Audrey Flack
Adrian Ghenie
Slawomir Elsner

In dialogue with Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach

Art historical traditions culminate and come together in the Renaissance. At the same time, the individual moves into the focus of artistic practice. Three contemporary artists deal with the Renaissance and some of its most prominent pictorial inventions.

All of Them Witches: Exhibition at the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery
Organized by Dan Nadel and Laurie Simmons

This exhibition arose from a conversation we’ve been having for years about our shared affinity for a certain kind of art to which we’re drawn, can’t quite name, but recognize when we see it. Artworks and artists that share an affinity with what we thought of as a “witchy” sensibility, which we see as using the iconography of the supernatural, occult, and witchcraft to channel ideas about power, the body, and gender.

The conversation began because Laurie was aware of Dan’s interest in the history of graphic art and his insatiable desire to discover new work—often by lesser known artists. She introduced him to the work of Austė Peciura who showed her work in the adjacent gallery when Laurie had her first show at Artists Space in 1979. Discussing Austė led us to the mid-century gothic drawing and filmmaking, from Edward Gorey to Alfred Hitchcock, and that got us thinking about the work of contemporary artists who stirred up some of the same feelings; we discovered a shared passion for the paintings of Ellen Berkenblit, the sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle, and the photography of Deborah Turbeville. This constellation of artists became the center of an ongoing game, a list to which we would add and subtract whenever we met.

This is how All Of Them Witches was born, though it was many months before we had the idea for an exhibition and longer still before there was a concept and a title. The essence of the work seems to emanate from women, though there are certainly male and non-binary artists whose works fit the bill. The art touches on spells and incantations, wishes and curses, though it needs a dose of adolescence to make sense in the context we’ve created. This crosses into works about or employing notions of gender, puberty, sex, the historical occult, cartoons, ritual, landscape, and fantasy. This iconography offers a recognizable foothold for makers and viewers alike in otherwise traditionally challenging subject matter and allusive poetics. This was the matrix we used to discern artists who shared an affinity with what we thought of as a “witchy” sensibility.

While we respect the history and context of real-practice occult, this is a show about the aesthetic influence of those traditions, not the actual practice behind it. Multiple generations and media will be present, from painting (Hollis Sigler, Gertrude Abercrombie), drawing (Heather Benjamin, Cameron), sculpture (Audrey Flack, Greer Lankton), videos (Marilyn Minter’s Green Caviar), and photographs (Cindy Sherman, Bea Nettles).

In a time of constant historical and thematic artistic rediscoveries, we present a breadcrumb trail that already exists—a shared language across generations of artists who share in a knowledge of, and taste for, a bit of the cauldron and a touch of darkness.

-Dan Nadel and Laurie Simmons, October 2019

NYC PREMIERE: DOC NYC alumna Deborah Shaffer, with co-director Rachel Reichman, offers an intimate look at the life and creative process of visual artist Audrey Flack. Feminist, rebel, mother, sculptor and teacher, Audrey’s often controversial 40-year career evolved from abstract expressionism in the 1950s to photorealism in the 1970s. One of the first women ever included in the famed Janson’s History of Art, Audrey, at 88, is still creating, exploring and inspiring with her unique style and indomitable spirit.

Ecstasy: Baroque and Beyond brings together older depictions of ecstasy with more recent works focused on the transcendence of normal consciousness, including trances, moments of expanded awareness, and visionary insight.  From representations of saints and mystics, to dreamscapes and images of bacchanalian revels, this exhibition explores how Baroque style – characterized by exaggeration, high drama, extravagance, frenzy, and excess – continues to inform contemporary art.

(UQ Art Museum Press Release)

From Lens to Eye to Hand reexamines this important movement in contemporary art that found its roots in the late 1960s in California and New York and continues today. Photorealism reintroduced what many considered to be straightforward representation into an art world more attuned to the burgeoning conceptual framework of artistic practice coming out of Pop and into Minimalism, Land Art, and Performance Art. Open now to public at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York.

(Parrish Art Museum Press Release)

ABOUT FACE, includes sculpture, paintings, and photographs, bringing celebrated artists, many from the East End, together with emerging artists to examine the diverse ways human beings are presented in portraiture today.

Photorealism: 50 years of Hyperrealistic Painting traces the evolution of Photorealism from 1960 to today. The exhibition presents the work of some 30 artists known for their hyperrealistic depictions of ordinary objects and scenes of everyday life such as American diners, chrome features on cars and motorcycles, as well as meticulous portraits. Photorealism: 50 years of Hyperrealistic Painting features three generations of photorealist painters including Audrey Flack and many others. The Tampa Museum of Art is the only American venue on the international tour of Photorealism: 50 years of Hyperrealistic Painting, organized by the Institut für Kulturaustausch in Tübingen, Germany.

(Tampa Art Museum Press Release)

A solo exhibition featuring recent drawings from Audrey Flack at the Hollis Taggart Gallery in NYC.