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BLIND FOLLY
THIS EXHIBITION MARKS THE INAUGURAL SURVEY OF TACITA DEAN’S OEUVRE
BY ARTHUR DEMICHELI
The Menil Collection proudly presents Tacita Dean: Blind Folly, the first major U.S. museum survey of the celebrated British European visual artist Tacita Dean. Dean, who resides in Berlin and Los Angeles, is renowned for her unique, unmediated, and chance-based drawing processes across various mediums, including film and printmaking. Blind Folly —a playful British phrase connoting foolishness— aptly captures Dean’s approach to art, where she allows the inherent behaviors of her mediums to dictate the results. Emphasizing the role of chance and fate in creativity, Dean describes her process as “how to find by not looking.”
The exhibition will feature Dean’s monumental blackboard drawings, which explore the fragility of nature. Highlights include white chalk renderings of melting icebergs and avalanches, echoing the sublime narratives of Romantic painting. Equally captivating are Dean’s large-scale “portraits” of trees, where she envelops cherry blossoms, Jacarandas, and ancient oaks in intricate hand-drawn marks. The display also includes carbon paper lightning drawings, cloud formations on Victorian-era slates, and rarely shown studio drawings on paper, found postcards, and albumen photographs.
A separate gallery will showcase a rotating selection of Dean’s 16mm films, illustrating her concept of “drawing with light.” Among these is her newest film, Claes Oldenburg Draws Blueberry Pie (2023). The exhibition spans Dean’s three-decade career, highlighting themes of obsolescence, environmental fragility, and the creative struggle.
Rebecca Rabinow, Director of The Menil Collection, expressed her excitement, stating, “The Menil is proud to have worked closely with Tacita Dean, an artist we deeply admire. Over the past seven years, she has visited the Menil several times to develop an extraordinarily beautiful and thought-provoking exhibition that includes recent pieces created specifically for it. We look forward to sharing her work with our visitors.”
Michelle White, Senior Curator at The Menil Collection, added, “Weaving together an array of subjects, from classical mythological narratives to natural phenomena, Tacita Dean’s work presents a poignant and urgent reflection on experience in an increasingly virtual and ecologically volatile world. In this anxious moment, she shows us the power of analogue through the act of drawing.”
Tacita Dean: Blind Folly promises to be a landmark exhibition, offering visitors a profound exploration of Dean’s influential and thought-provoking art.
This highly anticipated exhibition, organized in close collaboration with Dean, will be on view from October 11, 2024, through April 20, 2025.
