Petah Coyne
Sarah Cain
The World, 2013
Acrylic, string, chain, pencil, and beads on canvas
64.5 x 48 inches (163.8 x 121.9 cm)
In Sarah Cain's signature style of radiant abstraction, colors take the form of ambiguous shapes and textures to create expansive spaces that make way for myriad interpretations. "The world [that we live in] informs the spirit of the work but I don’t want to overtly push a meaning on the viewer," Cain shares. In The World (2013), the use of material such as string, beads, and chains centers the physicality of the work. From here, the composition suggests a separate reality as trapezoids flank toward the center and direct our perspective beyond; we are at once on the periphery looking in and on the inside peering out. – Grace Hong
Petah Coyne
Untitled #1486 (Justice for Elijah McClain/Black Lives Matter), (2020)
Polaroid print
4.25 x 10.5 inches
Street Art By: Beatriz Ramos (left); Unknown (center); @dpfstudio (right)
Petah Coyne lives in Soho which was heavily affected during the first nights of protests against the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other African-Americans lost to us from police brutality. After the first nights, many storefronts boarded up their windows with plywood, but within 24 hours, these grim facades blossomed into inspiring and accomplished murals. Petah commented to me that the alacrity in which they were done, with the simplest of materials, reminded her of early days when Soho was a true artists’ neighborhood.
What resonates is the marriage of the pressing issue of today, Black Lives Matter, and the heroic and sensitive way the subjects are painted. Petah’s handwriting feels urgent to communicate what she saw and what she felt and what we can feel, too. Though I’d love to know who the artists are—individual or collectives—Petah as an artist and documentarian has captured their presence. – Mary Sabbatino
Andy Goldsworthy
Hedge crawl
dawn
frost
cold hands
Sinderby, England
4 March 2014, 2014
Digital video
Running time: 8:22 minutes
Edition of 6 with 1 AP
In Hedge crawl, Andy Goldsworthy ventures to play out the unexpected and seemingly simple action of crawling through a hedge in the cold of dawn. Like many of his staged works, what draws me to this video is its unadulterated presentation of a physically difficult action through an unlikely space. We may not be directly experiencing the action and the scrapes and the cold, but we are made aware of the struggle and discomfort and beauty of the scene through the sights and sounds of snapping branches, the grunts and exertion, the birds and crickets, and the changing light of an early morning. – Jon Cancro
Alfredo Jaar
Lament of the Images, 2002
Installation: 3 plexiglas plates with inscriptions, light wall, mixed media
Text panels: each 23 x 20in. (58.4 x 50.8 cm)
Light wall: 6 x 12 feet (182.9 x 365.8 cm)
Lament of the Images is one of Alfredo’s most significant works and today, more than ever, the avalanche of images of violence and suffering, even at their most raw—a video of a man dying under police custody, children in cages at the US/Mexico border, a child refugee drowned before he could reach the shore—does not seem to inspire enough empathy or outrage to change the structure of society. To this question, Alfredo answers with a blinding white screen that obliterates meaning but is an opening of a door. He is always prescient, never afraid to look at hard questions of responsibility. I see hope in Lament, but it’s also charged with loss. It was commissioned by Okwui Enwezor for Documenta XI and during the long, stressful days of installation, Alfredo and I were buoyed by Okwui’s quiet confidence that it would work. Now that Okwui is gone, Lament has another layer of meaning for me, personal loss and a larger loss for the world and hope for transformation embodied in the white light. – Mary Sabbatino
Samuel Levi Jones
Interconnectivity, 2019
Pulped American history books on canvas
70 x 80 inches (177.8 x 203.2 cm)
Framed: 71.6 x 81.6 x 3.5 inches (181.9 x 207.3 x 8.9 cm)
In this work, Jones has distilled a small library onto a single canvas. What was once shelves full of books on American history has been reimagined as a concentrated, abstract portrait of American history. By deconstructing the books’ material, the artist implores us to uncover the subtle, almost invisible ways in which different histories are connected—and, perhaps more importantly, how they connect us. In Jones’s own words, “To what extent do [different] forms of atrocity, when seen only in isolation, prevent us from understanding how our struggles against them are interconnected?” – Mycroft Zimmerman
Cildo Meireles
Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project, 1970
Three glass bottles, metal caps, liquid, and adhesive labels with text
Each: 7 inches (24.1 x 17.8 cm)
Meireles made this work as a form of free-circulating political graffiti in the 1970s during Brazil’s repressive military dictatorship. The work, which is activated when being circulated, is not something to be bought or sold; only shared anonymously. A great way to get your message out into the world, unfiltered by the media or the government and hopefully without the consequence of reprisal. – Bianca Cabrera
Ana Mendieta
Butterfly, 1975
Super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent
Running time: 3:19 minutes
Edition of 6 with 3 AP
In the film Butterfly (1975), Ana Mendieta incorporated a 16-channel video processor to add a high-contrast, polarized graphic-effect to images of herself with what appear to be feathered wings. This film demonstrates the artist’s technical innovations and singular approach to film, revealing aspects of her practice that have been increasingly brought to light. Butterfly represents transformation and renewal, becoming a symbol of hope for change in the present moment. – Sarah Landry
Yoko Ono
Mend Piece (Galerie Lelong Version), 1966/2015
Yoko Ono’s “Mend with wisdom, mend with love. It will mend the world at the same time” are the instructions for Yoko Ono’s Mend Piece. Having shown or seen this instruction piece in multiple locations and cultures, we are always struck by the universal way people react. They approach the table with trepidation or even derision but are drawn into the task of mending and don’t want to stop. In a time of radical revision and sorrow for loss, Ono’s long-term work for peace and understanding remains constant and her instructions deceptively simple. When an iteration of the work was shown in the gallery, we were struck by the community it formed in a small space and in a small amount time. As a group, we hope more generous and understanding communities can pervade our world. – Collective Staff Pick
Yoko Ono
Mend Piece (Galerie Lelong Version), 1966/2015
Yoko Ono’s “Mend with wisdom, mend with love. It will mend the world at the same time” are the instructions for Yoko Ono’s Mend Piece. Having shown or seen this instruction piece in multiple locations and cultures, we are always struck by the universal way people react. They approach the table with trepidation or even derision but are drawn into the task of mending and don’t want to stop. In a time of radical revision and sorrow for loss, Ono’s long-term work for peace and understanding remains constant and her instructions deceptively simple. When an iteration of the work was shown in the gallery, we were struck by the community it formed in a small space and in a small amount time. As a group, we hope more generous and understanding communities can pervade our world. – Collective Staff Pick
Jaume Plensa
Talking Continents I, 2013
Stainless steel
19 components, varying dimensions
The past several months has separated many of us from our families, friends, colleagues and others. In addition to this form of isolation, too much of the rhetoric we hear every day serves to divide us and not unite. Whenever I look at Plensa’s work, I’m reminded of the need to reflect on a more collective humanity. He says: “We are each a country, an island . . . linked and separated by an ocean. As far as we are so different and unique, we can collaborate, we can exchange information, but never compete.” Talking Continents poetically brings together individual elements into a larger installation leaving the viewer to contemplate both inwardly and globally. – Liz Bower
Nancy Spero
Cri du Coeur, 2005
Handprinting on paper mounted on polyester poplin
Overall dimensions: 25 x 1,925 7/16 inches (83.2 x 4893.1 cm); room configuration variable; as installed at Galerie Lelong in Nov 2005: 25 x 1,924" (160' 4") - 4,887 cm (48 m 87 cm)
In Nancy Spero’s monumental work on paper, Cri du Coeur, crowds of recurring female figures process along the floor, raising their arms to the sky in mourning. With imagery sourced from the ancient Egyptian tomb of Ramose of Thebes and stretching over 150 feet long, the installation is an encompassing and heart-wrenching expression of grief. At the time of its completion in 2005, Spero was mourning the loss of her longtime husband, Leon Golub, while also responding to images from Iraq, Afghanistan and post-Katrina New Orleans. And now in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic and a national reckoning on race, Spero's “Cry of the Heart” captures a sense of collective anguish and invites us to walk together toward healing. – Lindsay Danckwerth
Nancy Spero
Cri du Coeur, 2005
Handprinting on paper mounted on polyester poplin
Overall dimensions: 25 x 1,925 7/16 inches (83.2 x 4893.1 cm); room configuration variable; as installed at Galerie Lelong in Nov 2005: 25 x 1,924" (160' 4") - 4,887 cm (48 m 87 cm)
In Nancy Spero’s monumental work on paper, Cri du Coeur, crowds of recurring female figures process along the floor, raising their arms to the sky in mourning. With imagery sourced from the ancient Egyptian Tomb of Ramose in Thebes and stretching over 150 feet long, the installation is an encompassing and heart-wrenching expression of grief. At the time of its completion in 2005, Spero was mourning the loss of her longtime husband, Leon Golub, while also responding to images from Iraq, Afghanistan and post-Katrina New Orleans. And now in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic and a national reckoning on race, Spero's “Cry of the Heart” captures a sense of collective anguish and invites us to walk together toward healing. – Lindsay Danckwerth
Michelle Stuart
Tapa, 1998
Seeds, beeswax, pigments and wood
12 x 12 inches (30.5 x 30.5 cm)
Though this work may seem the most distant from those that comment more directly on the present moment, the intimacy and quiet power of the composition compels me to have hope for the future. What is a future without seeds and here, pressed into pigment infused beeswax, their form is preserved in a gesture that is more powerful for its quiet modesty. All artists are seeds for change and seeds for a culture of transformation. Somewhat lost in recent dialogues is the link between environmental concern and social justice. Without a sustainable planet, there is no hope for the future. – Paul Loughney
Barthélémy Toguo
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), 2017
Brass
17.7 x 15.75 x 7.9 inches (45 x 40 x 20 cm)
Barthélémy Toguo’s powerful portrait of Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), honors the memory of one of the early leaders in the fight for African American and Civil Rights.
Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Mississippi, a year before emancipation. Her experience of being removed from a train car based on race when she was a 25-year-old schoolteacher fueled her activism. She battled the injustice in court. Her pioneering journalism and political strategizing widely publicized inequality and challenged the erasure of Black American History.
Wells was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in May, 2020 for her “outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.” Her campaign against this brutality, of which began more than 130 years ago is immediately relevant today. – Dede Young
Juan Uslé
Soñé que revelabas (Bravo), 2020
Vinyl dispersion and dry pigment on canvas
120.1 x 89.75 inches (305 x 228 cm)
Soñé que revelabas (Bravo) belongs to Uslé’s best-known family of works (1997–ongoing), known for filmstrip-like brushstrokes that are applied on canvas guided by the artist’s heartbeat. Seemingly uniform at a distance, a close-up look at Uslé’s painting reveals the singularity of each brushstroke. As a transcript, the painting echoes that time is made up of innumerable individual moments, in this case, reduced to a pulse. Created in New York in 2020, the painting records life under unimaginable challenges; it also invites contemplation to live with greater consciousness, as individuals and collectively. – Coty Heinz Bustamante
Ursula von Rydingsvard
Ona, 2013
Bronze
19 feet high
Photography by Piotr Redlinski
Ona, a monumental cast-bronze sculpture has a richly textured surface, evocative of natural rocky outcrops and simultaneously of ancient monuments. The work, commissioned by Barclays Center to commemorate its one-year anniversary in 2013, is a prominent public artwork placed to face people as they emerge from the busy Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center transit station, and to provide a meeting space within the Barclays plaza.
On May 29th this year, thousands of people gathered at the plaza outside Barclays Center as part of the nationwide protests against the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Speaking about the sculpture upon its initial installation in 2013, von Rydingsvard remarked “You don’t have to pay a fee or enter a museum to view it.” This remains true and the work continues to bear witness to the protests that surround “Her.” – Ashley Martin
Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, is pleased to present A Summer Like No Other, an online group exhibition featuring artworks personally selected by members of the gallery’s team. Presenting works made between 1966 to 2020, the collaborative selection responds to the current cultural atmosphere while also reflecting the gallery’s long history of work with artists who explore a greater humanity. Each work included in the exhibition is accompanied by a short text written by a staff member, offering a personal rumination. Overlapping themes emerge, espousing the significance of togetherness and the enduring growth of individuality against a dominant narrative.
The newest work in the show comes from Petah Coyne who has documented graffiti art related to the Black Lives Matter movement through polaroids. Barthélémy Toguo’s brass portrait of African-American journalist and early civil rights leader Ida B. Wells brings her historical efforts into the present discourse.
Dating to the late 1960s and early 70s, Yoko Ono’s Mend Piece (1966) and Cildo Meireles’s Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project (1970) highlight the power of collective unity in creating change. Bringing the attention to the individual, the durational works of Andy Goldsworthy and Ana Mendieta explore acts of endurance and renewal.
Featured artists include Sarah Cain, Petah Coyne, Andy Goldsworthy, Alfredo Jaar, Samuel Levi Jones, Cildo Meireles, Ana Mendieta, Yoko Ono, Jaume Plensa, Nancy Spero, Michelle Stuart, Barthélémy Toguo, Juan Uslé and Ursula von Rydingsvard. To read each individual write-up, please click on the specific artwork.
