I begin by drawing and painting on an image from a porn or fashion magazine page. I then use scissors and tape to further separate the image. from this context/environment. A new image is born from these parts, most of which belong to my longtime friend Nikie, who modeled in the early 2000s. The pair of hands, the foot in a shoe, those are all Nikie’s.
—Beverly Semmes
Susan Inglett Gallery is pleased to present Beverly Semmes: Cut Paste, an exhibition of new mixed media paintings and sculptures on view from 25 April through 1 June 2024. An important figure in third-wave feminist art, Semmes’s multidisciplinary practice spans fabric sculptures, ceramics, blown glass, fashion, film, photography and, more recently, collage-based painting. An opening reception will be held from 6 - 8 PM on 25 April 2024.
The exhibition coincides with a display of the artist’s seminal Super 8 film and photo-based work from 1988-1991 in Wonderland: Curious Nature at the New York Botanical Gardens on view from 18 May through 27 October 2024.
In Cut Paste, Semmes ups the ante in her perennial mixing of mediums, found images, scale and techniques. Early on Semmes brought her roughhewn ceramic pots literally into the folds of regal wall-to-floor sculptures, her signature works, setting them out like buoys in the pooling fabric. Now paintings enter the fray, no longer separate but equal. While several large paintings are presented conventionally, others are treated as accessories to the fabric pieces, where they appear at chest height. Smaller than a breast plate, too large to be a pendant, the odd coupling trades in the artist's long standing engagement with Surrealism and the absurd. One of the assemblages has a companion piece--a full-size, independent version of the "worn" painting--amplifying the dialogue between historically cisgendered sewing and painting, the one grounded in the here and now, the other conjuring a world apart. The paintings are themselves hybrids resulting from a recursive process of hand painting on iterative hi-res scans of the cut, pasted and taped magazine drawings. But paint has the final word, variously altering, accentuating and concealing what lies beneath.
The group of work as a whole is set to the rhythm of repetition through doubling and Rorschaching. A pair of wall-mounted twins in orange organza, standing shoulder to shoulder like choir boys, wear matching paintings. Doubling down, the small canvases feature a mirrored composite image involving photographic and painted bare legs, red pitchers, a sofa and stripes. The image has then been further altered--abstracted--by its upended presentation as a vertical when it actually reads horizontally. The fluid positionality carries on throughout the exhibition in the way Semmes toggles between abstraction and figuration, digital or painted illusionism and IRL, pitchers and stilettos, dressed and undressed, power and vulnerability. Here Semmes levels the playing field, using her favorite models along with long-coveted fabrics, shapes, objects, and patterns as fodder for an unhinged formalism. Her restless process of cutting and pasting leads the way.
Text by Melissa E. Feldman
BEVERLY SEMMES (b. 1958) based in New York, the artist been honored with many solo museum exhibitions including presentations at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the ICA Philadelphia; the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; The Ginza Art Space, Tokyo; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In fall 2025, her alma mater, Tufts University, will present a major solo exhibition at the University Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include Always In Relation: 50 Years of the Gallery at Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown; The New Village: Ten Years of New York Fashion at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC as well as Witch Hunt at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the 57th Carnegie International, at the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh. Semmes’ work can be found in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, The Netherlands; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, among others.
The exhibition coincides with a display of the artist’s seminal Super 8 film and photo-based work from 1988-1991 in Wonderland: Curious Nature at the New York Botanical Gardens on view from 18 May through 27 October 2024.
In Cut Paste, Semmes ups the ante in her perennial mixing of mediums, found images, scale and techniques. Early on Semmes brought her roughhewn ceramic pots literally into the folds of regal wall-to-floor sculptures, her signature works, setting them out like buoys in the pooling fabric. Now paintings enter the fray, no longer separate but equal. While several large paintings are presented conventionally, others are treated as accessories to the fabric pieces, where they appear at chest height. Smaller than a breast plate, too large to be a pendant, the odd coupling trades in the artist's long standing engagement with Surrealism and the absurd. One of the assemblages has a companion piece--a full-size, independent version of the "worn" painting--amplifying the dialogue between historically cisgendered sewing and painting, the one grounded in the here and now, the other conjuring a world apart. The paintings are themselves hybrids resulting from a recursive process of hand painting on iterative hi-res scans of the cut, pasted and taped magazine drawings. But paint has the final word, variously altering, accentuating and concealing what lies beneath.
The group of work as a whole is set to the rhythm of repetition through doubling and Rorschaching. A pair of wall-mounted twins in orange organza, standing shoulder to shoulder like choir boys, wear matching paintings. Doubling down, the small canvases feature a mirrored composite image involving photographic and painted bare legs, red pitchers, a sofa and stripes. The image has then been further altered--abstracted--by its upended presentation as a vertical when it actually reads horizontally. The fluid positionality carries on throughout the exhibition in the way Semmes toggles between abstraction and figuration, digital or painted illusionism and IRL, pitchers and stilettos, dressed and undressed, power and vulnerability. Here Semmes levels the playing field, using her favorite models along with long-coveted fabrics, shapes, objects, and patterns as fodder for an unhinged formalism. Her restless process of cutting and pasting leads the way.
Text by Melissa E. Feldman
BEVERLY SEMMES (b. 1958) based in New York, the artist been honored with many solo museum exhibitions including presentations at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the ICA Philadelphia; the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; The Ginza Art Space, Tokyo; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In fall 2025, her alma mater, Tufts University, will present a major solo exhibition at the University Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include Always In Relation: 50 Years of the Gallery at Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown; The New Village: Ten Years of New York Fashion at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC as well as Witch Hunt at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the 57th Carnegie International, at the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh. Semmes’ work can be found in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, The Netherlands; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, among others.
