Johannes Vogt Gallery is pleased to inaugurate its new exhibition space at 55 Chrystie Street with a solo show by Cristóbal Lehyt, "Given a wall, what’s happening behind it?” titled after a question posed by Jean Tardieu and answered by Juan Luis Martínez, a Chilean avant-garde poet, writer, and visual artist. The exhibition features a new series of paintings, wall drawings, as well as a text piece and video work.
For his third solo show with the gallery Lehyt continues to expand his ongoing body of work “Drama Projection”, a personal variation of automatic drawing, a dissociative operation in which he aims to draw different figures unconsciously.
“Given a wall, what’s happening behind it?” takes as its starting point the characters created in Lehyt's “Drama Projection” series and intentionally places them over the packing paper that renders as a protective layer for the plexiglass sheet lying beneath. What serves as Lehyt’s substrate...in these paintings conceals the transparent material underneath, meant to be peeled off when the material comes to use. With this gesture Lehyt chooses a deliberate play with the transparent-opaque dichotomy inherent in his work. Simultaneously the paintings and drawings act as layers of clarity and opacity in relation to the walls of the space, propped objects that both conceal and reveal. The figures are then seemingly bystanders, existing in an in-between space, present yet not placeable.
The exhibition as a whole serves as a milestone both in the history of the gallery and in Lehyt’s new body of work. The gallery marks a new chapter in a promising neighborhood while Lehyt explores and responds to the features of a new space. And while getting to know new walls the artist asks through Jean Tardieu’s question and Martinez’s answer:
“Given a wall, what’s happening behind it? There are other men building another wall in front of which you are asking: GIVEN A WALL, WHAT’S HAPPENING BEHIND IT?... GIVEN A WALL, WHAT’S HAPPENING BEHIND IT?” (Excerpt from: Juan Luis Martínez, "La Nueva Novela", 1985 as it is appears translated in Scott Weintraub's book: "Juan Luis Martínez's Philosophical Poetics") CRISTÓBAL LEHYT was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1973. He lives and works in New York. His work has been shown internationally, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, America’s Society, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, the Shanghai Biennale, the Mercosul Biennial, the Queens Museum, the Carpenter Center and Artists Space among others. Lehyt currently teaches at Cooper Union, NYU and Parsons, New York. He has been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the Art Forum Fellowship from Harvard University. Lehyt is included in the collections of, among others, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago, Chile.
Entrada actualizada el el 12 mar de 2017
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