Detail View: University Art Galleries (UMassD):

Installation by Petah Coyne

February 2 - March 8, 1991

1991

University Art Gallery (UMass Dartmouth Galleries)

Directed by Lasse Antonsen

The Petah Coyne exhibit is in one sense quite common. This is to say, it is one of a long line in the very fine exhibits hosted by the College of Visual and Performing Arts at SMU. In another and more meaningful sense, it is decidedly uncommon. It presents the work of an extraordinary gifted contemporary artist in a stunningly provocative way, inducing both poetic and affective responses that are evoked only by the most sublime expressions. My congratulations to all involved in a truly superb performance. Undoubtedly the many people who are privileged to view Mr. Coyne's work will come away profoundly affected. – John R. Brazil, President of Southeastern Massachusetts University Petah Coyne's work has been characterized as a grim yet elegant, personal and cooly professional, enchanted yet classical, visceral yet abstract. That it should elicit contrary characterizations is not surprising. The primary material, wire mesh, is at once both a grid and the integument of a dark organ/fruit; it is delicate and open, yet in layers substantial and solid. The dense black casting sand which covers it enhances both its graphic elegance and its textured fleshiness. Hanging, these pods invert our customary expectation of sculptural support, but their proximity to the floor increases their weight. Surely, these and other contradictions in the work have analogues in nature's delicate poise between life and death, its essential fragility. Art which is expressively rich, which works near the limits of conventional expression, and which by example encourages others to explore their own sources of motivation, art like Petah Coyne's, is especially appropriate for exhibition at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Southeastern Massachusetts University. Fundamental to the College's educational objectives is the premise that students at the university should have the opportunity to respond to work which is near the center of critical discourse. In addition, the College has an important cultural mission in southeastern Massachusetts, and that mission can be served very effectively by exhibitions of important younger artists. This exhibition would have been impossible without the participation of the Massachusetts Arts Council, now the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The College and the Gallery of Art are proud to have worked together with it and other units of the university on this project and they look forward to future collaborations which will nourish creative expression in the arts. – Michael Taylor, Dean of Visual and Performing Arts

installation

12009_007

ephemera - poster

COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION: Under the direction of the Visual Resource Center digital collections are made available to the UMass Dartmouth campus community for the sole purpose of classroom instruction and study in accordance U.S. Copyright Laws . All other uses are prohibited and are subject to copyright infringements.

UMass Dartmouth Art Galleries

Petah Coyne

American

1953 -

Coyne's sculptures convey tension between vulnerability and aggression, innocence and seduction, beauty and decadence, and, ultimately, life and death. Coyne's work seems Victorian in its combination of overloaded refinement with a distinctly decadent and morbid undercurrent. She acknowledges the influence of sculptors Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois on her work. Coyne was born in Oklahoma City, but the family moved repeatedly before settling in Dayton, Ohio, when Coyne was 12. She lives and works in New York and New Jersey. While in high school, she took art courses at the University of Dayton, and then went on to Kent State University and graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She changes materials every few years to approach the creative process from a fresh angle. The inspiration for each change often derives from her travels abroad. Besides creating the sculptural installations for which she is best known, Coyne also works with photography. Coyne's creations are extremely labor-and time-intensive. Their layered materials provide a visual record of the passage of time during Coyne's creation of the piece. The sculptures also relate to time in the form of memory—the artist's personal memories as well as memories these objects evoke in viewers. Solo exhibitions include Vermilion Fog at Galerie LeLong, NY; Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin at Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Petah Coyne: Hairworks Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH. Selected group exhibitions include Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion at the Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TX, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, NY, the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; Uncontained, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Material Actions, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA. Coyne�s work is in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY and many more.

http://www.petahcoyne.org/

http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=576

http://www.nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/petah-coyne

11/06/13

jtrinh