Solveig Ovstebo - Böcker

In 2015 the Renaissance Society presented an exhibition of newly commissioned works by Los Angeles-based artist Mathias Poledna. Coinciding with the museum’s centennial, it marked the final show in the institution’s first hundred years.For this project Poledna used the notion of iconoclasm and its various historical contexts as a conceptual backdrop for two new works: a 35-mm film installation, co-produced with and premiering at the Renaissance Society, and a substantial alteration to the gallery space: the demolition, dismantling and removal of the gallery’s ceiling structure, a steel truss grid that had horizontally bisected the double-height gallery since 1967. This catalog—featuring a cover designed by artist Peter Downsbrough—documents the exhibition and its installation, and in doing so celebrates a century of the Renaissance Society.

Between the Ticks of the Watch is the catalog to the exhibition of the same name at the Renaissance Society. The show featured artists Kevin Beasley, Peter Downsbrough, Goutam Ghosh, Falke Pisano, and Martha Wilson, who together presented a platform for considering doubt as both a state of mind and a pragmatic tool. Between the Ticks of the Watch traces how doubt can eat away at the foundation of understanding itself, calling into question the very possibility of knowledge—or at least demanding recognition of its limitations.  Featuring two new in-depth essays, a poetic text, and contributions by the artists featured in the exhibition, this catalog further presents doubt as a critical means for identifying new avenues of inquiry. The texts open space for the germination of novel forms and concepts, or questioning structures of power that have long been in place.

In her solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society in 2017, Tenderheaded, Jennifer Packer established herself as one of the most compelling painters of her generation. The exhibition, a selection of portraits and paintings of funerary bouquets, based in observation, improvisation and memory, rigorously engaged with art history at the same time as it maintained a personal response to how black bodies navigate within the present political landscape. Packer’s portraiture foregrounds the autonomy and integrity of her sitting subjects, embodying questions of representation, visibility, and desire. Her paintings of funerary bouquets, meanwhile, provide a personal space in which to address themes of trauma and loss. Packer, whose practice is marked by both its restraint and tenderness, favors the emotive capacity of painting as a form of resistance to fixed identity.The first monograph devoted to the paintings of this important emerging artist, this catalog will address her multiple bodies of work. Tenderheaded includes documentation of the exhibition, an introduction by Solveig Øvstebø, a conversation between Packer and the acclaimed Chicago-based painter Kerry James Marshall, as well as art historical essays and poetry responding to Packer’s work.

Over a fifty-year career, Robert Grosvenor has produced a body of work that is at once solidly physical and conceptual, muscular and fluid. Grosvenor frequently uses industrial materials and found objects as he experiments with texture and scale, resulting in sculptures that reveal a handmade quality and subtle vein of humor.In 2017, the Renaissance Society presented an exhibition of the sculptor’s untitled work from 1989 to 1990. Re-contextualized within a spare architectural installation, this assemblage of materials and found objects eludes interpretation at the same time as it asserts its form and construction. Such nuances, combined with its ambiguous scale, evoke what critic John Yau has suggested is the labor of an “anonymous worker.” Grosvenor has made significant contributions as a sculptor over the past fifty years, but relatively few books have been published about his work. This monograph documents the Renaissance Society show and also features new scholarship considering Grosvenor’s work with a broad scope. The text includes contributions by Yves-Alain Bois, Bruce Hainley, Susan Howe, John Yau, and Renaissance Society executive director and chief curator Solveig Øvstebø.