Intimacy in Discourse: Reasonable Sized Paintings

Mana Contemporary, Jersey City

Oct. 18 – Dec. 22, 2015

Mana Contemporary presents Part I in this two-part exhibition, co-presented with School of Visual Arts Chelsea Gallery in collaboration with Rail Curatorial Projects, exploring how various painting sizes affect artists and viewers.

Curated by Phong Bui, both shows are proposed experiments to explore the various conditions that lead to the production of small paintings: how paintings’ sizes are determined by artists’ conscious and unconscious intentions, and how those sizes, in turn, affect their relation to viewers in the various spaces the artworks quietly occupy in contemporary visual culture.

The exhibition opens at Mana Contemporary on Sunday, October 18, 2015, with a reception from 1 to 6 p.m. A concurrent exhibition will be on view at School of Visual Arts Chelsea Gallery from November 21 – December 22, 2015, with a reception on Saturday, November 21, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Bui commented that both curatorial ideas were inspired by Jackson Pollock’s admiration for Albert Pinkham Ryder, whose modest-sized paintings, such as “Moonlight Marine” (1870 – 90) which measured 11 ½  x 12 inches, evoke monumental scale and immensity of space, while Pollock’s large-sized canvases attain a sense of intimacy. The show also references Thomas Nozkowski’s term, “reasonable size paintings,” that describes his two standard sizes, 16 x 20 inches and 22 x 28 inches, within which he has consistently worked since the early 1970s.

Part I: Reasonable Sized Paintings at Mana Contemporary will focus solely on works by artists who have consistently made paintings approximately within this modest scale. Artists include: Joshua Abelow, Peter Acheson, Etel Adnan, Ellen Altfest, Tom Burckhardt, Rackstraw Downes, Helmut Federle, Robert Feintuch, Mark Greenwold, Josephine Halvorson, Merlin James, Bill Jensen, Katy Moran, Thomas Nozkowski, Ann Pibal, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, James Siena, and Robert Storr.

In conjunction with the exhibition, poetry reading, dance performance, and panel discussions will be organized at both venues. Admission to all events is free to the public. A free color catalogue of the exhibition will also be available.