SUMMONING
November 23, 2024 - January 25, 2025 Artists Reception, December 7 | 5-7PM
SUMMONING
November 23, 2024 - January 25, 2025
Artists Reception, December 7 | 5-7PM
Rena Bransten Gallery is pleased to present the group exhibition Summoning with work by Dawoud Bey, Sydney Cain, Jonathan Calm, Rodney Ewing, Rupert Garcia, Doug Hall, Oliver Lee Jackson, Hung Liu, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Robert Minervini, Tracey Moffatt, Viviana Paredes, Rose Piper, and Lava Thomas.
Spanning a variety of media – painting, photography, works on paper, and sculpture – this exhibition highlights how art can be used as a tool for evocation. The artists included commune with past and future, often summoning spirits to the present through their powerful work.
We introduce the large, newly published tapestry by Amalia Mesa-Bains Sleeping Nun, a portrayal of the monjas coronadas (“crowned nuns”) of 18th and 19th century colonial Mexico. The families of these nuns made donations to the church to protect and sequester their daughters, much like a marriage dowry, and Mesa-Bains alludes to the complexity of women’s roles by layering in a female medical doll. Also included are dancing Calaveras, perhaps alluding to the women achieving freedom in death.
Viviana Paredes’ sculptural work on view – a pair of glass hands holding a string of prayer beads – references a well-known, Mazatec healer Maria Sabina. Sabina used ritual of song, poetry, chanting, and incantation during sacred mushroom ceremonies. By invoking Sabina, Peredes posits there are invisible forces and the existence of things greater than ourselves.
Hung Liu’s dialog with the past is at the foundation of her oeuvre, reimagining historical photographs as paintings and memorializing the extraordinary stories of ordinary people. New works on paper from Sydney Cain continue an exploration of ancestral communing as shadowy, enigmatic figures gather in other-worldly realms. Dawoud Bey’s large scale, black and white photographic series In This Here Place uses images of southern plantations as a narrative starting point to consider how the land holds memory; his images become portraits without people, suggesting that the stories of those who existed in these places are ever-present.
Oliver Lee Jackson No. 10, 2015 (8.21.15), 2015
Oil-based paints, mixed media on panel
97 x 74 inches (framed)
$120,000
Jonathan Calm Double Vision (Underground) 2020
Archival pigment print
46 3/4 x 56 1/2 inches (framed) Edition of 6
$11,000
Sydney Cain OTA (PROCESSION I), 2024
Acrylic, magnetite, steel, pigment, soft pastel on paper
74 x 72 inches
SOLD
Thomas I Walk in the Light of My Ancestors’ Prayers, 2024
Altered tambourines, pyrographic calligraphy on metallic leather, mirrored acrylic disks, grosgrain ribbon
59 1/2 x 115 1/4 x 2 inches
$32,000
Lava
Dawoud Bey
In This Here Place: Tall Grass, Fence and Cabin, 2019
Gelatin silver print
49 1/4 x 60 inches (framed) Edition of 6 $47,000
Dawoud Bey
In This Here Place: Mississippi River and Trees, 2019
Gelatin silver print
49 1/4 x 60 inches (framed) Edition of 6
$47,000
Rodney Ewing Home, 2018
Recycled wood on panel (diptych)
25 x 111 x 3 1/2 inches
$8,500
Hung Liu
Alterpiece, 1992
Oil on canvas in wood frame, box with silk shoes, imitation jade flowers
25 x 15 x 8 inches
$120,000
Rupert Garcia
La Xochitl IV Tapestry, 2003
Hand painted tapestry
82 x 82 inches
Edition of 5
$33,000
Acrylic on canvas
68 x 72 inches
$18,000
Robert Minervini Monumental, 2016
Invocations (7), 2000
printed in ultra violet inks
45 1/4 x 40 1/4 inches (framed)
$14,000
Tracey Moffatt
Photo-silkscreen
Tracey Moffatt Invocations (11), 2000
Photo-silkscreen printed in ultra violet inks
60 x 50 inches (framed)
$17,500
Doug Hall
Olompali Valley Oak I, 2023
Pigment print, wall text
48 1/2 x 78 1/2 inches (framed)
*dimensions include wall text
Edition of 6
$10,000
Amalia Mesa-Bains
Sleeping Nun in Venus Envy Chapter III: Cihuatlampa, The Place of the Giant Women, 1997-2024
Jacquard tapestry
57 x 70 inches
Edition of 3
$30,000
Oliver Lee Jackson Painting No. 8, 2022 (11.2.22), 2022 Oil-based paints, colored pencils on panel
25 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches (framed)
$40,000
Viviana Paredes
Everywhere / nowhere, 2018 Cast glass, ceramic beads, steel plate
Sculpture: 6 x 13 x 10 inches
Steel plate: 15 x 13 x 1/4 inches
$20,000
37 3/4 x 40 3/4 inches (framed)
Lava Thomas Looking Back IV, 2021
Graphite, conte pencil, watercolor on paper
$40,000
37 3/4 x 40 3/4 inches (framed)
Lava Thomas Looking Back III, 2017
Graphite, conte pencil, watercolor on paper
$40,000
Rodney Ewing Haints No. 3, 2020
Hand colored silkscreen on vintage ledger paper
34 3/4 x 24 3/4 inches
$7,500
Rose Piper
I want my sisters to go with me to feast on that heavenly manna
Date unknown
Painting
17 1/4 x 14 1/8 x 3/4 inches (framed)
SOLD