Wesleyan University's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery presents "Diane Simpson: Cardboard-Plus, 1977-1980" January 28 through March 1, 2020
Diane Simpson with her installation at Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, 1979.
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Diane Simpson with her installation at Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, 1979.
Click here to download high resolution version.
Diane Simpson, "Corrugated Drawing," 1978. Corrugated board, graphite, 110 × 46 × 18 inches. Courtsey of the Artist; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; JTT, New York; and Herald Street, London.
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Middletown, Conn.—"Diane Simpson: Cardboard-Plus, 1977-1980," an exhibition of the artist’s large-scale cardboard sculptures and collaged constructions shown together for the first time in 40 years, curated by Associate Director of Visual Arts Benjamin Chaffee, will be on view in Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, located at 283 Washington Terrace on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown, Connecticut, from Tuesday, January 28 through Sunday, March 1, 2020. Gallery hours are Tuesday and Wednesday from Noon to 5pm; Thursday from Noon to 7pm; and Friday through Sunday from Noon to 5pm. Admission to the gallery and performances is free and open to the public. Please see below for more information about the exhibition, the artist, and related events.
About the Exhibition
Created soon after completing her M.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978 at the age of 43, these sculptural works were last exhibited collectively in Simpson’s first two solo exhibitions at Artemisia Gallery, Chicago (1979) and at Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York (1980). These early works are already emblematic of the artist’s mature style and show Simpson’s transition from her studies in drawing and printmaking into sculpture, the medium that would become the focus of her decades-long career.
Although these works are from early in Simpson’s career, they are consistent with her enduring solutions to the challenges of sculpture. Already you can see her incorporation of a 45-degree rotation in her sculptures, allowing a simultaneous approach to the front and the side views of the objects. This is a sculptural translation of a perspectival drawing technique for rendering three dimensions in two. Though static in nature the sculptures almost appear to hover, suspended between each perspective. The cardboard surfaces also host drawings, somtimes of textural rubbed crayon and others with intricate graphite lines describing other geometric spaces. Sculpture as drawing supporting drawing. Drawing as sculpture. Drawing supported by objects rendered from drawing.
Another enduring characteristic of Simpson’s early work is her anti-illusionistic use of quotidian materials. Cardboard was a pragmatic solution to creating easily-transportable works without a studio space. Resembling a sewing practice, each cut piece is an interlocking planar shape supporting each other to additively compose a volume. Works that at first glance appear almost industrially-produced upon closer reflection reveal slight moments of the presence of the artist’s hand and her idiosyncratic engineering solutions.
Most well-known is Simpson’s later work which contains references to the architecture of clothing and elements of fashion; and has been the subject of recent solo museum exhibitions at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2015), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2016), and the 2019 Whitney Biennial. In contrast the works in "Diane Simpson: Cardboard-Plus, 1977–1980" are much more formal in nature. These works, not included in the museum exhibitions above, expand the narrative of Simpson’s career, show the scale of her ambition and illuminate her path into sculpture.
About Diane Simpson
Born in 1935, Diane Simpson is a Chicago-based artist who for the past 40 years has created sculptures and preparatory drawings that evolve from a diverse range of sources, including clothing, utilitarian objects, and architecture. She has exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad, most recently at the 2019 Whitney Biennial. In 2010, a 30 year retrospective was held at the Chicago Cultural Center, and she has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. In 2019, Simpson was one of the ten recipients of the "Anonymous Was a Woman" award. Her artwork is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois; Perez Museum, Miami, Florida; and the Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, California and Paris, France. She received a B.F.A. in 1971 and an M.F.A. in 1978 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Simpson is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; JTT, New York; and Herald St., London.
Related Events
FREE!
Opening Reception
Tuesday, January 28, 2020 from 4:30pm to 6pm; artist talk by Diane Simpson at 5pm.
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
Artist Talk: Matt Keegan
Tuesday, February 4, 2020 at 4:30pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Room 202
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 Noon
Adzenyah Rehearsal Hall, Room 003 (Daltry Room), 60 Wyllys Avenue
Musician/composer David Grubbs will speak about his work. Co-sponsored by the Music Department.
Susan Howe and David Grubbs: "WOODSLIPPERCOUNTERCLATTER"
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 4:30pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
"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
Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 5pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
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.