Susan Inglett Gallery presents select works by Channing Hansen and Wilmer Wilson IV within the Focus Section of the 2024 Armory Show. Curated by Robyn Farrell, Chief Curator at The Kitchen, this year’s selection underscores the fair’s origin as the Gramercy International Art Fair, emphasizing its avant-garde character and interdisciplinary roots. Susan Inglett Gallery has been invited to present work by two artists who exemplify this experimental and nonconformist approach, both wielding their process and materiality in uniquely intricate ways.
Channing Hansen approaches his knitted compositions with a dedication to process. Chance plays a key factor, beginning with an algorithm that the artist writes, determining stitch, pattern, and color. Skirting, spinning, and dyeing the wool of conservation-bred sheep, texture and tactility is present in the work from the start. Hansen’s interest in probability and chance are a nod to his grandfather, Fluxus legend Al Hansen, a Movement whose ideology placed significance on the experience of the artmaking process overall. The process represents a marriage of technology and the natural world to produce vibrant and haptic knit works. In the case of Cell 1-20, chance is reintroduced with the artist’s mandated installation method. Turning the installation into a thing of play (based on mathematician John Conway’s cellular automaton computer simulation “game” from 1970, called Life) and leaving the final plan up to an 8-sided die is inherently of a Fluxus mindset, as Hansen emphasizes the modularity of the works, and in turn, the malleability of choice. That’s Life.
Wilmer Wilson IV considers the constructed experience via an interdisciplinary practice of performance, sculpture, and time-based media. In early performances, Wilson others himself via a second skin, erasing his own physiognomy and becoming unidentifiable as he interacts with the public. He continues this exploration of identity and urbanism in his work with staples: previously functioning as a protective membrane for imagery of Black bodies in found advertising material, Wilson now extrapolates the staple-as-mark, wielding them in both a representational and abstract manner. Exploring the relationships between figure and environment, city and dweller, viewer and viewed, Wilson speculates impossible infrastructures and anonymous personas as surrogates for his inspection of visibility. Warm, saturated fiber contrasted with cold, abrasive metal, the artists are complimentary in their differences, and the tactile nature of the work generates common ground.
CHANNING HANSEN (b. 1972) explores ideas of connection through his abstract knitted forms. He collects, processes, and dyes raw fleece from conservation-bred sheep. After spinning fleece into yarn, Hansen transforms the material into complex forms through knitting and weaving. Elaborate computer algorithms dictate his designs, combining craft and computation. In uniting technology with manmade and environmental concerns, Hansen’s work underscores our interconnected place in the universe— whether to the earth itself, an algorithmic world, or the cosmos— and asks us to consider what mark we should leave behind. The artist’s work is found in permanent collections including the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; the Art Institute of Chicago; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, among others.
WILMER WILSON IV (b. 1989) investigates the marginalization and care of Black bodies in contemporary life. Born in Richmond, VA and based in Philadelphia, Wilson is concerned with “the way that blackness is shaped in and by city space” and interested in “producing possibilities for representation that exist apart from global advertising strategies.” He explores these themes via an interdisciplinary process consisting of time-based media, performance, and sculpture. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; The Phillips Collection; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond among others.
6 - 8 September 2024
Friday 6 September 2024
11:00 – 7:00 PM
Saturday 7 September 2024
11:00 – 7:00 PM
Sunday 8 September 2024
11:00 - 6:00 PM
