Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin

Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin includes key works from the 1980s, 1990s and three recent large-scale sculptures, one of which “cries” tears, in an allusion to miracles and faith. The exhibition will open at Galerie Lelong on Saturday, January 29, from 6 to 8 PM. The artist will be present at the opening.

The exhibition’s title, Above and Beneath the Skin, is a reference to Coyne’s fascination with unconventional materials and her skill at transforming matter into metaphor. The wax, sand, and silk flowers, which cover many of the sculptures, are analogous to skin, simultaneously obscuring and protecting the essential characteristics and meanings of the sculptures.

Coyne’s diverse bodies of work--from the early black sand hanging sculptures, to the wax “chandeliers”, the hair works, “White Rain”, and the current works in wax and silk--all share a central dialectic of strength and fragility. The sculptures are imposing in size, but appear vulnerable and delicate.

Coyne has been exhibiting in New York since 1987. This exhibition, her third at Galerie Lelong, marks a notable and remarkable point in her career. She is one of the few, perhaps the only, contemporary sculptor who successfully combines figuration and abstraction. The current exhibition shows her again exploring new media while staying consistent with her search for a startling aesthetic language, one that personifies fragility, morbidity, beauty and regeneration.

Since Coyne’s last exhibition at Lelong in 2001, she has had a solo show, Fairy Tales, at the Frist Center for Contemporary Art and the Cincinnati Art Museum. During that time, her sculpture has been represented in a number of museum shows, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Detroit Art Institute, Michigan; the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts; and the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska.

A concurrent exhibition, Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin, will take place at the SculptureCenter, Long Island City, from January 16 to April 10, 2005. The exhibition is organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and will travel to the Chicago Cultural Center, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, before concluding at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in September 2006. A full-color catalogue with substantive essays by Douglas Dreishpoon, Eleanor Heartney and Nancy Princenthal accompanies the exhibition.

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Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin