STORM KING ART CENTER ANNOUNCES
MAJOR ARLENE SHECHET EXHIBITION
OPENING MAY 4, 2024 |
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Featuring six monumental new commissions
that press the boundaries of outdoor sculpture,
along with related ceramic sculptures and modular benches |
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 | | Arlene Shechet in fabrication shop with new outdoor commission for Storm King Art Center; photo by David Schulze |
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Mountainville, NY, January 9, 2024 — Storm King Art Center announces Lookout, is pleased to announce Arlene Shechet: Girl Group, the most ambitious exhibition yet of Arlene Shechet’s outdoor sculpture, and the first to pair this body of work with her iconic indoor ceramics. On view May 4–November 10, 2024, the exhibition will debut six new large-scale commissions—spanning heights of ten to twenty feet and lengths of up to thirty feet—along with complementary indoor works in wood, steel, and ceramic. Shechet’s Girl Group responds to and expands upon the legacy and techniques of post-war and contemporary sculpture at Storm King through the artist’s signature emphasis on process, color, and form.
Girl Group asserts a feminine sensibility across Storm King’s hills, fields, and galleries. This series of sculptures adapts the monumental vocabulary of Storm King to Shechet’s unique voice. Recognized as a leading sculptor who has radicalized ceramics, Shechet now takes on industrial materials and inaugurates a new phase of her work. She brings an array of vibrant colors—pinks, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and purples—to Storm King's terrain for the first time. The works in Girl Group incorporate nature as material by harnessing it as negative space and reflected image.
Artist Arlene Shechet says, “For a sculptor, Storm King is ‘the promised land’: a landscape of rolling hills, mountain views, and fields populated with significant works by renowned artists. I am honored and thrilled to join the dialogue at this historic place and coax it forward with my exhibition Girl Group.”
“This exhibition is exemplary of Storm King’s collaborative approach to exhibition making—the creative support we offer and our incomparable landscape invite artists to achieve new and ambitious directions in their practice,” said Nora Lawrence, Storm King’s Artistic Director and Chief Curator. “Arlene’s work is bold and audacious, and visitors will certainly feel the pulse of the new sculptures she has created for Storm King across our landscape.”
Arlene Shechet: Girl Group has grown from the artist’s work in ceramics—specifically her recent Together series—which will be displayed in the Museum Building galleries. Developing the new outdoor sculptures over the course of three years, Shechet prioritized process and improvisation over pre-conception by alternating between digital means and intuitive handmade methods—always finalizing with the handmade. While large in scale, the works retain the sense of gesture, touch, and bold color found in the artist’s earlier lauded artworks. The new sculptures are comprised of welded and constructed steel and aluminum, each incorporating two colors shifting from glossy to matte, as well as planes of unpainted metal. Shechet’s expertise with color is evident in her palette. Far from standard or primary, the colors for Midnight (2023-24) are between pink and orange; for Rapunzel (2023-24), somewhere between blue and purple. The particularities of the sculptures’ forms and lines impart an idiosyncratic character rare to encounter at this scale, seeming to teeter at the edge of physical possibility.
Eric Booker, Storm King’s Associate Curator says, “Arlene’s sculptures resist static definition, eschewing differences between beauty and humor, industrial and hand-made, and even front and back in favor of a more contradictory and vibrant reality. Taken together, the works in Girl Group challenge preconceived notions of monumental sculpture, revealing the ways in which Arlene has continually reinvented the sculptural form.”
As distinct as each individual sculpture is, Girl Group functions as an ensemble. Like a musical band whose harmonies the show’s title evokes, Shechet’s sculptures make rhythms together. Installed throughout the landscape and gesturing dynamically toward one another, they create frames for nature and sky. Experiential works that change as a viewer moves around them, the sculptures’ stillness prompts the viewer’s movement. And for those who wish to pause and further contemplate the works, a new series of artist-designed benches provides seating close to Shechet’s spirited outdoor forms.
Arlene Shechet: Girl Group will be on view May 4–November 10, 2024, and will be accompanied by a robust calendar of public programs, including an outdoor performance produced in collaboration with Shechet. The exhibition is co-curated by Storm King’s Artistic Director and Chief Curator Nora Lawrence and Associate Curator Eric Booker, with Adela Goldsmith, Curatorial Assistant. |
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NOTES TO EDITORS About Storm King Art Center
Storm King Art Center is a 500-acre outdoor museum located in New York’s Hudson Valley, where visitors experience large-scale sculpture and site-specific commissions under open sky. Since 1960, Storm King has been dedicated to stewarding the hills, meadows, and forests of its site and surrounding landscape. Building on the visionary thinking of its founders, Storm King supports artists and some of their most ambitious works. Changing exhibitions, programming, and seasons offer discoveries with every visit.
stormking.org
Instagram @StormKingArtCenter | Facebook Storm King Art Center | X @StormKingArtCtr
About Arlene Shechet
Elected in 2023 as a lifetime member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and recognized by the College Art Association with the Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work (2016), Arlene Shechet has changed the landscape of ceramics since working with clay in 2006. She has been the subject of many solo exhibitions, including the 20-year survey All At Once at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2015), and Full Steam Ahead, installed in Madison Square Park, New York (2018). Her many curatorial projects include Porcelain, No Simple Matter, The Frick Collection, New York (2016); From Here on Now, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2016); Making Knowing, The Drawing Center, New York (2021); STUFF, Pace Gallery, New York (2022); and Disrupt the View, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2022–25), currently on view. Recognized with grants from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Anonymous Was A Woman Foundation, Shechet’s work is held in over fifty public collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She currently lives and works in the Hudson Valley.
Visitor Information
Storm King will reopen for the 2024 season in April.
Hours – Starting April 2024
Wednesday – Monday, 10:00AM – 5:30PM
Closed Tuesdays
Tickets
Advance tickets are recommended. Onsite tickets are limited and available on a first come, first served basis. Members enjoy free, ticketless admission any time during open hours. For the most up-to-date information on ticket availability, amenities, and hours, please see stormking.org/visit.
Discounted Admission
Storm King is pleased to offer discounted admission to the following visitors.
· SNAP participants/EBT cardholders via Museums for All
· Active military and their family via the Blue Star Program
· Storm King Partner School students, families, and educators
· Modern and Contemporary Reciprocal Membership Program (Mod/Co)
· American Association of Museum (AAM) Members
· International Committee of Museums (ICOM)
· Staff of other museums
Digital Guide – Bloomberg Connects
The Storm King digital guide is available for free on the Bloomberg Connects cultural app. Make the most of your visit with interactive activities, audio and video commentary by artists and Storm King staff, suggested routes, and more—anywhere, anytime from on your mobile device. Download the Bloomberg Connects app >
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