Terry Haggerty 2025 by Miles McEnery Gallery

TERRY HAGGERTY

It had been a few years since I’d seen Terry Haggerty’s work in person, so I found some surprises when I viewed the paintings (all from 2024) for his current show. One thing that struck me immediately was their size. They were smaller than I remembered as typical of his work. But that might have been the fault of my memory. Somehow, his works loomed larger in in my mind than they appear on the wall.

That means these eccentrically shaped works transcend literalism—which may seem surprising, since they are so explicitly in dialogue with the reductive art of the 1960s, whether categorized as minimalism, post-painterly abstraction, hard-edge painting, or what have you. The art being made at that time by painters such as Jo Baer, Tom Downing, Gene Davis, Kenneth Noland, and Frank Stella adhered to Stella’s blunt assertion, “What you see is what you see.” Idea and actuality were meant to coincide.

Kenneth Noland, New Day, 1967, Acrylic on canvas, 89 3/8 x 184 x inches (227 x 468 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Kenneth Noland, Atoll Sun, 1968, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 90 x 288 inches (228.5 x 731 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, purchase and gift of Andre Emmerich and John Kasmin.

And the ’60s paintings to which Haggerty’s allude were often huge. Think of Noland’s horizontal stripe paintings. His New Day (1967), in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, is more than fifteen feet long, which is a little more than twice its height; but that’s nothing compared with the example in the Museum of Modern Art: Atoll Sun is nearly twenty-four feet long, and just (just!) seven and a half feet high. Such works are environmental in scale;. you can’t get far enough back to take in everything at once. Or if you can, you may find yourself too far away to understand what you are looking at. They exceed our field of vision. Haggerty’s horizontal paintings—here, Narrow Passage, Run Slowly, and Transparent Opacity could put you in mind of works like New Day and Atoll Sun. You’d almost be tempted to say that they give

Noland a twist—they torque his rectilinear forms. But then, you might also think they could be related to what used to be called supergraphics, another manifestation of that time (Merriam-Webster dates the first appearance of the word to 1967)—environmentally scaled graphic interventions that use color and geometry to exceed the architectural spaces they occupy—as one practitioner put it, to be “bigger than the architecture,” or “as though it had almost flown over the architecture.”1 (These should not be equated with wall paintings such as the one Haggerty has made for the current exhibition—a mural “framed” by the surrounding architecture rather than surpassing it.)

Narrow Passage, Run Slowly, and Transparent Opacity want you to think of those kinds of artistic and architectural predecessors, but they also want to assert their differences. Haggerty’s paintings are objects, not environments. They are pictorial and thing-ly at the same time, but with a very specific ratio between those two aspects: Haggerty might well have continued the painting onto the sides of the canvas as, for instance, Mary Heilmann does. That would have made them a bit more object-y and would have given a stronger hint of the “sculpting with color” idea that Heilmann seems to play with. But no: Haggerty insists on the plane, the surface. He doesn’t want you to envision his color as existing in depth.

Yet he also evokes something like perspectival recession in tension with the plane—by means of that twist I mentioned. Yes, the color is flat, but it’s as if that flat color had been applied to an imaginary surface that winds its way through a virtual space. The effect has been called illusionistic; Haggerty himself has used that word. I don’t think that’s quite right, though, because it implies trickery or deception. And Haggerty is not trying to fool you into thinking that his flat surfaces are swerving off like roads into the beyond. “Illusions are created and flattened,” as he has said.2 One thinks of Carl Andre’s famous statement on Frank Stella’s stripes as “paths” that “lead only into painting.” Haggerty’s stripes, for sure, lead nowhere that’s not painting—but painting, his works seem to imply, may not be where we think it is. It’s somewhere in the mind as much as it is something on the wall. So, his works evoke an imaginary distance even as they insist—I even want to indulge in the full power of pleonasm and say they insist insistently—on their flatness. Their paths are into the mind. They offer not certainty, but ambiguity. Is what you see what you see? Or is what you see what you think?

1 “Supergraphics and Computer Art: Deborah Sussman and April Greiman in L.A.,” Print, October 10, 2012. https://www. printmag.com/design-events-conferences/supergraphics-and-computer-art-deborah-sussman-and-april-greiman-in-l-a/

2 Interview by Ursula Ströbele, in Terry Haggerty: Transcend (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2013).

Haggerty’s more vertical paintings use a similar formal vocabulary, but they tend to complicate it, to create a more intricate (one might even say syncopated) “beat” through their intersections of straight and curvilinear forms—a counterpoint that becomes most notable in Out Crossing. You might notice that I keep reaching for musical terms to describe what I feel is going on in these paintings—for in what art are intellectual structure and corporeal affect more closely allied than in music? As different as their formal vocabularies may be, Haggerty gets close to Piet Mondrian’s infectious sense of boogie-woogie in a work like Out Crossing

Concomitant with this rhythmic intricacy, what most tellingly distinguishes Haggerty’s vertical paintings from his horizontal ones is their relative independence from the notion that a painting should be a rectangle. A work like Narrow Passage communicates the idea of a rectangle that happens to have been bent. In Fading Light, a rectangle seems to have been formed of an array of six stripes where the vertical bands have hit some unseen obstacle at the bottom and bounced off in another direction. Likewise, Imperfect Joints could suggest a rectangle made of horizontal bands but with a couple of addenda at the upper left and bottom right. But the other more vertical works here, Caviate, Murmuration, and Rest—like Out Crossing—hardly refer to the idea of the rectangle at all, given their eschewal of right angles and paucity of parallel edges. These three works interrupt the space of the room to a greater degree than the others in the show. They have a strange kind of presence, because they appear a bit alien to their immediate environment. Yet, at the same time, they present themselves as a kind of applied ornamentation to it.

Both the horizontal paintings and the vertical ones that evoke rectangles while swerving away from them readily open themselves to being interpreted as taking inspiration from natural space; in fact, one could easily discuss them as geometricized depictions of landscape. I’ve already hinted that Narrow Passage and the other horizontal pieces could be thought of as representing roads, though I could even more readily conjure rivers as their potential references. Really, any linear landscape element will do—which should clarify that it is not the specific element, but its relation to its space, that counts. In this regard, it’s notable that while the paintings’ titles might suggest references to the natural world, they are not the references one would most readily draw from the paintings themselves. The title Fading Light, for example, might refer to the nocturnal darkness of tone that dominates the painting, but the painting’s color key—though unusual

Bridget Riley, June 3 Bassacs, 1988, Gouache and pencil on paper, 25 3/4 x 34 1/8 inches (65.4 x 86.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift.

in this group of works—isn’t what strikes me as most noteworthy about it. Or should I say, about my response to it? Because the thing that won’t let go of me is that I can’t help but see a waterfall in this abstract arrangement of stripes and curves. I sense that the vertical stripes stand for water flowing straight down and that, at the bottom, it strikes rocks that make the water bounce up before falling back down again. Is that just my own random personal association? Maybe. But I’d still insist that the painting’s openness to such associations is significant. For me, many of these pieces evoke flow and fluidity—and their great affinity is with water.

Yet, just as I can’t avoid seeing such allusions in Haggerty’s paintings, I also can’t help but wonder if I am deluding myself when I see them. I began this essay by asserting Haggerty’s connection to a lineage of abstract painting—Baer, Stella, et al.—that absolutely rejected such connotations. Must I end it by saying that Haggerty is surreptitiously bringing nature back into a form of painting that had resolutely rendered it null and void? That might not be as heretical as it first seems—at least not if I point to another precursor, Bridget Riley (like Haggerty a British artist), who has never made a secret of her affinity for Impressionism and Postimpressionism. Her paintings, like Haggerty’s, neither picture things in the world nor refuse all connection with them.

The point has never been Stella’s “what you see.” Rather, it is “how you see”—which allows for any sort of “what” that affords inspiration. These paths can lead to and from anything.

Barry Schwabsky is an art critic for The Nation and an editor at Artforum. His recent books include two collections of poetry, Feelings of And (Black Square Editions, 2022) and Water from Another Source (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023).

107 x 88 cm

A, 2024

Acrylic on canvas

42 x 35 inches

102 x 84 cm

B, 2024

Acrylic on canvas

x 33 inches

Caviate, 2024

Acrylic on canvas

45 x 54 1/8 inches

114 x 138 cm

Fading Light,

74 3/4 x 43 1/4 inches

190 x 110 cm

2024

Acrylic on canvas

67 1/4 x 29 1/8 inches

171 x 74 cm

Imperfect Joints, 2024

Acrylic on canvas

Murmuration, 2024

77 1/2 x 49 1/4 inches

197 x 125 cm

Acrylic on canvas

22 1/2 x 52 inches

57 x 132 cm

Narrow Passage, 2024

Acrylic on canvas

Out Crossing, 2024

74 3/4 x 43 1/4 inches

190 x 110 cm

Acrylic on canvas

74 x 43 3/4 inches

188 x 111 cm

Rest, 2024

Acrylic on canvas

Run Slowly, 2024

32 1/2 x 83 inches

83 x 211 cm

Acrylic on canvas

23 1/2 x 70 inches

60 x 178 cm

Transparent Opacity, 2024

Acrylic on canvas

TERRY HAGGERTY

Born in London, United Kingdom in 1970

Lives and works in Eugene, Oregon

EDUCATION

1989

BA, Cheltenham School of Art, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom

1987

BTEC Diploma, Southend School of Art, Essex, United Kingdom

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025

Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

2024

“Shapes From the Edge,” Von Bartha, Copenhagen, Denmark

2023

“Not there – here,” Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt, Germany

2022

“Into the Wind,” Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland

2019

Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY

Eduardo Secci Contemporary, Florence, Italy

FS.ART, Tettnang, Germany

AD HOC Galerie, Bochum, Germany

2018

Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland

Ivory Press, Madrid, Spain

“End to End,” Dolceacqua Arte Contemporanea, Dolceacqua, Italy

PS Project Space, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2016

Von Bartha, S-Chanf, Switzerland

2015

Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland

Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY

2014

Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany

2013

“The Nearness of Objects,” Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY

“FOCUS,” Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX

2012

“MASK,” Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“Edge of Interference,” PS Project Space, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2011

“Protrusions and Areas of Concern,” Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland

“In Between Elements,” Von Bartha, S-Chanf, Switzerland

2010

Andreas Grimm Gallery, Munich, Germany

“Angle of Response,” Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2009

Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Brussels, Belgium

Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

EY5, Düsseldorf, Germany

2008

Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

Andreas Grimm Gallery, New York, NY

“Lose Track,” PS Project Space, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2007

“Hammer Projects,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Grimm/Rosenfeld, Munich, Germany

2006

Aschenbach & Hofland, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2005

“Start to Finish…,” Konsortium, Düsseldorf, Germany

2003

“Gas,” Riva Gallery, New York, NY

“Karioka Color,” Paintbox Extensions, Copenhagen, Denmark

Riva Gallery, Project Space, New York, NY

2001

“Air Condition,” Alexander de Folin Gallery, New York, NY

2000

“Welcome Home,” Flat Gallery, New York, NY

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2024

“All Bangers, All The Time: 25th Anniversary Exhibition,”

Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

“New Ideas for Other Times,” Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland

2023

“PAPERWORK,” And Pens, Los Angeles, CA

“The Imaginary Collection Vol. V” (curated by Andrea Murkudis and Diandra Donecker), Andreas Murkudis and Von Bartha, Berlin, Germany

2022

“Future Memory” (curated by Konsortium), Kaunas 2022, Kaunas, Lithuania

“+1,” Lachenmann Art, Frankfurt, Germany

“Curator’s Choice,” FS.ART, Tettnang, Germany

“Super Mountain Market Colours,” Forum Paracelsus, St. Moritz, Switzerland

2021

“The Imaginary Collection Vol. IV: Take the Stage” (curated by Caroline Bøge), Von Bartha and 2112, Copenhagen, Denmark

2020

“The Backward Glance can be a Glimpse into the Future,” Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland

2019

“Big Circle / CCNOA:DAC - A Shared Experience” (organised by KNO/Kyiv Non Objective), M-17 Contemporary Art Center, Kyiv, Ukraine

2017

“Miss Lucy’s 3 Day Dollhouse Party,” Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

“Highlights from the Permanent Collection,” Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX

“Open Air Museum De Lakenhal: 100 Years After De Stijl” (curated by Guido Winkler and Iemke van Dijk), Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden, Netherlands

2016

“Gestalt & Becoming,” Feldbusch Wiesner Rudolph, Berlin, Germany

2015

“Hildebrandt Collection,” G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig, Germany

“Standard International - Post Spatial Surfaces #1” (curated by Rüdiger Lange, loop – raum für aktuelle K unst), Geisberg Berlin, Berlin, Germany

“Ideale, Linien” (curated by Peter K. Koch), Kuckei + Kuckei Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“Linear Abstraction” (curated by Alexandra Sachs & Aaron Levi Garvey), Gutstein Gallery, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA

2014

“Einknicken oder Kante zeigen? Die Kunst der Faltung,” Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany; traveled to Kunstraum Alexander Büerkle, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

“Dystotal” (curated by KONSORTIUM), Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland

“PS 1999-2014,” PS Project Space, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2013

“Merge Visible,” Horton Gallery, New York, NY

“Moving: Norman Foster on Art,” Carre d’Art-Musee d’Art

Contemporain, Nîmes, France

“whatever colors you have in you mind” (curated by Jan van der Ploeg), Ruth Leuchter Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany

“Columna 2,” Lyon Biennale Satellite, Vienne, France

“Blowing the Whistle,” Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany

“3 + 4 b/w,” Taubert Contemporary, Berlin, Germany

2012

“Ultra Violet,” Glue, Berlin, Germany

“Off the beaten track,” Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland

“More and Different Flags,” Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY

“Summer In The City,” Martin Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark

“Point Of View II,” Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“Abstract Confusion” (curated by Christian Malycha), Kunsthalle Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany; traveled to Städtische Galerie Gladbeck, Gladbeck, Germany

“Nymphius Projects” (curated by Friederike Nymphius), CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain

2011

“Art & Stars & Cars” (curated by Renate Wiehager), Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart, Germany

“From Berlin,” Martin Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark

“Crisp & Shout,” KANT Gallery, Esbjerg, Denmark

“Space Oddity” (curated by Friederike Nymphius), CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain

“Abstract Confusion” (curated by Christian Malycha), b05 Kunst und Kulturzentrum, Montabaur, Germany; traveled to Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm, Germany

“Enthusiasmos,” Cosar HMT, Düsseldorf, Germany

“Entropia,” Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany

“I Do Like Drawing,” Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland

2010

“Big New Field: Artists in the Cowboys Stadium Art Program” (curated by Charlie Wylie), Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

“Faint to Black,” Henningsen Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark

“My Lonely Days Are Gone” (curated by Arturo Herrera), Arratia Beer Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“UND#6” (curated by Tilman, Billy Gruner, Jan van der Ploeg), Schwartz Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Esemplasticism: The Truth is a Compromise” (curated by Hicham Khalidi), Berlin, Germany

“The Berlin Box” (curated by Friederike Nymphius), Andratx CCA, Mallorca, Spain

“Picture About Pictures” (curated by Renate Wiehager), Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria

2009

“Zeigen Audio Tour” (curated by Karin Sander), Temporäre

Kunsthalle Berlin, Berlin, Germany

“The Multiple Show,” Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

“Axis Bold As Love,” Forgotten Bar Project, Berlin, Germany

“If you fake the plane your nose will grow,” Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“Bank Of Eden” (curated by Rick Buckley), Whitechapel Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“Private View II,” Andreas Grimm Gallery, Munich, Germany

“Point of View,” Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“Maximal Minimal,” Andreas Grimm Gallery, Munich, Germany

“Connected things Collected” (curated by Jonathan Monk), Sammlung Haubrok, Berlin, Germany

“Unlikely,” Kunstverein Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

“PS 1999-2009,” Kunstruimte 09, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2008

“Yo, Mo’ Modernism,” Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Brussels, Belgium

“Something and Something Else” (curated by Claudine Hellweg), Museum van Bommel van Dam, Venlo, The Netherlands

2008

“Fith Anniversary Exhibition,” Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“Minus Space” (curated By Phong Bui), MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY

“Roundabout” (curated By Malene Landgreen and David Rhodes), Berlin, Germany

“You Said He Said She Said,” Seiler + Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Zürich, Switzerland

“Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks” (curated by Tine Colstrup), Den Frie Udstilling, Copenhagen, Denmark

“Punto Linea Superficie,” Effearte, Milan, Italy

“Summer Show,” Andreas Grimm Gallery, New York, NY

“Unlikely” (curated by Leo de Goede), W139, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; traveled to Städtische Galerie Waldkraiburg, Waldkraiburg, Germany

“Machine Learning” (curated by Matthew Deleget), Gallery

Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX

“Gegenstandslos,” Gesellschaft für Kunst und Gestaltung, Bonn, Germany

2007

“Stripes & Stars,” Sammlung Haubrok, Düsseldorf, Germany

“Unlikely” (curated by Leo de Goede), Galerie Kienzle & Gmeiner, Berlin, Germany

“Machine Learning” (curated by Matthew Deleget), Boyden Gallery, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St. Mary’s City, MD; traveled to The Painting Center, New York, NY

2006

“White Out,” KONSORTIUM, Düsseldorf, Germany

“Carbonic Anhydride,” Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany

“The Difficult Shapes of Possible Images” (co-organized by Douglas Mellini), ZieherSmith, New York, NY

“Gimme Shelter” (curated by Megan Riley), Shelter Island, NY

“I Am Yours Now” (curated by Arturro Herrera), Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY

“Neo Plastic Redux” (curated by Miles Manning), Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, NY

“I’m not here, this isn’t happening,” Grimm/Rosenfeld, New York, NY

“Summer Show,” Grimm/Rosenfeld, Munich, Germany

“Public Project” (curated by KONSORTIUM), 10 Artists, Düsseldorf, Germany

2005

IAAX, Hollywood, CA

“Incognito,” Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA

“Painting Matters,” Kuttner Siebert Gallery, Berlin, Germany

Paradigm Arts, New York, NY

“Autopilot” (curated by Konsortium), Halle 29, Düsseldorf, Germany

2004

“Stop & Store,” Luxe Gallery, New York, NY

“Incognito,” Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA

“Hard and Soft,” Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NY

“Art House,” Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NY

2003

“Lazarus Effect” (curated by Luca Beatrice, Lauri Firstenberg, and Helena Kontova), Prague Biennale, Prague, Czech Republic

“Lightshow,” 325 Gold Street, Brooklyn, NY

“Born Design,” ICFF, New York, NY

“Flair,” Heather Marx Gallery, San Francisco, CA

“Lightbox,” Toniq llc, New York, NY

2002

“Now More That Ever” (curated by Fintal Friel), Citylights

Projects, Melbourne, Australia

“Painting as Paradox” (curated by Laurie Firstenberg), Artists Space, New York, NY

2001

“Best of Season,” Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT

“Ground Zero,” lafayette st, New York, NY

“Paradise,” 33 Rector Street, New York, NY

1999 Natwest Art Prize, London, United Kingdom

“X4,” Alexandre de Folin Gallery, New York, NY

“Networking,” Gallery Konstakuten, Stockholm, Sweden; traveled to Shibuya-ka, Tokyo, Japan; and Seoul, South Korea

1998

“A4,” Sali Gia Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Show Me The Money, Part 1 & 2” (curated by Goshka Macuga and Mathew Leahy), Duke’s Mews, London, United Kingdom

Open! Studio, London, United Kingdom

1996

Victoria Park Square, Bethnal Green, London, United Kingdom

1994

“Outpost,” Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy

1993

“Outpost,” 100 Artists, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

“Adsite,” Aldwych Circus, London, United Kingdom

“Brick Lane Open,” International Heritage Centre, London, United Kingdom

“Domestic Incident,” Sheffield, United Kingdom

1992

“Fresh Art,” Islington Design Centre, London, United Kingdom

AWARDS + RESIDENCIES

2011

CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain

2009

For-Site Foundation Award, San Francisco, CA

2003

John Anson Kittredge Fund, Cambridge, MA National Workshop for the Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark Exhibition Grant, British Council, London, United Kingdom

2002

Residency, MacDowell, Peterborough, NH Fellowship, Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, New York, NY

Exhibition Grant, British Council, London, United Kingdom

1999

NatWest Art Prize, London, United Kingdom

1990

Travel Grant, Cheltenham & Gloucester, Cheltenham, United Kingdom

Published on the occasion of the exhibition