R. H. Quaytman

As part of Sequence 7, Miguel Abreu Gallery is pleased to present R. H. Quaytman’s new, large-scale painting from The Sun Does Not Move (Dear Johns), Chapter 35. This ambitious new work inaugurates the artist’s largest panel size included in her system to date – 52 3/8 x 84 3/8 inches. It will be on view at 36 Orchard Street before it ships out to Portugal, where it will be exhibited as part of Quaytman’s survey show at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto.

“This somewhat melodramatic painting turned out to be an unusual one for me […] I worked on it from late January to now. It came about after I wrote a short essay on Jaspers Johns’s Flags for his upcoming retrospective at the Whitney and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After writing it, I thought it was only fair that I would try to paint an American flag painting too. I used my system to compose eight sections based on the eight panel measurements all my panels fit into. This enabled me to arrive at this complex composition that otherwise I would never have been able to invent. I hope it reflects somehow the fracture or divisions in our current disunity as a country. I also hope it will provide many diverse interpretations […] It means a lot to me, and I think it goes quite well with not only the other works in The Sun Does Not Move, Chapter 35, but also with Morning, Chapter 30 which was completed right before the election of our current president.”

—R. H. Quaytman

Sequence 7: One work, One week is an exhibition format wherein, over the course of several weeks, a single artwork is on view at our 36 Orchard Street space. This sequencing of objects by various artists articulated over time constitutes a break from the traditional group show in which works are installed in relation to one another in space rather than time.

R. H. Quaytman (b. 1961, Boston) studied at Bard College and at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques in Paris, and received the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in 2001. In 2015, Quaytman was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize with Michael Krebber. Since 2006, Quaytman has taught at Bard College, in addition to lecturing at Princeton University, Cooper Union, Columbia University, and the Yale University School of Art. In 2005, she co-founded Orchard, a cooperatively-run exhibition and event space that concluded its three-year run on the Lower East Side in 2008. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Insititute of Chicago, the Pinault Collection, the Tate Modern, the Museo Reina Sofia, the V–A–C Foundation, Fondazione Memmo, the CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others.

Quaytman’s work was featured in documenta 14 (2017), the 54th Venice Biennale and the 2010 Whitney Biennial, and solo shows dedicated to her work were held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2018), Secession, Vienna (2017), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016), Miguel Abreu Gallery (2008, 2015), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2015), Renaissance Society, Chicago (2013), the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2012), Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels (2012, 2014), the Kunsthalle Basel (2011), Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne (2011), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2010), and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2009). In 2019, her work was prominently included in Luogo e Segni, curated by Mouna Mekouar and Martin Bethenod at the Punta Della Dogana, Venice. Other two-person and group exhibitions include Electric/A Virtual Reality Exhibition, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Serralves Museum, Porto (2019); Signal or Noise, SMAK, Ghent (2019); Jay DeFeo: The Ripple Effect, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado and Le Consortium, Dijon (2018); Field Guide, Remai Moden, Saskatoon (2017); Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, MUMOK, Vienna (2016) and Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2015); The Distance of Day, curated by Rita Kersting, The Isreal Museum, Jerusalem (2016); No Man’s Land, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2015); New Skin, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2015); America is Hard to See, The Whitney Museum, New York (2015); A History. Art, architecture, design from 1980 until today, curated by Christine Macel, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); Arrhythmia (A Tale of Many Squares), with Martin Barré, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris (2013); and Materials and Money and Crisis, co-organized by Richard Birkett and Sam Lewitt, MUMOK, Vienna (2013); Abstract Generation, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); The Angel of History, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2013); and Dynamo, Grand Palais, Paris (2013). Spine, a comprehensive monograph focusing on the artist’s work from The Sun, Chapter 1 through Spine, Chapter 20, was published by Sequence/Sternberg Press in 2011, and a second monograph covering Cherchez Holopherne, Chapter 21 through The Sun Does Not Move, Chapter 35 is forthcoming. Other major monographs include Morning: Chapter 30 (MOCA, Delmonico, Prestel, 2016), חקק, Chapter 29 (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2015), and Dalet, Chapter 24 (Museum Abteiberg, 2012), along with critical discussions of Quaytman’s work in Afterall, Parkett, October, Texte zur Kunst, and Grey Room.

In 2019, a retrospective exhibition, The Sun Does Not Move, Chapter 35, was mounted at Muzeum Sztuki in Lódz, Poland. A second iteration of the show will open in October 2020 at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal. In March 2021, Quaytman will have a solo exhibition, curated by Dirk Snauweart, at Wiels, Brussels.