Center for the Arts

Diane Simpson: Cardboard-Plus, 1977–1980 presents her large-scale cardboard sculptures and collaged constructions in their most comprehensive presentation since 1980. These works represent an important transition in the artist’s practice from drawing and printmaking into sculpture. Each sculpture is composed additively of interlocking planar shapes supporting each other to form a volume. The artist’s use of cardboard was a pragmatic solution to creating easily-transportable works without a studio space. Cardboard also doubles as volumetric paper, becoming a support surface for intricate graphite drawings on many of the sculptures. Simpson's later work, for which she is so well-known, contains references to the architecture of clothing and fashion. In contrast, the body of work in Cardboard-Plus is much more formal in nature. Cardboard-Plus is a rare moment to view works by the artist not often seen in the last 40 years.


RELATED EVENTS

Artist Talk: Matt Keegan
Tuesday, February 4, 2020 at 4:30pm
Zilkha Gallery 202
FREE!
Brooklyn-based artist Matt Keegan will speak about his practice and its intersections with Diane Simpson’s work.

Talk by David Grubbs
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 12pm
Adzenyah Rehearsal Hall 003 (Daltry Room)
FREE!
Musician/composer David Grubbs will speak about his work.

Susan Howe and David Grubbs: WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 4:30pm
FREE!
WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER is the fourth collaboration in a decade from poet Susan Howe and musician/composer David Grubbs. Veering away from the stuttering, profoundly fragmented seance of their Frolic Architecture (2011), they present a sound work that germinates from text collages and other material published in Howe's collection Debths (New Directions, 2017). This performance work was created while the material (Tom Tit Tot, Childe Roland, Paul Thek, W.B. Yeats, Isabella Stewart Gardner, etc.) in Debths was being arranged. The work combines Howe’s reading with the resonant sounds and represented spaces of Grubbs’ piano playing and field recordings made in Boston's Gardner Museum. Co-sponsored by Writing at Wesleyan.

Millie Kapp and Matt Shalzi Artist Talk: Curating Performance in the Gallery
Wednesday, February 26 at 12:15pm
Zilkha Gallery 106
FREE!
Join Millie Kapp and Matt Shalzi in an open conversation with Wesleyan’s Associate Director of Visual Arts Ben Chaffee. Lunch will be provided.

Millie Kapp and Matt Shalzi
Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 5pm
FREE!
New York-based collaborative duo Millie Kapp and Matt Shalzi present a commissioned performance made in response to Diane Simpson's exhibition Cardboard-Plus, 1977–1980 and the architectural space of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.



Benjamin Chaffee, Associate Director of Visual Arts
Gallery Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday, Noon–5pm
Thursday, Noon–7pm
Friday through Sunday, Noon–5pm