Art Basel Miami Beach | Galleries -- Philip Martin Gallery will present works by five artists of different ages and backgrounds: Kwame BRATHWAITE, Brian BRESS, Katy COWAN, Tomory DODGE and Nathan MABRY.
Philip Martin Gallery’s booth is B22.
Photographer and media theorist Kwame BRATHWAITE (b. 1938, lives New York) was one of the first people to promote “Black is Beautiful.” A shrewd visual thinker, Brathwaite recognized that in order to change how people thought about themselves, he had to change what they actually saw. Positive images of African-Americans were few and far between in the media landscape of the late 50s/early 60s. Brathwaite set about creating a visual armature where none had existed previously, using his connections in art, fashion and music to disseminate Black is Beautiful - one of the most important ideas of the twentieth century.
Brian BRESS (b. 1975, lives Los Angeles) will present new wall-mounted video works. Brian Bress's work reminds us that the relational nature of art objects and screens is both virtual and physical. In contemporary life, we not only do we watch screens - we also touch them, hold them close, and allow them to inhabit, if not define, our personal space and how it works. The sense in which Bress’s ‘screens’ act like paintings, or sculptures, allows his art to push forward not only our sense of what art objects are and what they can do, but also what modern technologies are doing to us.
Katy COWAN (b. 1982, lives Los Angeles) will present wall-mounted painted aluminum sculptures. Cowan uses an array of media - ceramics, bronze casting, traditional rope making, fabric dying - to make works that stress the materiality of the art object. Cowan’s rope works are designed to hang on the wall. They utilize the sense of the painterly frame - the grid - as the basis for composition. Cowan’s stretched fabric works call upon the language of textiles, a medium in which Cowan was trained, to point to the presence of herself as a topic in her own works.
Tomory DODGE (b. 1974, lives Los Angeles) will present new large-scale abstract oil-on-canvas paintings. Over the course of a nearly twenty year career, Dodge has become known for dynamic paintings that explore the representation and mechanics of picture-making. Painting, one of the oldest means of expression, remains a vital key to understanding the nature of images in modern life, whether they are experienced in the physical world, on our devices, or on-line. Tomory Dodge writes, “I have often talked about paintings being inherently contradictory things. They are objects that are spaces, walls that are windows. They are the intersection of object and image. Painting maintains a physical anchor at a time when the image generally is becoming more and more ethereal - everywhere and nowhere at the same time.“
Nathan MABRY (b. 1978, lives Los Angeles) will present “Nostalgia of the Infinite (La Lune).” In a surreal moment, a cast stainless steel bird rests atop a monochrome abstract aluminum sculpture. The metal plate forms are arranged to create a font that spells the letters i-b-i-s. The ibis is a species found all over the world and in the symbolism of many different cultures. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the ibis represents Thoth, the deity that maintains the universe. The large circular form of Mabry’s work is drawn in part from David Smith’s monumental, “Circle I” (1962). Mabry writes that Smith’s work has its own “aesthetic relationships to geometric masks and other celestial systems." Mabry's sculpture stands as a portal and a representation of time. This approach, Mabry writes, "explores an already-told story to reveal new myths.”
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Kwame BRAITHWAITE (b. 1938, Brooklyn, NY) will be the subject of a major touring exhibition, “Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful.” The show opens at Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles in April 2019. A monograph of the same title, produced by the Aperture Foundation, will be released in spring 2019 with essays by Deborah Wills, Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, and Tanisha C. Ford, Associate Professor of Black American Studies and History at the University of Delaware. Brathwaite’s work has recently been acquired by such institutions as Museum of Modern Art (New York; NY); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); MIT List Visual Arts Center (Boston, MA); The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY); Museum of the City of New York (New York, NY); Block Museum, Northwestern University (Evanston, IL); Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA); JPMorgan Chase Art Collection (New York, NY); and Sidley Austin LLP (New York, NY). Brathwaite's work has recently appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, New York Post, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Vogue, Aperture and other publications. He lives and works in New York, NY.
Brian BRESS (b. 1975, Norfolk, VA) received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2006. Brian Bress’s work is currently the subject of “Brian Bress: Pictures Become You” (Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH, October 13, 2018 - April 14, 2019) and “Paradox: The Body in the Age of Al” (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, PA, October 5, 2018 - February 3, 2019). Bress’s work has been recently featured in such solo and group exhibitions as: “Screens: Virtual Material,” (DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Boston, MA); “In the Box: Brian Bress” (Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA); “The Imperfect Tense (for Josef Albers)” (Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD); “Commercial Break” (Public Art Fund, New York, NY); and “2016 Moving Image Biennial” (Centre d'Art Contemporain Geneva, Switzerland). Brian Bress’s 2015-16 touring exhibition, “Brian Bress: Make Your Own Friends,” opened at Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, UT); and traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Denver, CO); and Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA). Bress has had solo exhibitions and projects at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); Museo d'arte contemporanea (MACRO) (Rome, Italy); Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA); and New Museum (New York, NY). His work is the collections of Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation (Los Angeles, CA); Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); Loyola University Museum of Art (Chicago, IL); Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL); Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego, CA); Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, FL); Palm Springs Museum of Art (Palm Springs, CA); Portland Museum of Art (Portland, OR); San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego, CA); Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA); Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (Chicago, IL); Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, UT); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY). He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Katy COWAN (b. 1982, lives Los Angeles) received her BFA from University of Puget Sound in 2004 and her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2014. Cowan’s work was the subject of the solo exhibition, “"Reflected-Into- Themselves-Into-Reflected," at the Lynden Sculpture Garden (Milwaukee, WI). Cowan's work has featured in solo and group exhibitions University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA); Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (Madison, WI); Synchrotron Radiation Center: Home of Aladdin, (Stoughton, WI); Poor Farm (Manawa, WI); Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Green Gallery (Milwaukee, WI); Kate Werble Gallery (New York, NY); Fourteen30 Contemporary (Portland, OR); Poor Farm (Manawa, WI). Cowan's work was recently acquired by the Minneapolis Museum of Art (Minneapolis, MN). Her work has been reviewed in ArtForum, Los Angeles, Time, Architectural Digest, Wallpaper*, Contemporary Art Review.LA, Artnet and other publications. She lives and works in Berkeley, CA.
Tomory DODGE (b. 1974, Denver, CO) received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2004. In the summer of 2018, Dodge’s work was the subject of a solo exhibition at LUX Art Institute (Encinitas, CA). Recent solo and group exhibitions featuring Tomory Dodge’s work include, “Stranger Than Paradise,” Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI); “Grafforists,” Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA); “Nowism”, Pizzuti Collection (Columbus, OH); “An Appetite For Painting”, National Museum (Oslo, Norway); “Pouring It On”, Herter Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA); “Tomory Dodge and Denise Thomasos: Directions to a Dirty Place,” Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (Winston-Salem, NC); “Future Tense: Reshaping the Landscape,” Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY); “American Soil,” Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); “Sheldon Survey,” Sheldon Memorial Gallery, University of Nebraska (Lincoln, NE). Dodge’s work is the subject of several monographic catalogs and has been discussed in such publications as Art Forum, Flash Art, Modern Painters, Art Review, Los Angeles Times and New York Times. His work is in the collections of such museums as Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, CA); Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA); Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX); Knoxville Museum of Art (Knoxville, TN); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA); Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL); RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, (San Francisco, CA); Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC); Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT). Dodge lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Nathan MABRY (b. 1978, lives Los Angeles) received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2001 and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. Mabry’s work will be featured in the upcoming “The Sorcerer’s Burden,” The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX, September 14, 2019 – January 19, 2020). Nathan Mabry has been the focus of important exhibitions, such as his solo show at the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, TX); “Thing: New Sculpture from Los Angeles” (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA); “Red Eye: Los Angeles Artists from the Rubell Family Collection” (Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL); and “Thief Among Thieves” (Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO). Mabry’s work is included in the collections of the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA); Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego, CA); Phoenix Museum of Art (Phoenix; AZ); Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX); Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, TX); Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY). Private collections include 176 / Zabludowicz Collection (London, UK); The Rubell Family Collection, (Miami, FL); and Vanhaerents Art Museum (Brussels, Belgium). Mabry’s work has been the subject of reviews and articles in such domestic and international publications as Art in America, Art Forum, Art + Auction, Frieze, Modern Painters, The Art Newspaper, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Art Basel Miami Beach is located:
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139.
Philip Martin Gallery booth is B22
Public Days
Thursday, December 6, 2018, 3pm to 8pm
Friday, December 7, 2018, 12 noon to 8pm
Saturday, December 8, 2018, 12 noon to 8pm
Sunday, December 9, 2018, 12 noon to 6pm
Philip Martin Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11am-6pm and by appointment. For further information and images please contact the gallery at +310-559-0100 or info@philipmartingallery.com.
Philip Martin Gallery
2712 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
+310-559-0100
info@philipmartingallery.com
