GRAY is pleased to announce GRAY at 60, an exhibition and accompanying book commemorating six decades since the gallery’s founding in 1963 by Richard Gray (1928-2018).
Featuring works by sixty historical and living artists whose practices have been integral to the gallery’s vision, GRAY at 60 presents the legacy and future of one of the United States’s longest running galleries. The exhibition opens at GRAY Chicago on January 26, 2023 and remains on view through March 11, and will be on view at GRAY New York from March 31 through May 26.
GRAY at 60 pursues a single material—paper—across more than one hundred years of art history to survey the myriad ways in which artists use the medium as an index of touch and a surface for immediacy. The exhibition takes root in the gallery’s intertwined histories of presenting canonical artists alongside those reinventing the canon itself.
Bob Thompson, Gathering, 1961
Exhibited in the inaugural exhibition at Richard Gray Gallery, 1963
As gallery Principal Paul Gray notes, “From the beginning of the gallery there was the eclectic mission of acquiring, exhibiting, and dealing in the masters of the century’s first half such as Matisse, Picasso, Léger, Giacometti, and Gorky, combined with representing and exhibiting prominent mid-career artists of the time, Calder, de Kooning, Avery, and Morris Louis, as well as exhibitions for young and emerging artists like 26 year-old Bob Thompson whom the gallery presented in its inaugural show in 1963.”
Willem de Kooning, Two Women I, 1952
Principal Valerie Carberry adds, “The artists featured in GRAY at 60 represent who we are now. Our long history of presenting major artists of the 20th century is also an ever-renewing history of art in our own time. For instance, when we showed de Kooning, he was a contemporary artist. The anniversary exhibition expresses our enthusiasm for supporting artists’ careers over time and for always building for the future.”
Reflecting on this history, GRAY at 60 makes space for Modernist, Abstract Expressionist, Pop, Contemporary, and other expansive practices to be shown along side one another. These transhistorical readings posit a logic for the works of Agnes Martin and Barnett Newman to hang alongside a tar paper work by Theaster Gates; for the colorful forms of Joan Miró, Jackson Pollock, Grace Hartigan, and Helen Frankenthaler to enter into dialogue with McArthur Binion’s and Carrie Moyer’s; for Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse to converse with Alex Katz and David Hockney; for a balance between the sculptors Alexander Calder, Jaume Plensa, and Torkwase Dyson’s impressions in two dimensions; and for Rashid Johnson’s figures to join those by Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, and Philip Guston.
In considering these conversions of art-making across time, GRAY at 60 finds the medium of paper a fitting ledger with which to trace the years past and those to come.
Bethany Collins
The Odyssey: 2001/1853, 2022
Graphite and toner on Somerset paper
Framed: Each 46 ½ × 65 × 1 ¾ in.
(118.1 × 165.1 × 4.4 cm)
Jim Dine
Plane and Brace, 1962
Crayon and gouache on Arches paper
29 ¾ × 22 ½ in.
(75.6 × 57.2 cm)
Torkwase Dyson
Sliver, (Life Without the Promise of Stability), 2021
Sheet: 8 ¼ × 11 ⅝ in. (21 × 29.5 cm)
Framed: 11 ⅜ × 14 ⅞ × 1 ⅝ in. (28.9 × 37.8 × 4.1 cm)
Theaster Gates
Black Painting Study: Roofing Binary, No Content, 2018
Roofing paper and tar
78 × 36 in.
(198.1 × 91.4 cm)
Ewan Gibbs
GRAY 60, 2022–23
Pencil and pinpricks on paper
Image: 6 × 6 in. (15.2 × 15.2 cm)
Sheet: 10 × 10 in. (25.4 × 25.4 cm)
Philip Guston
Outside, 1964
Oil on matboard
29 ½ × 39 ½ in.
(74.9 × 100.3 cm)
Mary Heilmann
Mighty Right, 2019
Acrylic on paper
3 ¼ × 7 ¼ in.
(8.3 × 18.4 cm)
Mary Heilmann
Wave, 2020
Acrylic on stenciled handmade paper, on pigmented
handmade paper (Ruth Lingen)
15 × 12 in.
38.1 × 30.5 cm
Rashid Johnson
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag paper
42 ⅜ × 54 × 2 in.
(107.6 × 137.2 × 5.1 cm)
David Klamen
Untitled, 2008
Oil on paper
18 × 26 in.
(45.7 × 66 cm)
Ellen Lanyon
Study for Found in South Haven, 1965
Watercolor on paper
22 × 30 in.
(55.9 × 76.2 cm)
Tony Lewis
Stand, 2019
Graphite, pencil and colored pencil on paper mounted on wood
Sheet: 71 ½ × 95 ¼ in. (181.6 × 241.9 cm)
Wooden mount: 75 ⅞ × 99 ⅞ × 1 ⅜ in. (192.7 × 253.7 × 3.5 cm)
Jim Lutes
All wrong, Alright?, 1997
Ink on Japanese paper
29 ½ × 55 ¼ in.
(74.9 × 140.3 cm)
Henry Moore
Reclining Figure: Cave Entrance, 1978
Charcoal, colored wax crayon, watercolor and collage on paper
8 ¾ × 11 ¾ in.
(22.2 × 29.8 cm)
Carrie Moyer
Configuration #5, 2022
Mixed media and collage on paper
14 ½ × 18 ¼ in.
(36.8 × 46.4 cm)
Elizabeth Murray
Clock, 1991
Pastel and charcoal with string and collage on paper
40 × 28 ¼ in.
(101.6 × 71.8 cm)
Jaume Plensa
19-Suite Seoul - Human Rights, 2018
Mixed media on paper
39 × 27 ¾ in.
(99.1 × 70.5 cm)
Richard Serra
Untitled, 1972
Paintstick and charcoal on paper laid down on canvas
24 ¼ × 28 ¾ in.
(61.8 × 73 cm)
Leon Polk Smith
Untitled, 1955
Torn paper
20 ⅝ × 4 ⅜ in.
(52.4 × 11.1 cm)
Evelyn Statsinger
Aerial Coves, 1984
Graphite, pastel and colored pencil on paper 30 × 40 inches
76.2 × 101.6 cm
John Stezaker
Voyeur's Incisions (Photoroman), c. 1976–77
Collage
Image: 6 × 7 ⅞ in. (15.2 × 20 cm)
Framed: 16 ½ × 21 ⅛ × 1 ½ in. (41.9 × 53.7 × 3.8 cm)
John Storrs
Untitled, 1917
Ink on paper
5 ¼ × 4 ⅛ in.
(13.3 × 10.5 cm)
jina valentine
LITERACY TEST: RORSCHACH, 2016
Iron gall ink on paper made from Sea Isle Cotton shirts
17 ¾ × 22 ½ in.
(45.1 × 57.2 cm)
PUBLICATION | GRAY is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of GRAY at 60, a book accompanying the exhibition and surveying the gallery’s six decades of giving a platform to artists’ visions. GRAY at 60 features an extensive contribution from Elizabeth Broun, PhD, Director Emerita of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and texts from artists Bethany Collins, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates, Ewan Gibbs, Rashid Johnson, Alex Katz, Jaume Plensa, and others.
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