GARY STEPHAN | ALINA TENSER

GARY STEPHAN | ALINA TENSER 17 March 2016 – 23 April 2016

Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC

Installation View, 2016 Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC

Gary Stephan Temporary Wisdom, 2015 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 60 in.

Gary Stephen and Alina Tenser in Conversation, 5 March 2016

Alina: The voice memo application is quite full on my phone because my son uses it as his makeshift YouTube channel. It’s a “YouTube channel” that is just audio; I have not introduced the video aspect to it because he resorts to mimicking other YouTube videos he sees. This way he continues to build his own weird logic.

Gary: What’s strange in his logic?

Alina: It’s a combination in which he is playing talk-show host, doing a bit of self advertising à la social network, inserting a talent show aspect such as beat boxing, and taking time to voice concern about something. It’s not far from what a YouTube channel does, but his combinations are wonderfully absurd.

Gary: The reason I ask you is, I think it’s interesting that in your Gorky’s Granddaughter interview you talk about de-familiarization, which is the goal of my work and the goal of most work you could argue, most modern work in the last hundred years. I use it in terms of art but you said, “If you really want to see de-familiarization in action, give a five year old a chair”.

A: Yes.

G: And the chair immediately turns into a cave or a boat or whatever it turns into. When I looked at your work, I thought you were getting at the same thing, in the repurposing of the paint roller or the coasters, but you’re not six.

A: My work is kind of a product of open-ended play, in some cases with a manufactured object and in others with a hand made object, or with material. Using anything incorrectly yields unexpected and exciting results. A lot of this has to do with watching a child develop. When I started graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University, my son was ten months old. My work at that point was very much focused on the body, not the figurative body, but the experience of living in a body because the experience of birth was so fresh. I go with the flow as far as making work, but it’s always quite reflective of where my life is.

G: I have been trying to remove subjectivity from my work and have every bit of it perform some objective task that I can quantify. Still, the structure is sufficiently porous and lived experiences emerge. Our tactics are different but strategically we want the same thing: to make the world new to the viewer and ourselves. I use the tools of constructivism to build the house of surrealism and you use the tactics of Dada to resee the too reasonable world of made objects. I’m trying to take things that people think they know and use them in such a way that they become problematic.

A: I was wondering if you think about game logic in your work. I was specifically thinking about fields, like a soccer field, where lines delineate the rules and logic of how to play. Another thing that comes to mind, and bridges our work, is the play between abstraction and representation. The moments of familiarity when the brushstroke starts to look like wood grain.

G: That’s right.

A: And understanding that it’s obviously not a faux finish, it is very much a brush stroke. The wood Alina Tenser, Paint Tray 2, 2015 grain is incidental to the material and process, and it takes it out of abstraction.

Epoxy modeling clay, bamboo and steel

10 x 14 x 4 in.

G: Absolutely right. .

A: Whereas what I’m doing is taking manufactured objects such as a furniture glider and by isolating it from its intended use, I bring it into abstraction.

G: Exactly. That’s great. It reminds me of something that Catherine Murphy said: “all painting is abstract and all painting is narrative.”

Which is like you saying that you think of all narrative as pattern and transformation. What was your phrase that I interpreted as defamiliarization?

A: One way I’ve talked about it was “having an original experience with the object,” but that’s very specific to when I am working with manufactured objects such as paint rollers or furniture gliders. When I use them I try to consider their value, or better yet their properties. For example, one property of a paint roller is that it rolls softly; another is that it is pierced through like a bead. So in my videos and performances I try to engage in a sort of open-ended play based on these properties that draw me to the object, while ignoring its intended use. However I do make sculptures and objects for which the term “de-familiarization” actually makes more sense. I often use forms that have quotidian origins, for example I have been making many variations on “trays” for the last three years.

G: Do you know about an object that was a big deal on the West Coast in the middle of the Century that was called the Slant Step?

A: Yes! It has been in my periphery since graduate school. It’s incredible. It’s a perfect object to bring into the conversation, I’m glad you brought it up.

G: It was a very important object in the early sixties on the West Coast because there was an interest in, essentially, Dada objects. And your work has a quasi-functional quality, as do your performances. They have the quality of sitting between chance and intention. It’s the looseness of intention that is interesting in the way Andy Kaufman’s stand-up comedy leaves the audience wondering where the edges are. Just how much management is the work under? You seem to bring together things that we know have properties, and then random interactions take place. Is that right?

A: In my sculptures, performances, and videos, I’m interested in function but I’m interested in a kind of open-ended function, finding a new absurd value in the fact that a roller rolls.

That is such a great function. It doesn’t have to roll paint on, but it rolls.

Anonymous, The original Slant Step G: So you’re going to have four tray sculptures in the show?

Wood, linoleum, and rubber, 18.88 x 15 x 12.25 in.

A: Yes, I’ll have four handmade paint trays with inlaid bamboo shapes inside of them. I think they will have an interesting or funny painting reference. They operate like paintings framed by a paint tray, but they are also very solid in their objecthood.

G: So it’s a two-painter show. I was thinking about putting my painting on the floor.

[Laughter]

G: The trays resemble something used in manufacture?

A: Not quite. You can tell that I handmade them. They are not sloppy, but you can see the hand and pinching of the material. Each handle is specific to the piece, so they are not exactly the same.

G: And what about the video?

A: The video is a loop that is about seven minutes and I think of it as being fairly peripheral. It is not something you watch through. It is not linear and narrative does not come up. It’s something you watch for a while, then look at other work and come back to, very much like sculpture. A lot of it is about the screen that it is projected on.

G: How tall is the object? Can you describe it?

A: It’s 45 inches by 40 inches, freestanding plexiglass screen and the video is just a thin strip, the rest is clear plexiglass. I’m thinking about weightlessness and cheating gravity.

G: Some of your pieces really have a sense of the form in the video, sensing the body that’s holding it. But with these I don’t get as much of a sense of body, it’s more about the making.

A: It’s about the movement and breath. I’m giving movement and breath to these furniture gliders. So basically the gliders are in a big tray that I made and I am slowly rotating it around. The tray and I are in a green screen so the furniture gliders get isolated and their movement upended and somewhat dramatized.

G: It’s quite nifty.

A: I use trays as functional helpers, like for making video, and I also make them as my art pieces. I like that they are open and shallow vessels, and I like how they frame whatever is arranged on them. Do you think about that?

G: No, I don’t. It’s like what Raphael Rubinstein said, “these are paintings that have arguments with themselves.” Just as you think you know how to read this, there should be one or two more ways to read the implied picture space that operates differently. So here is what they are not; they are not aesthetic designs. If people come in and say something like “It’s too red at the bottom, that’s too strong for my taste,” it doesn’t matter whether one likes red or not. That’s the color that will do what I need that painting to do. If people don’t understand these are functioning like layers in reality, then it’s game over. If you look at an Ad Reinhardt and think it is about nihilism because it is black, there is some fundamental sense that you did not usefully view the painting. It is necessary to wait until the form emerges. Whether you like it or not, it’s the gag. You either get the gag or not but it’s the price of admission into that world.

A: So I’m jumping topic here, because I was just reading a text on Adolph Loos’s interiors. The text was about how Loos was constantly trying to make a window be a one-way thing, where an outsider can look in but the insider can’t see out. And once you are inside he is always trying to keep the gaze there, going deeper, going into the room. He would put a mirror directly under a window, interrupting or confusing a window and portal. When I think of reflective surfaces, mirrors or fetish finish, I think of trickery. You are getting drawn by promise of portal or extension while in reality you are just getting bounced back, it’s a hoax.

G: Well you problematized it in the performance piece where you have the photo reflector and are using it to reflect the Mylar, so it’s reflecting the reflection.

A: I’m very interested in surfaces in that way, how the surface allows your body to be with the thing. Loos would also do this other wild thing where he would put in a skylight above the windows so they would transform into reflective things.

G: I have one architectural connection I have in the show, a piece called E-1027.

A: Oh, Eileen Gray?

G: How do you know that? Nobody knows that!

A: I read about E-1027, Eileen Gray and Corbusier, and then attended a reading group focused on E-1027. What an amazing building and story! I loved the descriptions of Eileen’s building process, basically almost like inside out, from the detail to the structure. I remember thinking she must have had the door knob before she had the door.

G: Oh that’s funny.

A: It’s such a feminine way to build a home: everything grown from the detail.

Gary Stephan, E-1027, 2014

G: Why does that seem feminine?

Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in.

A: Maybe because that’s how I work. [Laughter] But really, I like how structure is kind of a byproduct of details that added up, it is a much more organic and sympathetic route to building a living space.

G: You could say that it works from the direct and the domestic, out to the general and the public. I think of this as the rings of metaphor out from the body. First is clothing, then furniture, then the room next to the building and finally, the city.

Alina Tenser

Alina Tenser

Paint Tray 1, 2015

Paint Tray 3, 2015

Epoxy modeling clay, bamboo and steel

Epoxy modeling clay, bamboo and steel

10 x 14 x 4 in.

10 x 14 x 4 in.

Alina Tenser Glider Shuffle, 2015 Single channel video projection on plexi glass screen 06:46 Edition of 2 + 1 AP

Gary Stephan CN2, 2015 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 30 in.

Installation View, 2016 Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC

The Logic of Rotation

Some paintings pick arguments with art history. Some paintings pick arguments with their materials. Some paintings pick arguments with the other paintings around them in the artist’s studio. Some paintings pick arguments with the world at large. All these types of argumentative artworks can be incredibly engaging, and many of history’s masterpieces can be found among their number, but for me there is one particular type of argumentative painting that is the most stimulating, the most rewarding, the most exemplary: the painting that picks an argument with itself, and at the present moment it’s hard to think of another painter who exemplifies this kind of painting better than Gary Stephan.

At the heart of his pictorial disputes is the fact that every painting invites multiple, contradictory readings: in a moment, a flat figure/ground structure can shift to an illusionistic composition in which a geometric shape seems to be floating above the ground. Similar perceptual flips happen with parts and whole as internal framing devices isolate segments of the larger composition, but never definitively. To look at any of Stephan’s paintings is to experience constant oscillation and undecideability.

Abednego, 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 in.

Anyone familiar with Stephan’s career will know that his art has long been an arena for the staging of vigorous oppositions, in particular between the seductive voids of illusionistic space and the blunt materiality of paint, between fiction and fact. A second binary weaving through his work, especially of late, is the cleavage (and strange interdependence) between the mark and the symbol. I’m thinking, now, of certain forms embedded in two recent paintings: Abednego and David Rising. Viewed among the ensemble of this show, these paintings may not immediately unveil their iconography, due in no small part to the artist’s canny skill at breaking up pictorial space, but once the iconography emerges, there is no chance of plausible denial. I’m talking, of course, about the swastikas formed by the configuration of vertical and horizontal segments. In both cases, this hypercharged symbol shares the 20-square-inch surface with other elements: the white swastika in Abednego is ringed by a quartet of irregular black shapes derived from the “Template” forms that were a prominent feature of Stephan’s work in the 1980s; in David Rising, a pale blue shape, vaguely suggestive of a cookie cutter, surrounds the central area, delaying, perhaps, recognition of the swastika.

What happens “next” (I place this chronological term in quotation marks since no two viewings of a painting, even by the same person, necessarily follow the same perceptual sequence, which is not to say that they can’t and, often, do) is wholly unexpected and audacious. As the triangular internal sides of the blue shape isolate sections of the gray swastika and yellow ground, a new shape suddenly emerges from the painting: a six-pointed star or Star of David, that ancient symbol of Jewish identity. But here it’s a mostly yellow star, which, even without the word German word “Jude,” can be nothing else than the yellow star the Nazis and their collaborators required that all Jews wear when venturing into public.

David Rising, 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 in.

In the past, Stephan has rarely allowed these kinds of highly charged symbols into his work, but for some reason they seem to be irrupting, intentionally or not, into some of the recent paintings. In a fascinating Brooklyn Rail conversation with Phong Bui, Stephan mentions an early instance in a 2012 painting titled The Spine of the Book in which an image came out “unconsciously.” Having completed the painting Stephan “realized how much it looked like a crucifix with little splashes of blood on the bottom of Christ’s feet while his whole body is twisted a little.” Given that Stephan is an artist well-known for being acutely aware of every historical allusion and conceptual twist of his paintings, it seems almost out of character for him to court and accept the intrusion of unconscious images. And, in fact, Stephan never relinquishes absolute control of his paintings. Rather, he follows wherever their logic (pictorial logic, logic of process) leads. And if this logic leads to an unsettling, disruptive icon, so much the better insofar as it introduces yet another degree of oscillation and undecideability into the painting.

It’s crucial to understand how the swastikas emerge from two basic structural conditions of Stephan’s painterly procedures: first, the woven grids that he lays down with thinned out paint as he initiates each canvas; second, the rotational procedure that is fundamental to Stephan’s practice, facilitated by the self-designed, wall-mounted rotating easel that occupies a central place in his Lower Manhattan studio. In many, if not most, of the seventeen 20 by 20 paintings in this show (displayed in this show as a group in three staggered rows in what I think of as a variant on a haiku stanza: 6,5,6 instead of 5,7,5), the compositional movement is explicitly rotational as blocks of color and surrounding shapes lead the eye around the perimeter of the support. In one case the title, Sides 2/3/4 Clockwise @ 11/2/6 explicitly points to the rotational structure. The use of implied rotation as a compositional device is fairly uncommon in abstract painting, although it is a venerable format (think of the cycles of episodes in countless paintings depicting the lives of religious figures) that offers, to artist and viewer alike, a unique combination of instability and continuous motion.

Sides 2/3/4 Clockwise @ 11/2/6, 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 in.

Irregular shapes in several of the paintings (CN1 and CN7) suggest floor plans, and thus connect to one of Stephan’s recurring themes, architecture. In a recent larger painting, E-1027, the artist creates a brilliant homage to Eileen Gray’s legendary modernist house. His focus on E-1027 is related to his fascination with Le Corbusier, whose buildings have been an object of pilgrimage for Stephan and his wife Suzanne Joelson for many years, including the National Museum of Western Art (1959) in Tokyo.

There’s a striking resemblance between the patterns on the concrete façade of Museum of Western Art and the abutting gray brushstrokes in many of Stephan’s recent paintings. (Note to self: explore, in the manner of Duncan Smith, the persistence of the word “gray” in Stephan’s work: it is not only his most favored color, but also the last name of one of his inspirations—Eileen Gray—and an anagram of his own first name.) Stephan’s use of buildings as protagonists in his art suddenly reminds me of another instance of an artist appropriating an iconic piece of 20th century architecture: Jean-Luc Godard’s filming long sections of Le Mépris (Contempt) in the Casa Malaparte on the island of Capri. Like E-1027, the Casa Malaparte (designed by writer Curzio Malaparte) is a highly personal and deeply eccentric house that overlooks the Mediterranean and features large windows facing the sea.

Thinking about Godard and Stephan, two creators who seem impelled to over-determine their art (to highly productive ends), a phrase comes to mind that Godard once used to describe Le Mépris. The film was, he said, a story about “survivors from the shipwreck of modernity.” I think the same might well be said of Gary Stephan’s paintings.

Raphael Rubinstein

CN1, 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 in.

CN7, 2015 Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 in.

Installation View, 2016 Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC

Gary Stephan Untitled, 2015 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 20 in.

Gary Stephan

Gary Stephan

The Tortoise Said to the Hare “You know from

Untitled, 2015

certain angles you look like a duck,” 2015

Acrylic on canvas

Acrylic on canvas

20 x 20 in.

20 x 20 in.

Gary Stephan The Last Five Minutes, 2014 Acrylic on canvas 48 x 60 in.

GARY STEPHAN Born in Brooklyn, NY, 1942 Lives and Works in New York City & Stone Ridge, NY San Francisco Art Institute, M.F.A., 1967 Pratt Institute, NYC, 1964 Art Students League, NYC, 1961 Parsons School of Design, NYC, 1961

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2016 Gary Stephan | Alina Tenser, Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC 2015 George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2014 “10 Years / 10 Paintings,” Galerie Thomas Flor, Berlin, Germany Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC Recent Work, Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2013 “New Work,” T-Space, Dutchess County, NY 2012 “The Story of What Happens,” Devening Projects + Editions, Chicago, IL 2010 The Kleinert / James Arts Centre, Woodstock, NY Eisbox, Brooklyn, NY 2009 “Reading and Unreading,” Galerie Kienzle and Gmeiner, Berlin, Germany 2006 “Ways To Make Things,” Cynthia Broan Gallery, NYC “Between The Window and The Wall,” St. Michael's College, Burlington, VT “New Sculptures and Paintings,” Domo Gallery, Summit, NJ 2002 “Nine Paintings,” Myers Gallery, University of Akron, Akron, OH 2001 Baumgartner Gallery, NYC 1999 “Same Body, Different Day,” University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME 1998 Baumgartner Gallery, NYC University of Alabama, AL “10 Year Survey,” Butler Institute, Youngstown, OH 1997 Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ 1996 Margulies Taplin Gallery, Coral Gables, FL 1995 Revolution Gallery, Detroit, Ml Cristinerose Gallery, NYC Galeria Fernando Alcolea, Barcelona, Spain Galería Siboney, Santander, Spain 1993 Mary Boone Gallery, NYC “Architectures Without Archaeologies,” Galleria in Arco, Torino, Italy 1992 Baumgartner Galleries, Washington, DC 1991 Galeria Fernand Alcolea, Barcelona, Spain 1990 Mary Boone Gallery, NYC Fuller Gross Gallery, San Francisco, CA Baumgartner Galleries, Washington, DC 1989 Galeria Lino Silverstein, Barcelona, Spain 1988 Galerie Gabrielle Maubrie, Paris, France “New Abstract Paintings,” Hirschl & Adler Modern, NYC 1986 Dart Gallery, Chicago, IL Lia Rumma Gallery, Naples, Italy Mary Boone Gallery, NYC Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Diane Brown Gallery, NYC 1985 Mary Boone Gallery, NYC 1984 Marlborough Gallery, NYC University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rl Portico Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 1983 Mary Boone Gallery, NYC The Texas Gallery, Houston, TX Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1982 Mary Boone Gallery, NYC Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, CA Ronald Greenberg Gallery, St. Louis, MO 1881 Mary Boone Gallery, NYC Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Mattingly-Baker Gallery, Dallas, TX

1980 1979 1978 1977 1976 1975 1974 1973

1972 1971 1970

Mary Boone Gallery, NYC Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Mary Boone Gallery, NYC Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Mary Boone Gallery, NYC Arnold Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Texas Gallery, Houston, TX Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, CA Texas Gallery, Houston, TX Bykert Gallery, NYC Bykert Gallery, NYC Texas Gallery, Houston, TX Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, CA Alfred University, Alfred, NY Bykert Gallery, NYC Texas Gallery, Houston, TX Galleri Ostergren, Malmö, Sweden Fabian Carlson Gallery, Goteborg, Sweden Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, CA Hans Neuendorf Gallery, Köln, Germany Hans Neuendorf Gallery, Hamburg, Germany Quay Gallery, San Francisco, CA David Whitney Gallery, NYC David Whitney Gallery, NYC

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBIITONS 2016 “Paint Heads,” Jeffrey Leder Gallery, Long Island City, NY “Nice Weather,” curated by David Salle, Skarstedt Gallery, NYC “How To Be Unique,” Kienzle Art Foundation, BleibtrustraBe, Berlin, Germany “New Geometry,” Fred Giampietro Gallery, New Haven, CT 2015 “E. 1027,” Joe Sheftel Gallery, NYC “On The Money,” Brian Morris Gallery, NYC 2013 “Come Together: Surviving Sandy,” curated by Phong Bui, Brooklyn, NY “Art for Art's Sake,” Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA “Keine Parole, Aktion-Malerei-Konzept,” The Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg, Germany “Unhinged,” Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY “Reinventing Abstraction,” Cheim & Read, NYC “Season Review,” Edward Thorp Gallery, NYC “Abstraction Advanced,” Edward Thorp Gallery, NYC 2012 “Around the Corner,” Terras Gallery, NYC “Broken/Window/Plane,” Tracey Williams LTD., NYC “Humus Redux: Landscape Painting Across a Spectrum of Abstraction,” The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminister, NJ 2011 “Refocusing the Spotlight: 21 American Painters,” Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY “A Disease of the Oyster,” The Pearl Lounge, New Orleans, LA “Humus: A Collaboration of 21st Century Painters,” John C. Hutcheson Gallery, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN 2010 “Power to the People,” Feature Inc., NYC “Gary Stephan with Richard Rezac,” Devening Projects + Editions, Chicago, IL “False Friends, False Friends,” Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany “Chautauqua: A Continuum of Creativity,” Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC “Non Objective or Not: Dialogues in Modernism,” Wendt Gallery, NYC “Up to the Edge,” Judith Racht Gallery, Harbert, MI “Painting And,” Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Woodstock, NY WAAM Woodstock Artists Association & Museum 2009 “Eye World,” Triple Candie, NYC “Jettison: New Ideas in Abstraction,” Trahern Gallery, Austin Pegy State University, Clarksville, TN “Unlikely,” Kunstverein Konstanz e.V., Konstanz, Germany “Champions of Modernism III,” Wendt Modern, Laguna Beach, CA Ewing Gallery of Art, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN “To Have it About You: the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection,” Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN 2008 “Unlikely,” Stadtische Galerie Waldkraiburg, Germany; W139, Amsterdam, Holland

2007

2006

2005 2003

2001 2000 1999 1998

1997

1996 1995 1994

1993 1992 1991

1990 1989 1988 1987 1986

“International Art Show on Paper,” Col Patrocino dell'Assessorato alla Cultura del Comune di Cesena, Cesena, Italy “Unlikely,” Galerie Kienzle & Gmeiner, Berlin, Germany; Picture Party, Brooklyn, NY “The Recognitions,” The Fireplace Project, East Hampton, NY “Unfathom,” Max Protetch, NYC “Exquisite Abstraction,” White Space, Atlanta, GA “Still Missing,” The Visual Arts Museum, NYC “American Art in Swiss Collections,” Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland “A Drawing and a Painting no.1,” Temporary Museum of Painting, Brooklyn, NY “War is Over,” Sideshow, Brooklyn, NY “After all that can be said,” Kienzle-Gmeiner, Berlin, Germany “I am a Child of Divorce, Give me a Break,” Cynthia Broan Gallery, NYC “Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture,” American Academy of Arts and Letters, NYC “Transcendent and Unrepentant,” University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA “Ball Point,” Geoff Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “177th Annual: Invitational,” National Academy of Design, NYC “Rebuilding Hope,” One Block at a Time, School of Visual Arts, NYC “Vermont Studio Center Press,” Robert Hull Fleming Museum, University of Vermont, VT “Substance,” Neo Images, NYC “Almost Something: Depictive Abstraction,” Catherine Moore Fine Art, NYC “Xthetic,” Curated by Giles Lyon, Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX Stefenelli Exhibition Space, NYC “Size Matters,” Curated by Mike Weiss, Gale Gates, Brooklyn, NY “Debs & Co.,” NYC “Evergreen Review Exhibition,” Curated by Richard Milazzo, NYC “Masters of the Master: MFA Faculty of the School of Visual Arts,” Butler Institute, Youngstown, OH “Annual Benefit,” White Columns, NYC Galeria Siboney, Spain “Leap of Faith: Amenoff, Heilman, Stephan, and Volonakis,” National Arts Club, NYC “Arbeiten Auf Papier,” Andrea Pintsch, Munich, Germany “Attitudes,” S.O.M.A Gallery, San Diego, CA Alternative Art Show, Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn, NY “Highlights From The Permanent Collection,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL “Annual Benefit,” White Columns, NYC “Prints,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC “25th Anniversary,” Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Positions: Attitudes & Arrangements,” Four Walls Gallery, Brooklyn, NY “Flooding Camera,” The Work Space, NYC “East/West,” J.S. Vandam, NYC “Abstract Painting,” Nina Freudenheim, Buffalo, NY “Personal Heroes,” Galerie de la Tour, Amsterdam, Netherlands Tour, Amsterdam, Netherlands “The Return of The Exquisite Cadaver,” The Drawing Center, NYC “Intimate Universe,” Michael Walls Gallery, NYC “The Figure in the Landscape,” Baumgartner Galleries, Washington, DC “Peter Schuyff, Gary Stephan,” Marc Richard Gallery, Santa Monica, CA “Rope,” Fernando Alcolea Gallery, Barcelona, Spain “La Metafisica Della Lee,” John Good Gallery, NYC “The Landscape in Prints,” Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA “Abstract Painting in the Nineties,” Andre Emmerich Gallery, NYC “Spellbound,” Marc Richard Gallery, Santa Monica, CA “The Last Decade: American Artists of the 80's,” Tony Shafrazi Gallery, NYC “Vertigo,” Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France “The Silent Baroque,” Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria “A Decade of American Painting: 1980-89,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Santa Monica, CA “Landscape Painting,” Joan Nelson/Gary Stephan, University Art Galleries, Wright State University, Dayton, OH Kent State University Art Museum, Kent, OH “The Image of Abstraction,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA “The Art at the End of the Social,” Rooseum Gallerie, Malmö, Sweden “Fall Invitational,” The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT “An American Renaissance, Painting and Sculpture Since 1940,” Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL “Paravision,” Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Collections of Douglas S. Cramer,” Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH “Amenoff, Mc Laughlin, Stephan,” Michael Lord Gallery, Milwaukee, WI

1985 1984 1983

1982

1981 1980 1979 1978 1977 1976 1974 1973 1972 1971 1970 1969 1968 1966 1965

“Abstract Painting Redefined,” Louis K. Meisel Gallery, NYC “Recent Abstract Painting,” John Good Gallery, NYC “Work From the Johnson Atelier,” New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ “Five Painters in New York,” Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC “An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture”, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC “Recent Acquisitions: Works on Paper,” The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC “Artist/Critic,” White Columns, NYC Portico Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “Mary Boone and Her Artists,” Siebu Museum, Tokyo, Japan “Language, Drama, Source, and Vision,” The New Museum, NYC “New York, New York,” Newcastle Polytechnic Gallery, Newcastle, England “Sweet Art,” Ronald Feldman Gallery, NYC “The Abstract Image,” Hamilton Gallery, NYC “Early Work,” The New Museum, NYC Mary Boone Gallery, NYC “Great Big Drawings,” Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA “Postminimalism,” The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT “Still Modern After All These Years,” Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA “Painting Institutional,” Oscarsson Hood Gallery, NYC “Drawings,” William Patterson College, NJ Mary Boone Gallery, NYC “Drawings,” Mary Boone Gallery, NYC “The Altered Photograph: 20 Walls, 20 Curators,” Institute for Art and Urban Resources / PS 1, NYC “From Allan to Zucker,” Texas Gallery, Houston, TX Mary Boone Gallery, NYC “Black and White on Paper,” Nova Gallery, NYC “Drawing Show,” Mary Boone Gallery, NYC “Painting 75, 75, 77,” Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY “11 Artists in New York,” Galerie Loyse Von Oppenheim, Nyon, Switzerland “Painting,” Institute for Art and Urban Resources/PS 1, NYC “Ten Painters,” Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA “Art Now '74,” Washington, DC The Art Institute of Chicago, IL Bykert Gallery, NYC Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC “Recent Abstract Painting,” Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY “New York Painting,” American Federation of the Arts (Traveling Exhibition), Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX “Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Biennial Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC “New Work: New York,” American Federation of the Arts, New York Young American Artists, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati “Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Painting,” The Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC “Paintings and sculpture by Peter Gourfain, Steve Conley, Gary Stephan, Phil Wofford, Richard Van Buren,” Bykert Gallery, NYC Hansen Gallery, San Francisco, CA Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Felsenthal, Julia. “Searching for the Architect Eileen Gray on the Lower East Side,” Vogue, 29 July 2015.

Kardon, Dennis. “Gary Stephan,” Art in America, 19 June 2014.

Lowenstein, Drew. “The Slide Area of Abstraction: Gary Stephan at Susan Inglett Gallery,” Artcritical, 23 April 2014.

Schjeldahl, Peter. “Gary Stephan,” The New Yorker, 11 April 2014.

Yau, John. “Gary Stephan Talks to Rene Magritte and Kazimir Malevich,” Hyperallergic, 30 March 2014.

Gay, Malcolm. “Recent Work: Gary Stephan’s abstract paintings light up the Philip Slein Gallery,” Riverfront Times, 6 March 2014.

Bui, Phong. “Gary Stephan with Phong Bui,” The Brooklyn Rail, 3 September 2012.

Yau, John. “What Happens When You Are Not A Track Star for Mineola Prep,” Hyperallergic, 28 April 2012.

Johnson, Ken. "Reinventing Abstraction: New York Painting in the 1980s," The New York Times, 11 July 2013.

John, Yau. “Gary Stephan’s Paradoxes,” T-Space Catalogue, May 2013.

Staff. "Groundbreaking," Art Now Nashville, 1 November 2011.

Nolan, Joe. "Fertile Soil," Nashville Scene, 26 October 2011.

Smith, Roberta. "Painting in the Heady Days, After it Was Proclaimed Dead," The New York Times, 16 February 2007.

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Boucher, Brian. "Gary Stephan at Cynthia Broan,” Art in America, January 2007, 145.

Fox, Catherine. "Exquisite Abstraction," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 2007.

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Clinger, Julia. "Stephan Reinfuses World With Stories," The Chautauquan Daily, 19 July 1994, 4.

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Clot, Manel. "Un Nuevo Paisaje Barroco," El Pais, 3 June 1989.

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Saatchi, Doris. "Man With the Golden Eye", House and Gardens, October 1983, 110-116.

Storr, Robert. "Gary Stephan at Mary Boone," Art in America, May 1983, 163.

Nayhouse, Sabine Grafin. "Neue Kunst Statt Tapetenwechsel," Ambient, May 1983, 138-145.

Pincus-Witten, Robert. "Entries: Increments of Inaccessibility," Arts Magazine, April 1983, 108-110.

Russell, John. "Gary Stephan and David Novros," The New York Times, January 1983, C24.

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Smith, Roberta. "Whitney Biennial: Four Views,” Arts Magazine, March 1973, 65.

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Nelson, Katherine Metcal. ArtNews, October 1966, 59-62.

AWARDS AND HONORS American Academy of Arts and Letters John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship National Endowment for the Arts The New York Arts Foundation

ALINA TENSER Born in Kiev, Ukraine 1981 Virginia Commonwealth University, Sculpture + Extended Media, MFA School of Visual Arts, BFA Lives and Works in NYC SOLO + TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2016 Gary Stephan | Alina Tenser, Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC 2015 “Ultraviolet,” Alina Tenser and Nathalie Provosty, Gallery Diet, Miami, FL Linda Lopez and Alina Tenser, Pig and Pony, Austin, TX “Edge Thin,” curated by Amber Esseiva, AIR Gallery, Brooklyn NY The Kitchen, curated by Lumi Tan, NYC 2014 “Vegetable be Soap!” a performance, Essex Flowers, NYC 2013 “Hip Openers,” Nurture Art, Brooklyn, NY Alina Tenser and Bill Jenkins, The Suburban, Chicago, IL “Holistic Approach,” Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY 2012 “Whiff of Black Ice: Thesis Exhibition,” Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2016 “Queens International 2016,” Queens Museum, Queens, NY 2015 “Condensed Matter Community,” curated by Kristof Wickman and Evan Gruzis, Synchrotron Radiation Center, Madison, WI “An Englishman’s House is His Castle,” curated by Ian Giles, Global Committee, Brooklyn, NY “Feeling of Dread,” curated by Woobie Bogus and John Elio Reitman, Parisian Laundry, Monteal, Canada “Performing Objects,” curated by Enough Room for Space Collective, Brussels, Belgium “Neon Eon,” Kate Werble Gallery, NYC “Break Out!,” curated by Benjamin Faust and Julian Elias Bronner, Frederic de Goldschmidt Collection, Brussels, Belgium “And Sometimes Gravity,” Adds Donna, Chicago, IL 2014 “Circles,” curated by Marco Antonini, Elizabeth Foundation, NYC “Material Art Fair,” Regina Rex Booth, Mexico City 2013 “Table Setting,” Jancar Jones, Los Angeles, CA “Still Moving,” curated by Recess Activities, The James Hotel, NYC “The Made-Up Shrimp Hardly Enlightens Some Double Kisses,” Laurel Gitlen Gallery, NYC “Body Style,” curated by Alisa Baremboym, Bull and Ram, NYC 2012 OUTvideo, International Festival of Video Art, Yekaterinburg, Russia “Crest,” 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA “Almost Famous,” Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA “ONWALLS,” curated by Nancy Lupo, FAB Gallery, Richmond, VA 2011 “Soft Power,” curated by Amanda Friedman and Elizabeth Hirsch, NURTURE Art, Brooklyn, NY SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Roffino, Sara. “Earnest Humor, Alina Tenser: Interview,” The Third Rail, February 2016.

Valinsky, Rachel. “Alina Tenser: Interview,” Bomb Magazine, September 2015.

Staff. “Neon Eon,” Art in America, June 2015.

Staff. “No Entrance, No Exit: Review,” ArtForum, February 2015.

Rooney, Kara. “No Entrance, No Exit,” The Brooklyn Rail, February 2015.

Staff. “No Entrance, No Exit,” The New Yorker, January 2015.

Staff. “Bill Jenkins and Alina Tenser,” The Visualist, August 2013.

AWARDS 2014 Vermont Studio Center Full Fellowship 2013 Dedalus Foundation Industry City Studio Residency 2012 Recess Sessions Resident, NYC Dedalus Foundation, MFA Fellowship Recipient Recipient of Graduate Grant from Virginia Commonwealth University

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2015 Guest Lecturer at Pratt Institute, Sculpture Department, Brooklyn, NY Visiting Artist at Pratt Institute, Sculpture Department, Brooklyn, NY 2014 Guest Lecturer at SVA, Sculpture and Digital Media, NYC 2013 Guest Lecturer for No Questions Series, Cooper Union, NYC

GARY STEPHAN | ALINA TENSER Publication Š 2016 Susan Inglett Gallery NYC All Rights Reserved Design: Aryn Foland Photo Credit: Adam Reich, NYC Photo Credit for Alina Tenser: Gallery Diet, Miami Essay: Raphael Rubinstein Published by: SUSAN INGLETT GALLERY 522 West 24 Street New York, New York 10011 212 647 9111 | info@inglettgallery.com No image or portion thereof may be copied, reproduced or electronically stored/transmitted without permission.

SUSAN INGLETT GALLERY