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EVENT DESCRIPTION
A solo exhibition of new paintings by American artist and curator Howardena Pindell (b.1943, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) will open at White Cube Hong Kong in November 2024, marking Pindell’s first solo exhibition in Asia and the gallery’s inaugural presentation of the artist since announcing representation in May 2024.
‘Howardena Pindell: Deep Sea, Deep Space’ debuts a new series of paintings inspired by the artist’s fascination with the solar system and the ocean. In these works, Pindell applies her signature spray-painting technique to create hundreds of tiny dots, evoking vast spectrums of existence.
Also featured are recent works from her ‘Tesseract’ series, which she began in 2022. In these paintings, the artist incorporates spray-painted dots with layers of geometric forms, creating complex, generative compositions of pixelated speckles. In other works, hundreds of tiny, hole-punched discs are meticulously applied to the canvas.
Pindell’s groundbreaking personal and politically charged practice comprises painting, collage, drawing and film. Over the past five decades, her work has addressed a wide array of issues, ranging from racism and gender inequality to the Vietnam War, homelessness and the AIDS crisis. The series featured in this exhibition delves into her enduring fascination with the cosmos, exploring realms such as the deep sea, outer space, quantum mechanics, science fiction and microbiology.
Growing up amidst segregation and the civil rights movement, Pindell cites a profound childhood memory of an encounter with Jim Crow law as the impetus behind her use of the circle, one of the most enduring motifs in her work. When she was eight years old, during a family trip to Northern Kentucky, her father stopped the car at a roadside root beer stand. Pindell recalls noticing red circles at the bottom of their cups, later learning that they were used to differentiate the utensils designated for Black customers. This experience manifested in her work through ubiquitous variations of the circular motif – ellipses, perforations, spray-painted dots and hole punches.
Pindell first developed her renowned hole-punching technique in the 1970s while working as a curatorial assistant in the Department of Prints and Drawings at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She used the tool to create stencils, allowing her to spray paint dots onto the canvas, while also preserving the delicate circular cutouts to incorporate as primary material in her works.
Details
- Start:
- 20 November 2024
- End:
- 8 January
- Admission:
- Free
- Event Category:
- Painting
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