FRIDMAN GALLERY

Fridman Gallery is proud to present the works of Remy Jungerman and Dasha Shishkin for ESTE ARTES’s online editorial platform, ESTE Journal. Though the artists come from different walks of life, Jungerman’s cotton and kaolin clay grids and Shishkin’s colorful drawings are at once classical and contemporary.

In his work, Jungerman explores the intersection of pattern and symbol in Surinamese Maroon culture, the larger African Diaspora, and 20th Century Modernism. In bringing seemingly disparate visual languages into conversation, Jungerman’s work challenges the established art historical canon.

In Dasha Shishkin’s paintings and prints, she allows line to take ultimate precedence. Although bright blocks of color inhabit her compositional spaces, Shishkin removes herself from the painter’s milieu, emphasizing that she is “still attached to line and [the] eloquent silhouettes that line creates, leaving painting and colors to be fillers and not definers”.

In its eighth year, the gallery continues to be a platform and incubator for a diverse, international roster of artists working across disciplines, from painting and sculpture to performance, video and sound art. Our 2021 program includes five solo and two group shows, a performance series, and the inaugural writer-curator residency. Of special note are first-ever solo gallery exhibitions by Milford Graves and Dindga McCannon, pioneers of mixed media art and mentors to several generations of creators.

Fridman Gallery (New York)
Iliya Fridman, director
169 Bowery, New York, NY 10002 USA
www.fridmangallery.com
@fridmangallery

COMISSIONED WRITINGS

Recuerdos de lo salvaje

Apuntes sobre la obra de Dasha Shishkin de Jacqueline Lacasa. Febrero 2021.

Las hegemonías de la memoria, cuando miramos arte, nos llevan a reconfigurar las imágenes, nos llevan a una reedición de experiencias que guía la intuición. Ese es el desafío al que nos enfrenta la obra de Dasha Shishkin, que en el cosmos que crea nos da la oportunidad de evocar, hecho que en estos tiempos pandémicos pasa a ser un mecanismo para desarrollar la resiliencia. Nacida en Rusia en 1977, Dasha Shishkin vive desde la adolescencia en Nueva York, donde ha realizado una larga formación en arte. En su obra, conformada por dibujos y pinturas con distintas técnicas y sobre diferentes soportes, aborda escenas que emergen desde lo más humano, con una fuerte impronta conceptual. Esta artista es presentada por Fridman Gallery en ESTE Journal 2021 con la pieza Unimaginably savage, pintura ampliamente representativa de su trabajo.

Dasha Shishkin’s signature figurative drawings on Mylar (translucent plastic film) use vivid colors, flattened perspective and overlapping, non-hierarchical narratives. In Dasha Shishkin’s paintings and prints, she allows line to take ultimate precedence. Although bright blocks of color inhabit her compositional spaces, Shishkin removes herself from the painter’s milieu, emphasizing that she is “still attached to line and [the] eloquent silhouettes that line creates, leaving painting and colors to be fillers and not definers”. Her intricate compositions vary from complex scenes of human interaction to patterning and designs devoid of human figures. Shishkin exploits the imperfections of found materials, such as creases in a canvas, to serve as catalysts for expression. Shishkin earned an MFA from Columbia University in 2006 and a BFA from the New School for Social Research in 2001. Solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara, CA; Griffelkunst, Hamburg, Germany; and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH. She is currently preparing for a solo exhibition at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO. Group exhibitions include Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York; Saatchi Gallery, London; and the Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens.

Theresa Sigmund interviews Remy Jungerman on Contemporary& (2018): “I am fascinated by how dominant Western culture operates and has kept a monopoly on contemporary art, and how art from African perspectives is just read historically in one way. Western culture has traditionally denied the contemporaneity of art from African perspectives and yet enriched itself by using it. So I am interested in creating work from a new center that looks on that scenario from a different perspective and in doing so outs the dominant Western culture”

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Vincent van Velsen writes on Remy Jungerman: Crossing the water on ARC (2015): “Remy Jungerman uses mainly textiles with patterns that seem to be direct forthcomings of the abstract works by Mondrian and his fellow De Stijl artists. However, they also carry the heritage and cultural meaning of early twentieth-century Caribbean cloth. Furthermore, they relate to the abstract Modernists, such as Robert Ryman. The latter demonstrated that pictorial complexity can be achieved by using an extremely restricted vocabulary. In his white works, Ryman attributed great importance to the (painted) surface and the artist’s touch. He used the two as essential elements in his highly refined examination of the optical and material properties of the act of painting and thereby the entire medium/discipline.
Ryman focused on art itself, aiming and investigating possibilities along with transitions within materiality – not referring to the outsides of the picture’s frame. Everything lies in between the four edges of the square. Jungerman also makes use of the square while reflecting on the meaning of art. Specifically, on the disparity in accounted value to works of art from different geographical areas. At the same time, he investigates the materiality of the object itself, like Ryman within his manifold white squares. The squares Jungerman uses are not necessarily confined to the definition of mere monochromes, but often partake in the bigger picture”

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Cathy Byrd interviews Remy Jungerman on Fresh Art Intl (2014): “I’m connecting it with modernism, and modernism is actually the strict grid form or abstract geometric forms, used by artists like [Piet] Mondrian and the grids are — originally they are patterns of clothes people wear during rituals. Lately, I’ve been doing, for instance, silk screens, which are based on clothes, which are large, abstract, geometric forms, which the Surinamese Maroons have used as clothes, dresses, and they’ve made them themselves. They originated, I think, in quilts from Africa”

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In his work, Remy Jungerman explores the intersection of pattern and symbol in Surinamese Maroon culture, the larger African Diaspora, and 20th Century Modernism. In bringing seemingly disparate visual languages into conversation, Jungerman’s work challenges the established art historical canon. As art and culture critic Greg Tate has remarked: “Jungerman’s work leaps boldly and adroitly into the epistemological gap between culturally confident Maroon self-knowledge and the Dutch learning curve around all things Jungerman, Afropean and Eurocentric”.

Born and raised in Suriname, he is a descendant, on his mother’s side, of the Surinamese Maroons who escaped enslavement on Dutch plantations to establish self-governed communities in the Surinamese rainforest. Within their rich culture, many West-African influences are preserved including the prominent use of abstract geometrical patterns. Placing fragments of Maroon textiles, as well other materials found in the African diaspora such as the kaolin clay used in many African religious traditions or the nails featured in West African Nkisi Nkondi power sculpture, in direct contact with materials and imagery drawn from more “established” art traditions, Jungerman presents a peripheral vision that can enrich and inform our perspective on art history.