CHEYMORE GALLERY

233 Route 17, Tuxedo Square • Tuxedo Park, New York 10987  www.cheymoregallery.com

For Immediate Release

Prophetic Diagrams II

October 25 - December 19, 2014

Opening reception:   Saturday, October 25, 2014 4-6pm

"So we didn't summon Lucifer that evening, but I was struck by the fact that besides a few incantations and supplicatory overtures to the devil, the vast majority of the spell was concerned with describing the visual nature of the process.  Specific diagrams needed to be drawn, objects carefully arranged.  It was less important to persuade the demon to come to you with words than to call upon them with images he/she recognized--it was all about drawing."

from the essay "Prophetic Diagrams by Will Corwin

Cheymore Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Prophetic Diagrams II

Bruce Pearson                         Carin Riley

Cy Morgan                               Dan Perfect

Elizabeth Ferry                         Elizabeth Kley

Fiona Rae                                 Fred Tomaselli

Joyce Pensato                         Kathleen White

Katie Holten                             Mike Ballou

Mike Cloud                              Morgan Hughes de Rham

Nathlie Provosty                      Paul Anthony Smith

Shervonne Neckles                 Simon Patterson

Tim Harrington                        Tom Levine

Will Corwin

Based on the idea of summoning spirits via diagram, inspired by an18th century German book of black magic discovered in a dumpster on 13th St. in Manhattan, curator Will Corwin personally asked* a group of artists to loan works that they felt were either diagrammatic or possessed the quality of summoning spirits or entities, or both.  The first exhibition took place in London at the George and Jorgen Gallery and featured such artists as Sarah Lucas, Fiona Rae, Joyce Pensato, Carin Riley, Roxy Paine, Bob and Roberta Smith and Lucy Skaer.  The second iteration of the exhibition opens at the Cheymore Gallery on Saturday October 25, and will run through December 19.  Pensato, Rae, Bruce Pearson, Simon Patterson and Mike Ballou have all returned for an encore (almost all submitting new drawings) and they have been joined by Mike Cloud, Elizabeth Kley, Katie Holten and Fred Tomaselli among others.

In his review of "Prophetic Diagrams," David Barrett in ArtMonthly wrote "The central tenet...is the revelation that it is good drawing technique, apparently, that is the key to successfully summoning a demon.  The unique rune-like marks that each spirit responds to must be accurately inscribed.  This exhibition then, is a multi-voiced disquisition that extrapolates that point into a wider thesis defining the activity of drawing--drawing as a tool-making activity, drawing as diagramming, and drawing as  incantation and summoning."  Several of the artists present deities: Elizabeth Ferry's drippy benevolent "Froggy Totem" is contrasted with Joyce Pensato's brutal "De Niro," where Jake LaMotta explodes with black and gold enamel blood, and Tom Levine charges the intersection of two nudes, creating a hybrid monster. Bruce pearson inscribes a hidden socio-political mantra in his patchwork watercolor while Mike Could etches a not-so-suble lamentation in thick oil paint on paper.  

The most diagrammatic works in "the prophecy fulfilled," Simon Patterson's zanily re-labeled cross-section of a cruise ship, Kathleen White's symbolist appropriation of music score and treble and bass clefs, and Katie Holten's networks of movement and environmental usage, serve to inform the viewer of diagrams at their most spontaneous and creative.  other pieces in the show, like Paul Anthony Smith's photo collage ode to the papaya act as vectors to retool and reinterpret the intersection between abstract symbols, cartographies and text, and realistic representation.

*with the exception of Kathleen White who passed away this September and was curated into the exhibition by her friend Elizabeth Kley.