Five staggered cast-dirt walls articulate the stage in Corin Hewitt’s exhibition, Medium/Deep. Behind each, a surrogate figure — off-stage actors composed of concrete, steel, wood, aluminum, simulated pegboard, aprons, makeup, scents and pigments — anticipates an entrance, or its discovery. This minimal scenery, the ground literally up-ended, reveals itself as part of an anxious proscenium: the liminal space of wings, off-stage areas, and what is referred to as crossovers. In a 1927 lecture-demonstration at the Bauhaus, Oskar Schlemmer considered the importance of the theater stage as an “orchestral organism” itself, a space where the metaphysical needs of man are met through illusions that create a transcendent reality. Here, the gallery becomes the backstage of a stalled metaphysical play and its dramatic subjects: the studio space, the artistic performance, and material itself.
Corin Hewitt lives and works in Richmond, VA and Vermont. Hewitt has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. His work has recently been included in group exhibitions at P.S.1, New York; the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and Galerie Perrotin, Paris. In the past year, Hewitt was the recipient of the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Fine Arts and The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painting and Sculpture. This is his first solo exhibition at the gallery.
New York City, NY; NYC