No Regrets

The LeRoy Neiman Gallery
Columbia University, New York, NY
October 19 - November 10, 2016
Reception: Friday, October 21, 5 - 7 pm

Curated by Guy Ben-Ari and Leah Wolff

Participating artists:
Beverly Acha
Noah Breuer
Ryan Coffey
Mark Joshua Epstein
Jasper Johns
Heather Lynn Johnson
Caitlin MacBride
Sharon Madanes
Lior Modan
Victoria Roth
Sarah Sze
Emily Weiner

NO REGRETS includes selected prints by established artists from the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, as well as new works by emerging New York based artists. The paintings, drawings and prints in this exhibition represent different examinations of form and process, through visual signification of layers, structures and physical gestures. The exhibition coincides with New York Print Week 2016.

The title of this show echos Regrets, Jasper Johns’ most recent exhibition of drawings and prints at MoMA. Following this, NO REGRETS becomes a double negative, the grammatical construction of a double negation. The works in this show explore the act of double negation as a working strategy, each containing a repeated act of reversal, cancellation or rejection. This offers a counter response to Jasper John’s well known sketchbook description of his process: ''Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it”.

Several of the paintings in the exhibition share a dominant element of hand gestures, as often appear in the works of Jasper Johns. While the mark of the hand is signified as absent in a painting by Emily Weiner, it is represented in the paintings by Sharon Madanes, and encapsulated in the large, materially enigmatic painting by Lior Modan. The prints by Noah Breuer approach textile patterns as a starting point which carries a personal narrative and historical signifiers. Caitlin MacBride approaches the materiality of fabric both as surface and subject of negation.

In the layered works of a deconstructed image, Sarah Sze’s prints propose a literal examination of the viewer’s visual sensory perception, while Heather Johnson presents a self portrait in a pose and point of view which is normally associated with the straight male selfies. Ryan Coffey utilizes digital technology in producing a virtual note to create a printed simulation of a wet signature, addressing Johns but not in his own voice. The vibrant, cumulative, detailed drawings by Mark Epstein can be traced back to some of John’s fascination with arbitrary design properties of everyday objects, while the drawing by Victoria Roth and the painting by Beverly Acha share a physical presence in their materiality which may make the viewer aware of their own inescapable experience of the body.