time with @ambreen.butt in the studio as she was finalizing the works for her solo show, "Say My Name." Head to our IGTV to see the full interview. Follow the link in our bio to view the complete body of work on our website. #AmbreenButt #SayMyName

For @ranumukherjee, abstract is a verb. It is an action she undertakes while painting rather than a word she uses to describe her work. She abstracts reality on the canvas, so her paintings are as much experienced as they are looked at. "I want the paintings to perform, as opposed to represent." Image: Ranu Mukherjee, "cut on the bias," 2020, pigment, Cristalina, UV inkjet print and silk and cotton sari fabric on linen, 72 x 42 inches (182.9 x 106.7 cm).... #ranumukherjee #ranumukherjeehasbeenverybusy

Eye to I: Self-Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery is now on view at the @sgfmuseum through January 17. Featuring this Untitled work from the series When I am not Here, Estoy alla by #MaríaMagdalenaCamposPons, the exhibition is drawn from the collection of the Smithsonian’s @nationalportraitgallery. Eye to I examines how artists in the United States have chosen to portray themselves since the beginning of the 20th century. Through painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and video, these artists raise important questions about self-perception and self-representation. Other artists in the show include #RobertArneson, #AlexanderCalder, #LoisDodd, #DeborahKass, #ElainedeKooning, #JacobLawrence, #LouiseNevelson, #IrvingPenn, #RobertRauschenberg, and many more.

Created as a means to explore the relationship between power and vulnerability and to pay homage to innocent lives lost, each of the twelve pieces in @ambreen.butt solo exhibition, "Say My Name" incorporates the name and age of a single Afghan or Pakistani child killed in U.S. drone strikes. Butt commences by staining the paper in tea. She then separately and repeatedly writes or prints out the child’s name, shreds it into pieces, and arranges and glues the shredded fragment...s to her tea-stained paper in dense, swirling patterns. This process, undertaken with repetitive and transformational urgency, reconsiders the ripping, tearing action of a drone strike in order to elevate the names of its victims into shapes of exquisite grace and enduring strength. Images: (1) Ambreen Butt, "Mohammad Yaas Khan (16)," 2020, text, watercolor with white gouache, and pen on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm); (2) Ambreen Butt, "Razi Mohammad (16)," 2020, text and watercolor with white gouache on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm); (3) Ambreen Butt, "Mashooq Jan (15)," 2020, text and 24 karat gold on tea-stained paper, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm). #AmbreenButt #SayMyName

I am trying to do this really basic job of a painter, which is to make images that express something about the present. Ranu Mukherjee While many of us have been wondering what to do, @ranumukherjee has been very busy in 2020. She has been painting and studying and painting and listening and painting and writing and painting some more. Her newest series of mixed media paintings is a result of all that work, and it represents the full constellation of Ranu’s concerns: ecol...ogy, motherhood, and biodiversity; the human body and labor; modernity, climate change, and sacred cultures; the impoverishment of the imagination and the promise of unimagined utopias; feminist futurism and the strength of listening. Visit our website via the link in bio to see all of Ranu's new works. Image: Ranu Mukherjee, "crowded dreams or how the dead speak," 2020, pigment, UV inkjet print, silk and cotton sari fabric and alpaca yarn on linen, 72 x 96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm) #ranumukherjee #ranumukherjeehasbeenverybusy

Congratulations to Julio César Morales (@jcm_3000) on receiving a @joanmitchellfdn 2020 Painters and Sculptors Grant! Follow the link in bio to learn more. #juliocesarmorales #joanmitchellfoundation

Ranu Mukherjee Has Been Very Busy. Visit our website to learn more about her new works. https://vimeo.com/469111715/0ee23f65b6

@chitraganeshbkny iteration of QUEERPOWER, @leslielohmanmuseum annual site-specific public art installation, is now on view on the museum’s facade. A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask incorporates both historical and speculative imagery, celebrating the queer and transgender histories of downtown Manhattan and the neighborhoods adjacent to the museum’s Soho location. Ganesh includes imagery from architectures of nineteenth century black settlements, Seneca... Village and Little Africa, as well as seventeenth century Lenape structures that have since been destroyed.Ganesh weaves flora and fauna indigenous to New York throughout this sprawling street-facing artwork. For more information, visit the link in bio. #chitraganesh #queerpower #leslielohmanmuseum