AMY SILLMAN

Drawing is the starting point and method for this exhibition, an expanded material investigation that moves from painting to animation. Compelled by the implications of the German phrase ‘ein Paar’, (a couple or a few), the artist has realised pairs and groups of works, including a large diptych on canvas, a series of works on paper utilising both printmaking and gestural drawing, and a video animation combining digital and hand-made layers. Keenly attuned to language itself, Sillman is interested in generating mismatches, disjunctions, and parapraxis from the materiality of the calligraphic impulse. Her work seems to constantly generate beginnings and transformations: ultimately she registers the process of change itself.

In recent works, Sillman has explored seriality and machine formats, using inkjet-printed canvasses generated from her drawings. In this show, she continues the exploration using silkscreen printing with drawing. In her video After Metamorphoses, an endlessly-morphing digital line, which loosely following the narrative of Ovid’s work, The Metamorphoses, plays atop a backdrop of process-based inks-on-paper. The video also features a soundtrack by the Berlin-based musician Wibke Tiarks.

Sillman’s new book, the All-Over, co-published by Dancing Foxes Press, Portikus, and Mousse Publishing, will make its debut at this exhibition, and will be available throughout the show. This fully-illustrated monograph explores Sillman’s work in painting, drawing, and animation, and contains essays by curator Manuela Ammer (MuMOK, Vienna) and art historian Yve-Alain Bois.

Amy Sillman (born 1955 in Detroit) lives and works in New York City. Since 2015 she has held the position of Professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main. Her works have been recently exhibited internationally in solo exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York (2017), Portikus, Frankfurt/Main (2016) and Kunsthaus Bregenz (2015). Her exhibition »one lump or two« originated at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston in 2014, toured the Aspen Art Museum and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York. Her works have been presented, among others, in group shows at Brandhorst Museum, Munich (2015), Tate Modern, London (2015) and MoMA, New York (2014).