ANN PURCELL K ALI POEM SERIES
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ANN PURCELL K ALI POEM SERIES
OC TOBER 15 - NOVEMBER 14, 2020
VIEW THE ENTIRE EXHIBITION ONLINE AT WWW.BERRYCAMPBELL.COM ALL IMAGES © ANN PURCELL
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hroughout her career, Ann Purcell has been filled with a passion for exploring ideas and methods from a wide range of art. In an artist statement she wrote: “I love art. One of the things that is so wonder-full about art is that art history is an endless resource—one cannot consume it all—and one is never bored. There are thousands of years of art to mine and a challenging and supportive foundation for the artist. I believe art is essential and a rewarding experience for humankind.” Each of her series begins with a particular problem she has chosen to address, which then leads her to new and broadened inquiries. For example, her “Playground” series developed over the course of six years in the late 1970s, from her longtime desire to “do something about Matisse’s paper cutouts,” which she considers one of the “last great innovations in art.” Drawing as well from related elements in a variety of sources—Braque’s paper collages, Motherwell’s collages, Stella’s “Indian Birds,” and Frankenthaler’s, Pollock’s, and Rothko’s paintings—she created works consisting of collaged or
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pieced paintings of painted canvas applied to painted canvas, which she combined with an exploration of various drawing materials in painting. She states: “The process allowed many different techniques, such as expanding color mixing, juxtapositions, surface plays, mixing the random with the ordered, and several levels of spatial contradictions—continuously in a process of affirming and denying themselves.” Her “Caravans” followed, but were more formal. Also including collage, they evoke movement—both in space and time—with some elements that are atmospheric and mysterious and others that represent a duality of figure and ground, in which the positive becomes the negative and vice versa. The works suggest movement as well as historical associations and homages to artists she admires. For Purcell, the desire to achieve more spontaneity in these series led to her “Kali Poem” series started in 1983 and ongoing. However, such inevitability was not intentional. Instead, it was the result of a compulsion she felt, even against her will. She notes: “For the first time in my work, it was not out of joy, but from some other place, some other sphere. They just seemed to appear.” To her they were “not like the invited guests to a dinner party, but someone a friend has brought along.” However, she knew they had a meaning, and the answer came to her from a poem: May Sarton’s “The Invocation to Kali,” published in Poetry (1971). At the time, Purcell had only read six lines of the poem and was not aware of the attribution, which she later discovered was by the acclaimed poet, May Sarton. In fact, such a hindsight recognition is perfectly in keeping with Sarton’s poem, as the poem is one of process and reckoning. In four sections, the poet and reader examine the human need to destroy. The poem’s fifth section, the “Invocation,” is an entreaty to the Hindu goddess Kali to “be with us,” in order to “bring darkness into light.” For Sarton, it
is the power represented by Kali—a goddess with a seemingly terrible form who is a destroyer of evil forces and also a kind protector of the universe—that gives recognition to how we must strive to bring creation out of destruction.1 These six lines of the “Invocation” had long lodged in Purcell’s mind: “Help us to be the always hopeful / Gardeners of the spirit / Who know that without darkness / Nothing comes to birth / As without light / Nothing flowers.” Purcell’s Kali paintings evoke the poem in several respects. Instead of the considered placement of shape and line in her “Playgrounds” and “Caravans,” she found herself using her long-time gestural skills, consisting of forceful, vigorous brush movements influenced by music and her dance study and practice. One can sense in the paintings, her struggle with a force greater than herself, to take control and be free at the same time. Like Sarton’s poem, Purcell’s “Kali” paintings feel raw and confessional, their darkness both in tone and mood exposing inner turmoil and powerful truths. However, light also breaks through, as if reflecting the goddess’s dual nature and the power she wields. In Kali Poem #43 (plate 1), streaks of white appear to detonate in an atmospheric otherworldly realm. Reviewing a show in 1987, a critic stated that one of Purcell’s Kali poems was “white overall, as if the sun has blinded you, and left spots before your eyes—those violent strokes in the center of the painting.”2 Kali Poem #49 (plate 2) and its many shades of green express new life. Kali Poem, #46 and #47 (Vanishing Time) (plate 3) is a diptych that suggests an epic contest between forces of darkness and light. They are equal in balance and struggle creating a dialogue between the two parts. In Kali Poem #31 (plate 4), a vortex of white gives the canvas a kinetic aspect of forward motion, yet a red stain at the right seems to pull us back. Even the
coming of the light cannot dispel the darkness of the past. Similar gestures can be seen in Kali Poem #56 (Garden of Delights) (plate 5), its wild, energetic movements both “beautiful/grotesque; tender/terrifying.”3 Purcell’s subtitle references Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych of ca. 1490–1510 (The Prado), evokes parallels. Since 1976, dualities and polarities of opposites, balanced/imbalanced, freedom and order, have long been important elements of Purcell’s work including spatial contradictions and spontaneity contrasted with an extreme analytical method. However, in her “Kali Poems,” the conflict reached a culmination that is striving to bring light from darkness that we as “gardeners of the spirit” must constantly seek to achieve. Purcell perceives the “Kali Poem” series as belonging to one “poem.” The approximately ninety-six paintings in the ongoing series reveal that “gardening the spirit” is a constant journey and an endless adventure. —Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D.
1
Kali is associated with Shiva (as his consort, wife, or associate), a god of destruction and creation. She is depicted with either four or ten arms and is usually dark-skinned (black or blue), indicating that she was created from darkness when the creation had yet to occur. Her features include eyes that are red with intoxication and rage, sharp fangs, claw-like hands with long nails, a red tongue that extends outward, and hair flying and disheveled. She is often shown on a battlefield, wearing a garland of human heads, which represent her killing rage but also her creative powers (the heads symbolize the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet and the beginning of language). Many images portray her naked (conveying her purity) and dancing, standing with her right foot on Shiva’s chest, holding a Khadga (a crescent-shaped sword) in each hand as well as a severed head and a cap to collect its blood. See David R. Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Traditions (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 116–31.
2
Pamela Kessler, “Four Artists in Search of No Subject,” Washington Post, September 25, 1987, p. WK47.
3
Vrinda Dalmiya, “Loving Paradoxes: A Feminist Reclamation of the Goddess Kali,” Hypatia 15 (Winter 2000), p. 127.
ANN PURCELL (b. 1941)
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nationally recognized artist whose abstract work is represented in museums across the United States, Ann Purcell considers process to be a critical factor in her work. Employing both gestural and analytical approaches in her paintings, collages, and works on paper, she works within tensions of paradox, ambiguity, duality, and contradiction. Her method is related to dance—an important form for her beginning in her childhood—as well as to music, while she draws on her thorough grounding in European and American Expressionist traditions. Art history is also an important source for Purcell; she states that “one of the things that is so wonderful about art is that art history is an endless resource—one cannot consume it all. There are thousands of years of art to mine and find a challenging and supportive foundation for the artist.” In the catalogue for a solo exhibition of Purcell’s work at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1976), the museum’s chief curator Jane Livingston commended Purcell’s “fluidity with a vast range of idioms.” Livingston stated: “Purcell is among the most disciplined and prolific artists I have encountered: the number of fresh, sometimes startlingly brutal, sometimes exquisitely refined works she manages to create in the continually ongoing process of her production is proportionately remarkable.”1 Purcell was born in 1941 in Washington, D.C. and raised in Arlington, Virginia. She studied independently in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and received her B.A. from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and George Washington University, Washington, D.C., in 1973. She went on to receive her M.A. in Liberal Studies from New York University in 1995. While finishing her degree at the Corcoran, Purcell took a summer course with Washington Color School painter Gene Davis, who became her mentor and lifelong friend. Through Davis, she met Jacob Kainen, who had been Graphic Arts curator at the Smithsonian. Purcell recalls often walking through museums in Washington, D.C. with Davis and Kainen, considering the historical context of works of art and critiquing them. Her development was also shaped
by the artist’s colony at Provincetown, Massachusetts. She initially went to the Cape Cod artist’s colony in the summer of 1982 on the recommendation of E. A. Carmean, Jr., then chief curator of twentieth-century art at the National Gallery. In Provincetown, Carmean introduced her to Robert Motherwell, from whose work Purcell has drawn much inspiration. Other sources of influence for Purcell are the cutouts of Matisse and paintings by Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko. Purcell first exhibited her work in 1971, when she had a solo exhibition at Villa Roma Gallery in San Miguel de Allende. When she showed at the Corcoran in a six-artist show in September 1976, a critic stated: “Ann Purcell may be the one painter here to achieve a personal mood. She draws and paints like an Abstract Expressionist, spreads pigment like a color field painter, uses color like a Darby Bannard or a Richard Diebenkorn, but adds a gentleness all her own.”2 In addition to her 1976 solo exhibition at the Corcoran—she has had one-artist shows throughout her career, including two at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York (1980, 1983). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including many organized by museums, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Working in series, Purcell combines a wide range of sources from art history and life, uniting associations and extrapolations. Her “Caravan Series” evoke journeys, as well as “finding new things, places of influence, buying old things, ancient histories, and open discoveries.” The series was inspired by Purcell’s summers in Provincetown in the early 1980s. In the August, 1984 issue of The Advocate Summer Guide, Purcell told Margaret Seaver that she had finally found “the mystical, paradoxical space” that she aimed to illustrate in her paintings from the landscape, culture, and light of Provincetown. “I see it in the boats on the bay. They are suspended in the endless and infinite space.”3 Other works belong to the “White Space,” “Lagniappe,” “Playground,” and “Kali Poem” series.
Whereas the “Lagniappe” works reference a word that entered the English language from Louisiana French, describing small gifts given by merchants to customers for good measure, the “Kali Poem” paintings, featured in this exhibition, emanated from May Sarton’s 1971 poem of invocation to the Hindu goddess. Throughout Purcell’s career, critics have given recognition to her willingness to explore a range of artistic methods and reconcile seemingly disparate means of expression. In 1976–77, when she was included in Five Plus One, a group exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery, Benjamin Forgey observed in ARTnews that the “light-filled paintings of Ann Purcell, alone among the artists in pursuing a complex, painterly style, are a delightful, sensual explosion.”4 In 1983, Dan Cameron took note of a few exhibitions of Purcell’s work in an article in Arts magazine. Describing Purcell as “a fervent disciple of modernism,” he remarked on the way she brought together painting and drawing in the collages in her “Playground” series “by manipulating edge, mass, and composition in a single gesture.” Cameron went on to comment that Purcell had extended the “metaphoric velocity of her pieced paintings” into paintings themselves, in which she developed new methods of applying “thin lines, drips, oilstick calligraphy, and controlled skeins of color that act as chromatic splinters.” Observing that within a picture, these elements served to hold the frontal plane in place, Cameron stated how Purcell was able to balance “the stable pictorial structure with a new sense of disorderliness.”5 When Purcell exhibited her work at Osuma gallery in 1987, a critic commented that her works were “pure abstractions— Jackson Pollock paint drips accented with the occasional rugged brushstroke of a Franz Kline.”6 Purcell was an prominent teacher of painting, drawing, and art history at the Corcoran College of Art and Design; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and Parsons School of Art and Design in New York. She has been a guest lecturer and artist-inresidence at several universities. Her awards include
grants from the Hereward Lester Cooke Foundation, National Gallery of Art (1988, for mid-career achievement), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1989, 2018), the New York Foundation for the Arts (2013), the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2014), and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation (2014). Purcell’s work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Santa Barbara Museum; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
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1
Jane Livingston, Five Washington Artists, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1976).
2
Barbara Gold, “Five Plus One at Corcoran,” The Sun (Baltimore), September 26, 1976, p. D8.
3
Margaret Seaver, “Ann Purcell, A Self-Assured Artist,” The Summer Advocate (Provincetown, Massachusetts), August 16, 1984.
4
Benjamin Forgey, “Washington, D.C.: Catching Up with Morris Louis,” Art News (November 1976), p. 104.
5
Dan Cameron, “Ann Purcell,” Arts (November 1983).
6
Pamela Kessler, “Four Artists in Search of No Subject,” Washington Post, September 25, 1987, p. WK47.
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Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1985.
Corcoran Faculty, 1976.
1971, Independent Study, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Jack Shainman Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1985.
Gallery #641, Washington, D.C., New York/Washington, 1976.
1973, BA, Corcoran School of Art and George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Reynold C. Kerr Gallery, New York, 1985.
Inland-Foundry Exhibition, Washington, D.C., 1976.
1995, MA in Liberal Studies, New York University
Philip Dash Gallery, New York, 1986.
AWARDS 1988, Hereward Lester Cooke Foundation Grant, National Gallery of Art
Jack Shainman Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1986. Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1987. Philip Dash Gallery, New York, 1989. Philip Dash Gallery, New York, 1993. Philip Dash Gallery, New York, 1997.
1989, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
Philip Dash Gallery, New York, 1998.
2013, New York Foundation for the Arts Grant
Philip Dash Gallery, New York, 1999.
2014, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant
Hokin Gallery Bay Harbor Island, Miami, 2002.
2014, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant
Hokin Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, 2001.
Middendorf & Co. Gallery, London, 2002.
2018, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
Tilghman Gallery, Boca Raton, Florida, 2002.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, 2007.
Villa Roma Gallery, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, 1971. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1976. Pyramid Galleries, Washington, D.C., 1978. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 1978. Dart Gallery, Chicago, 1979.
Osuna Art, Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Maryland, 2008. Miwa Gallery, New York, 2008 – 09. Berry Campbell, New York, Paintings from the 1970s, 2015. Berry Campbell, New York, Caravan Series, 2018.
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 1980.
Pyramid Galleries, Washington, D.C., Two-Person Drawing Exhibit, 1976. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Washington Painters, 1976. Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C., Drawings from the Studios of Washington Artists, 1976. Miami Dade Community College, Miami, 1978. Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina, Selected Works from Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 1978. Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, 1978. Pyramid Galleries, Washington, D.C., Summer at Pyramid, 1978. Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, Pennsylvania, 1978. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, New York Collection, 1978 – 79. Dart Gallery, Chicago, 1979. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C., Washington Artists at H.E.W., 1979. Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 15 Artists, 1979.
Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1981.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Hokin Gallery, Chicago, 1982.
Misrachi Gallery, Mexico City, 1971.
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, Shape and Field, 1979.
Provincetown Group Gallery, Massachusetts, 1983.
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Nineteenth Area Exhibition, 1974.
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, North Carolina, Works on Paper, 1980.
Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1983.
State Department, US Information Agency, Washington, D.C., American Embassies in the Middle East, 1974 – 76.
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Acquisitions, 1975 to Present, 1982.
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 1983. Massimo Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1984.
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,
Provincetown Group Gallery, Massachusetts, 1982.
Hokin Gallery, Chicago, 1982. Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Massachusetts, 1982. Virginia Technical University, Blacksburg, Virginia (traveled to James Madison University, Virginia), 1982. Provincetown Group Gallery, Massachusetts, 1983. Hokin Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, 1983. Hokin/Kaufman Gallery, Chicago, 1983. Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1983. Whitewind Gallery, Mendham, New Jersey, 1983. Hokin Gallery, Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, 1984. Hokin Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, 1984. Hokin/Kaufman Gallery, Chicago, 1984. Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1984. Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1985. Philip Dash Gallery, New York, 1986. American Embassy in Havana, Art in the Embassies, 1988. Bernard Jacobson Gallery, New York, 1988. Cooper Union School of Art, New York, Center for Book Arts Exhibit, 1989. Tilghman Gallery, Boca Raton, Florida, 1989. Zack/Shuster Gallery, Boca Raton, Florida, 1989. Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., Collage, 1990. The National Museum of Women in the Arts-in-Embassies Program, Washington, D.C. (traveled to Katmandu, Nepal), 1992. The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., Book Exhibition, 1993 – 94. US Department of State, Art-in-Embassies
Program, Stockholm, Sweden, American Painters, 1994 – 95. The Rotunda Gallery, Reading Between the Lines, Brooklyn, 1998. Osuna Art, Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Maryland, Art from Past to the Present, A Selection, 2004.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Alusuisse Corporation, Richmond, Virginia American Telephone and Telegraph, New York
Center for Book Arts, New York, 2007.
American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C.
Osuna Art, Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Maryland, Recent Acquisitions, 2007.
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland
Osuna Art, Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Maryland, Works on Paper, 2008.
Capitol Holding Corporation, Louisville, Kentucky
Osuna Art, Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Maryland, Artists’ Works Group Show, 2009.
Continental Bank of Chicago
Katzen Art Center, American University, Washington, D.C., Washington Art Matters II: 1940s-1980s, 2015. Berry Campbell, New York, Summer Selections, 2015. Berry Campbell, New York, Summer Selections, 2016. Berry Campbell, New York, Summer Selections, 2017. Cavalier Galleries, New York, 57th Street: America’s Artistic Legacy, Part I, 2018.
Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. Embassy of Italy, Washington, D.C. George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Italian-American Foundation, Washington, D.C. Jack Shainman / The School, Kinderhook, New York Katzen Art Center, American University, Washington, D.C. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Berry Campbell, New York, Summer Selections, 2018.
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, Washington D.C., Full Circle: Hue and Saturation in the Washington Color School, 2018.
New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana
George Washington University Museum, Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, Washington D.C., A Time for Action: Washington Artists circa 1989, 2019.
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Berry Campbell, New York, Summer Selections, 2019.
Sydney Lewis Foundation, Richmond, Virginia
Berry Campbell, New York, Artist Insights/ Contemporary Highlights, 2020.
Vesti Industries, Cambridge, Massachusetts
PepsiCo Collection, New York Philadelphia Life Insurance, Pennsylvania Salt Lake City Museum, Utah Santa Barbara Museum, California
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
ABOUT BERRY CAMPBELL GALLERY Christine Berry and Martha Campbell have many parallels in their backgrounds and interests. Both studied art history in college, began their careers in the museum world, and later worked together at a major gallery in midtown Manhattan. Most importantly, however, Berry and Campbell share a curatorial vision. Both art dealers have developed a strong emphasis on research and networking with artists and scholars. They decided to work together, opening Berry Campbell Gallery in 2013 in the heart of New York’s Chelsea art district, at 530 West 24th Street on the ground floor. In 2015, the gallery expanded, doubling its size with an additional 2,000 square feet of exhibition space. Highlighting a selection of postwar and contemporary artists, the gallery fulfills an important gap in the art world, revealing a depth within American modernism that is just beginning to be understood, encompassing the many artists who were left behind due to race, gender, or geography-beyond such legendary figures as Pollock and de Kooning. Since its inception, the gallery has been especially instrumental in giving women artists long overdue consideration, an effort that museums have only just begun to take up, such as in the 2016 traveling exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism, curated by University of Denver professor Gwen F. Chanzit. This show featured work by Perle Fine and Judith Godwin, both represented by Berry Campbell, along with that of Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell. In 2019, Berry Campbell’s exhibition, Yvonne Thomas: Windows and Variations (Paintings 1963 - 1965) was reviewed by Roberta Smith for the New York Times, in which Smith wrote that Thomas, “... kept her hand in, adding a fresh directness of touch, and the results give her a place in the still-emerging saga of postwar American abstraction.” In addition to Perle Fine, Judith Godwin and Yvonne Thomas, artists whose work is represented by the gallery include Edward Avedisian, Walter Darby Bannard, Stanley Boxer, Dan Christensen, Eric Dever, John Goodyear, Ken Greenleaf, Raymond Hendler, Ida Kohlmeyer, Jill Nathanson, John Opper, Stephen Pace, Charlotte Park, William Perehudoff, Ann Purcell, Mike Solomon, Syd Solomon, Albert Stadler, Susan Vecsey, James Walsh, Joyce Weinstein, Frank Wimberley, Larry Zox, and Edward Zutrau. The gallery has helped promote many of these artists’ careers in museum shows including that of Bannard at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2018-19); Syd Solomon, in a traveling museum show which culminates at the John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota and has been extended through 2021; Stephen Pace at The McCutchan Art Center/Pace Galleries at the University of Southern Indiana (2018) and at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (2019); Vecsey and Mike Solomon at the Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina (2017 and 2019, respectively); and Eric Dever at the Suffolk Community College, Riverhead, New York (2020). In an April 3, 2020 New York Times review of Berry Campbell’s exhibition of Ida Kohlmeyer’s Cloistered paintings, Roberta Smith stated: “These paintings stunningly sum up a moment when Minimalism was giving way to or being complicated by something more emotionally challenging and implicitly feminine and feminist. They could hang in any museum.” Collaboration is an important aspect of the gallery. With the widened inquiries and understandings that have resulted from their ongoing discussions about the art world canon, the dealers feel a continual sense of excitement in the discoveries of artists and research still to be made. Berry Campbell is located in the heart of the Chelsea Art District at 530 West 24th Street, Ground Floor, New York, NY 10011. For further information, contact us at 212.924.2178, info@berrycampbell.com or www.berrycampbell.com. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm or by appointment.
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