A Late Summer Guide to Maine’s Art Spaces
Feature by Jessica Shearer
September, 2026
Boston Art Review
Posted by anncraven on 4 September 2026
Posted by anncraven on 4 September 2026
A Late Summer Guide to Maine’s Art Spaces
Feature by Jessica Shearer
September, 2026
Andrew Reed Gallery, Miami, FL
FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY
Anton Kern, New York, NY
Aye Project Space, Hong Kong
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT
A Painter Famed for Recreating What She Lost, in the Spotlight
Recent coverage, including from The New York Times, highlights 2025 as a
significant year in Craven’s career marked by major exhibitions and an
increased focus on the theme of “revisitation”.
You can read the full article here
New York Studio School, curated by Julia Trotta, Clémence White, and Matthew Higgs
Broadway, New York, NY
Five individual silkscreen prints by Ann Craven, Rachel
Harrison, Sam McKinniss, Arthur Simms, Tabboo! Ann Craven, Moon (July Quiet), 100 + 10
APs, 10 HCs, 2PPs, 20 × 14 in.
Edition of 50 + 9 APs + 4 HCs + 4 PPs, 28 x 20 inches (71 x 51 cm), silk
screen on somerset satin, white 300 gsm, published by Lococo Fine Art, 2025
Edition of 50 + 8 APs + 4 HCs + 4 PPs, 60 x 43 inches (152.4 x 109.22 cm), silk screen on
somerset satin, white 300 gsm, published by Lococo Fine Art, 2025
Curated by Julia Trotta, Hoffman Donahue and Marc Selwyn Fine Art,
Beverly Hills, CA
La Galerie Centre D’Art Contemporain de Noisy-Le-Sec, France
Ann Craven featured on cover on Lilacs By Rainer Diana Hamilton
Bear (Climbing Trees and Mountain Sides)
2021
Oil on canvas / 84 x 72 inches
Courtesy of Karma and Colby College Museum of Art
In Lilacs, syringa vulgaris gives its name to a form of long
poem that promotes sense memory. Here, we have one lilac for
each of the senses, and a sixth for love, which synthesizes them all.
ART and also ANIMALS
By Joseph R Wolin
September, 2025
Ann Craven, Anne Goodyear, Matthew Higgs and Julia Trotta
IN CONVERSATION
Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory), on view at the
New York Studio School September 3 through November 9, 2025,
was originally conceived and first exhibited at the Bowdoin College
Museum of Art. Organized by co-director Anne Collins Goodyear in
close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition centers on Craven’s
evocative paintings of the moon, created between 2020 and 2024.
A panel of speakers will explore the conceptual underpinnings of the
exhibition, Craven’s unique visual archive, and the curatorial strategies
that shaped the presentation of this body of work.
Lecture Date
Wed, October 15, 2025
6:30PM – 7:30PM
New York Studio School
8 W 8th St, New York, NY 10011
Ann Craven’s Moonlit Meditations
By Julie Schneider
October, 2025
A CONVERSATION WITH ANN CRAVEN AND
CO-DIRECTOR ANNE COLLINS GOODYEAR
Ann Craven, artist, and Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-Director of
the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, in conversation to discuss
Ann’s artistic process. This program was presented in conjunction
with the exhibition Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory),
on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art
May 22, 2025 – Aug 17, 2025.
Presented by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
Recorded July 10, 2025 at Bowdoin College.
ANN CRAVEN
By Phong H. Bui
September, 2025
Curated by Julia Trotta (September 3–21)
Curated by Clemence White (September 24 – October 12)
Curated by Matthew Higgs (October 15 – November 9)
The New York Studio School is pleased to present Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory), September 3–November 9, 2025. Originally conceived and first exhibited at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, where it was organized by co-director Anne Collins Goodyear in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition focuses on the artist’s paintings of the moon, created between 2020 and 2024.
Based on direct observation, each work documents the date, time, and place of its making, underscoring Craven’s interest in the relationship between the cyclical rhythms of nature and the personal experience of time and memory. Craven’s repeated renditions of the moon, captured as both an eternal presence and an ever-changing one, reflect her deep fascination with seriality, a hallmark of her practice, as she revisits and reinterprets motifs over time. The return of the work to New York from Maine mirrors the cyclical nature of the moon, and of life itself, both primary concerns of Craven’s work.
To highlight the experimental breadth of Craven’s practice, the exhibition features the artist’s “laboratory” of lunar studies, a collection stored and inventoried in carefully labeled cardboard containers. This presentation will offer visitors insight into the artist’s process, revealing how Craven’s canvases trace both a celestial trajectory and a personal one.
Unfolding in three rotations—as the exhibition did at Bowdoin—each installation reaffirms the resilience of Craven’s subject matter. The inaugural iteration will be curated by Julia Trotta, Independent Curator (September 3–21). Clemence White, Director at Karma, will curate the second rotation (September 24–October 12). The third and final installation (October 15–November 9) will be curated by Mathew Higgs, Director and Chief Curator at White Columns. Collectively, the exhibition will draw from 185 compositions, each executed from direct observation of nature. Just as the moon reveals itself in both rural and urban environments, adopting shifting nuances in these different contexts, so too Craven’s depictions of this glowing orb will render accessible new constellations of thought as filtered through the vision of each curatorial contributor.
The movement of Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) from Maine to New York echoes the artist’s own trajectory and underscores her deep commitment to both locales. This connection is accentuated by the exhibition’s formative relationship to Ann Craven: Painted Time (2020-2024), on view at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine through January 4, 2026, and Spotlight: Ann Craven, on view at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine through September 14, 2025. The New York Studio School’s presentation of Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) testifies to both the resilience and transformation implicit in the work of Ann Craven and affirms its enduring and essential qualities.
Contributions by Christopher J. Brownawell, Anne Collins Goodyear. Conversation between Jaime DeSimone and Ann Craven. Farnsworth Art Museum, 2025
Ann Craven
Painted Time: (2020–2024)
Contributions by Christopher J. Brownawell, Anne Collins Goodyear.
Conversation between Jaime DeSimone and Ann Craven
Farnsworth Art Museum, 2025
128 pages
11 1⁄2 × 9 3⁄4 inches
Over the last three decades, Ann Craven has created a
formally innovative and conceptually loaded body of
work that reflects on memory and time. Ann Craven:
Painted Time (2020–2024) surveys the past five years
of her practice, highlighting four of her central
subjects, or what she terms “icons”—the moon, trees,
flowers, and birds. The exhibition sheds new light
on Craven’s richly layered, self-reflexive paintings,
foregrounding the artist’s singular approach to
capturing time through seriality. The accompanying exhibition
catalogue includes a new essay by Bowdoin College Museum of
Art co-director Anne Collins Goodyear and a conversation
between Craven and Painted Time curator Jaime DeSimone.
Edition of 1,850 cotton scarves
20 x 20 in
Designed by Ann Craven Studio
Sponsored by KHR McNeely Family Foundation
Created in honor of three summer 2025
exhibitions: Ann Craven: Painted Time (2020–2024) at
Farnsworth Art Museum, Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory)
at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and
Ann Craven: Spotlight at the Portland Museum of Art
Capsule collection, produced by J.CREW, 2025
Edition of 1,850 cotton scarves, 20 x 20 in, produced by Ann Craven and the KHR McNeely Family Foundation, 2025
Edition of 75, 33.5 x 27 inches (85.09 x 68.58 cm), 7 color lithograph on Somerset satin, white 300 gsm, published by JRP Editions, with Karma 2024
Edition 12 unique monotypes, monotype on somerset satin, white 300 gsm, 28.06 x 21.62 inches (71.27 x 54.92 cm), published by JRP Editions with Karma, 2024
Edition of 6 unique monotypes, monotype on somerset satin, white 300 gsm, 22 x 21.62 inches (55.88 x 54.92 cm), published by JRP Editions with Karma, 2024
Edition of 11 unique monotypes, monotype on somerset satin, 300 gsm, 22 x 21.5 inches (55.88 x 54.61 cm), published by JRP Editions and Karma, 2024
Edition of 75 silk scarves + 75 Aps +20 PPs, 84.25 x 72.25 inches, (152 x 130 cm), produced by Massif Central in collaboration with The Portland Museum of Art, with support from the KHR McNeely Family Fund, 2024
Edition of 100 + 20 APs + 5 PPs, 18 color screenprints on Somerset Velvet Warm White 400 gsm , published by Counter Editions, 2023
Edition of 15 prints, +8 APs + 4 PPs, archival inkjet, deckled edge, published by McLennon Pen Co., 2023
Farnsworth Art Museum
August, 2025
Rockland, ME
Youtube Link: Painted Time: Ann Craven
Clothing collaboration with J.Crew
New York, New York
July, 2025
Presented by the Farnsworth Art Museum
July 18, 2025
Rockland, Maine
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, curated by Anne Collins Goodyear, Jay Sanders, and Adam Weinberg.
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
Karma 70 Main, Thomaston, ME
Nicelle Beauchene, New York, NY
Sky High Farm, Germantown, NY
Halsey McKay, Brooklyn, NY
Karma 70 Main, Thomaston, ME
Artists in Conversation – Ann Craven and Jay Stern, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
presented by the Farnsworth Art Museum, July 18, 2025, Rockland, ME
Ann Craven has made an art out of painting time and memory
By Jorge S. Arango
July, 2025
Skowhegan, School of Painting & Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME
Painted Time:Moons (Laboratory), with Anne Goodyear, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME
As above, so below—every vision of heaven is mirrored by a depiction of hell. Paintings of the Last Judgment throughout the millenia, from Jan van Eyck to Michelangelo to William Blake to Buddhist Mandalas, set the two realms in relation, representing moral consequences as a dichotomous, mutually enabling pair. Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, the counterpart to the Italian poet’s Paradiso, artists like Sandro Botticelli and Gustave Doré have attempted to map hell’s nine circles, charting its strata from the Earth’s crust down into its core. Following A Particular Kind of Heaven, last year’s exhibition sited in Ann Craven’s deconsecrated church in Maine, Karma presents A Certain Form of Hell. Titled after a 1983 Ed Ruscha painting just like its predecessor, the exhibition features works exploring the netherworld in its many manifestations.
Warming, cleansing, life-giving—fire is also the archetypal symbol of hell. Milton Avery’s Charred Forest (1939) shows its ashy aftermath in the Canadian Gaspé Peninsula, where he spent a formative summer developing the luminous planes of color that would define his mature style. While Avery’s painting suggests both destruction and the promise of rebirth, Mungo Thomson’s Wildfire (June) (2021) shows the blaze still raging, its flames illuminated by an LED lightbox. The absence of light can also be hellish, as in the windows opening out onto a black void in Henni Alftan’s Darkness (2024) or the door to nowhere in Hughie Lee-Smith’s The End (The Pink Door) (1998). Cecily Brown’s Wee Hell (2025) also transcends fiery hues, instead taking cues from Old Master treatments of the underworld and translating them into a kaleidoscopic inferno of whirling brushstrokes.
Other artists draw our attention to the sinister underbellies of supposedly neutral objects and places, probing our cultural unconscious. Martin Wong’s Eye of Providence (1975) riffs on the design of the US dollar bill, highlighting the cleaved pyramid that some believe symbolizes malevolent secret societies—namely, the Illuminati. Mathew Cerletty’s photorealist, oil-on-linen Ribeye (2025) crops in on two glistening slabs of meat, industrially packaged and ready for consumption. Jane Dickson’s LV 82 Casino Girls Red Felt (2021), painted on a blood-red swath of the titular textile, depicts figures transfixed by the glow of slot machines, suspended in some self-inflicted purgatory. Leonora Carrington’s graphite drawings of Parisian street scenes find hell, as Jean-Paul Sartre famously quipped, in “other people.” Mike Kelly’s darkly humourous Length (1985) implies that the male psyche is an underworld all its own.
Hell can be abstract, as immaterial and wrenching as a feeling. Viennese Actionist Hermann Nitsch’s Rovereto VI 64.Malaktion (2012) is visceral, its ridges of scarlet paint manipulated with the artist’s fingers during one of his gory performances. Peter Bradley’s Nix Olympia (1973), its colors applied via spray gun, appears not bodily but mineral, like lava roiling out of the depths. The crimson ground of Richard Mayhew’s phosphorescent Untitled (Abstract Composition) (1975) is horizontally bisected by a blue current, the work reads as both landscape—perhaps the banks of the River Styx—and color field. Comprising nine perfect circles excised from silver cardboard, Cady Noland’s (Not Yet Titled) Parkett 46 (1996) conveys the violence of a stockade from geometry alone. While this form of torture is medieval, Noland’s evocation of the burning shame of public humiliation resonates in a contemporary culture intimately familiar with the spectacle of suffering. If, as Dante wrote, “the path to paradise begins in hell,” a consideration of the underworld is a necessary evil.
Gertrude Abercrombie, Adam Alessi, Henni Alftan, March Avery, Milton Avery, Bo Bartlett, Seth Becker, Brett Bigbee, Dike Blair, Casey Bolding, Louise Bourgeois, Katherine Bradford, Peter Bradley, Cecily Brown, Lucy Bull, Tom Burckhardt, Kathy Butterly, David Byrd, Jorge Camacho, Leonora Carrington, Sean Cavanaugh, Mathew Cerletty, Kye Christensen-Knowles, Andrew Cranston, Ann Craven, Alex Da Corte, Phoebe Derlee, Nancy Diamond, Jane Dickson, Lois Dodd, Matthew Tully Dugan, Betsy Eby, Nicole Eisenman, Melanie Essex, Hadi Falapishi, Ian Felice, Marley Freeman, Jeremy Frey, Sanaa Gateja, Wade Guyton, Kate Hargrave, Phoebe Helander, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Tatsuo Ikeda, Ulala Imai, Yvonne Jacquette, Tamo Jugeli, Alex Katz, Mike Kelley, Mia Kokkoni, Friedrich Kunath, Hughie Lee-Smith, Aubrey Levinthal, Jacob Littlejohn, Lee Lozano, Kathryn Lynch, Calvin Marcus, Keith Mayerson, Richard Mayhew, Sam McKinniss, Mark Milroy, Hermann Nitsch, Cady Noland, Nathaniel Oliver, Woody De Othello, Laura Owens, James Prosek, Luisa Rabbia, Ugo Rondinone, Sterling Ruby, Maja Ruznic, Borna Sammak, Arthur Simms, Marian Spore Bush, Emilie Stark-Menneg, Jay Stern, Rudolf Stingel, Tabboo!, Mungo Thomson, Tristan Unrau, Carole Vanderlinden, Aleksandra Waliszewska, Ouattara Watts, Nicole Wittenberg, Martin Wong, Jonas Wood, Randy Wray, Xiao Jiang, Norman Zammitt, Luigi Zuccheri.
Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) – Gallery Talk with co-curator Jay Sanders, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME
Curated by Anne Collins Goodyear (May 22–June 30)
Curated by Jay Sanders (July 1–18)
Curated by Adam Weinberg (July 20–August 17)
Held concurrently with Painted Time (2020-2024) at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) focuses on Ann Craven’s moon paintings, executed from 2020 through 2024. Craven begins by painting the moon plein air and afterwards scales her composition based on her initial observation. Over the course of the exhibition, three curators will collaborate with the artist to execute three distinct presentations of her moon paintings. The exhibition, like the moon itself, will evolve over time, bearing the traces of the moon’s “celestial journey” within the universe of the gallery.
Taking place in three rotations, the inaugural installation of the exhibition will be curated by Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art (May 22–June 30); Jay Sanders, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Artists Space will curate the second rotation (July 1–18); and Adam Weinberg, Director Emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art will curate the third and final rotation (July 20–August 17). Collectively, the exhibition will be selected from over 150 compositions, each one executed from nature, the full range of which will be made accessible through an accompanying digital catalogue. Approximately 20 paintings will appear on view in each rotation.
The exhibition is overseen and developed by Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. It is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Ann Craven: Painted Time (2020-2024), on view May 3, 2025, through January 4, 2026 at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, and Spotlight: Ann Craven, on view May 14 to September 14, 2025 at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine.
Additional features can be found in the Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) digital catalogue.
The Bowdoin College Museum of Art gratefully acknowledges the Shapell Family Art Fund and the KHR McNeely Family Foundation, Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely, for generous support of Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory).
Losing the Empty Feeling
“What is the literature of food?” asked my undergrad poetry professor, some twenty years ago.
“A Moveable Feast!” I blurted out.
“No… That’s a social history of a bunch of artists and writers. Try again.”
To which I should have replied: “Tomato tomato, Professor Hart. Tomato tomato.”
The idea being that then and now (and earlier than then, and probably until forever) ideas—visual, verbal, and otherwise—are forged around a table. And they require nouriture if anything is to be expected of them.
Still lifes: stuff of country house collections and art school exercises. Still lifes: fodder for the materialists out there, happy to denigrate them as simply representing the bourgeois accumulation of wealth. (Look at all those lobsters!)
And since vegetables have more patience than humans when it comes to braggarts and half-starts, the still life has become the arena of virtuosity (Weston’s peppers) or experimentation (Cezanne’s napkins that resemble Mont Sainte-Victoire).
All of the above rings true, but the true value of the still life rests in the middle, and how that connects to the people gathered around. The artists in this group show represent an ideal, impossible dinner party. Studiomates break bread with the long deceased. What emerges is the temporal magic of the genre. Want to keep your fish fresh? Paint a picture.
Our desire to hold on to fleeting life is the tablecloth on which every still life rests. It’s also the emotion core to the formation of artist communities, if not the formation of art itself.
In our time, many of us have Brooklyn. Earlier artists had other places where they worked and ate together.
In the opening chapter of A Moveable Feast, which IS about food, an aged Hemingway looks back on his younger self as he looks across a Parisian café table at a young woman.
I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink. I’ve seen you, beauty…
That would be enough for most of us, but his appetite remained.
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.
The still life is the wine and the oysters, and it’s the person across the table, who might not even know it yet.
-Hunter Braithwaite, May 2025
Summer shows include multiple exhibitions viewing nature through 2 artists’ work
By Jorge S. Arango
May, 2025
This special installation highlights Ann Craven’s vibrant, emotive works that explore nature, memory, and repetition. Deeply connected to Maine, where she lives and works part of the year, Craven finds inspiration in its landscapes, skies, and ever-changing light. Her internationally celebrated work captures fleeting moments with bold color and expressive brushwork, offering a profound connection between observation, imagination, and the passage of time. Spotlight: Ann Craven is part of a statewide collaboration celebrating the artist’s impact and vision.
About Frickin’ Time
By Ann Craven
May, 2025
Often regarded as a colorist, this exhibition repositions Ann Craven (born 1961) within a deeper language that moves beyond her traditional motifs–moons, flowers, and birds–to explore the mechanics of painting itself. It will highlight an often overlooked conceptual framework, where seriality, repetition, and shifts in scale function as both meditative and formal devices in her paintings.
Craven’s works are a testament to the power of conceptual art and her connection to the recurring rhythms of nature, where seriality, color, and brushwork dominate her canvases from 2020 to the present. Audiences are invited to question the boundaries of painting and to engage with the ways in which Craven redefines traditional genres and styles as one of the leading painters of her generation.
The Farnsworth’s exhibition is the anchor to the celebration of the 2025 Maine in America Award, which honors Craven’s exceptional contributions to Maine’s arts and culture. This lifetime achievement award recognizes her enduring impact on the art world and her dedicated role in the cultural landscape of Maine. As part of this honor, works by Craven will be shown at additional institutions around the state, including companion presentations titled, Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) on view May 22 through August 17, 2025 at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and Spotlight: Ann Craven, on view May 14 to September 14, 2025, at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine. The KHR McNeely Family Foundation will fund two underwriting scholarships for artists attending Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture this summer.
The Maine in America award will be given to Ann Craven at The Farnsworth Gala 2025 on July 18, 2025.
A Painter Famed for Recreating What She Lost, in the Spotlight By Julia Halperin April, 24, 2025
This Month the Museum Will Open “Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory)”
By Bowdoin College Museum of Art
April, 2025
A Painter Famed for Recreating What She Lost, in the Spotlight
By Julia Halperin
April, 2025
The FLAG Art Foundation is pleased to announce A Rose Is, an expansive group exhibition that examines the ubiquity and multivalent meaning of the rose throughout art history and visual culture. Across a wide array of media, including video, sculpture, painting, and text, the exhibition considers the rose in all of its symbolic and ritual complexity, ultimately seeking to complicate our familiarity with it as a vehicle for consumption and desire.
Artists include: Farah Al Qasimi, Polly Apfelbaum, Arakawa, Genesis Belanger, Louise Bourgeois, Joe Brainard, James Lee Byars, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Ann Craven, Sara Cwynar, Alex Da Corte, Jay DeFeo, Ethyl Eichelberger, Awol Erizku, Cerith Wyn Evans, Tony Feher, Allison Janae Hamilton, Gabriella Hirst, Peter Hujar, John Jarboe, Anna Jermolaewa, Sarah Jones, Anselm Kiefer, Lee Krasner, Dr. Lakra, Linder, George Platt Lynes, Robert Mapplethorpe, Katie Paterson, Nicolas Party, Kay Rosen, James Rosenquist, Taryn Simon, Charles Sheeler, Kiki Smith, Haim Steinbach, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol
Drawing inspiration from Cy Twombly’s monumental, four-part painting The Rose III (2008), the exhibition situates the rose—both physically and figuratively—as an icon of beauty, enticement, excess, and abjection, all at the same time. Set against a vibrant turquoise backdrop, three purple, yellow, and tangerine roses overflow and drip down the face of the first three panels of the twenty-five-foot-long canvas, with the fourth panel containing text fragments from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem The Roses (1926). Through an ecstatic combination of scale, color, and form, Twombly allows viewers to see the lushness and vitality of the roses while also contemplating their diminishment.
The literary and linguistic life of the rose is explored throughout the exhibition. From excerpted stanzas from Rilke’s poem to the language games found in Kay Rosen’s A Rose Is (1978/2025)—itself a reference to the line “rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” from Gertrude Stein’s poem Sacred Emily (1913)—the rose is framed as an idea, just as much as a perishable object to be given or received. Rosen’s large scale, fuchsia text on FLAG’s opening wall, as well as the photo-text work from which it is derived, casts the rose as a word to explore the tenuous relationship between concepts and the objects they point to. Leaning into Stein’s sensibility that “I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do,” Rosen repeats the word rose again and again throughout her poem, such that new phonetic sounds are produced and with them new directions of meaning and imagery as well. Rather than imagine the rose solely as a flower, or in relation to the ideas of consumption and desire only, Rosen captures its complexity as so much of the work included in A Rose Is does: as a malleable and historically layered entity open to contradiction and revision.
Throughout the exhibition, viewers are invited to consider the flower as a site of overlapping and contradictory meanings. Though the combination of advertising and cultural ritual has made the rose synonymous with Valentine’s Day and romantic gestures more broadly, it has equally strong associations with funeral processions and end-of-life commemorations. James Lee Byars’s sculpture Rose Table of Perfect (1989) highlights this duality, as 3,333 freshly cut red roses are studded into a perfect red sphere, only to fade and eventually die over the course of the exhibition. Like the Twombly painting, Byars’s sculpture complicates our familiarity with the rose by combining its conventionality with its ultimate undoing. As a foil, Tony Feher’s funeral wreath Saint Rosalie Intercedes on Behalf of the Plague Victims of Palermo (1991) positions white plastic roses into a perfect circle, creating a dime-store gesture that will never diminish. Equal parts glamorous and devastating is Peter Hujar’s photograph Candy Darling on her Deathbed (1973), made at the performer’s invitation on the occasion of her inevitable passing due to terminal illness. Surrounded by lavish flower arrangements—as if in her dressing room after a show—Darling is recumbent under dramatic lighting, wrapped in hospital bed sheets, her make-up just so, with a single long-stem red rose lying next to her failing body.
Just as the rose is a natural form called upon to reinforce human connection, so too is it a commercial form used to advertise and sell products globally. Sara Cwynar’s video Rose Gold (2017), displayed in a black-box room on the second floor of the exhibition, examines this facet of the rose as an artificial construct that produces tangible reactions. Made in response to the release of Apple’s Rose Gold iPhone, the video mines the history of product development and color theory, making both the color itself and the products it is used for seem glossy and attractive, while also calling attention to their status as kitsch objects of a clichéd consumerism. Further complicating the romantic connotation of the rose is Taryn Simon’s Framework agreement for economic cooperation. Quito, Ecuador, January 12, 2012, 2015, Paperwork and the Will of Capital (2015). The title of the work refers to the agreement between Ecuador and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), situating the rose as a witness to politics, governance, and globalization. Further expanding the cultural history of the rose and the rose as witness is Gabriella Hirst’s How to Make A Bomb (2015-ongoing). In response to a 1950s species of rose called Rosa floribunda ‘Atom Bomb,’ Hirst developed an interactive artwork wherein community members graft from the ‘Atomic Rose’ and surreptitiously plant the flower in public spaces, injecting the flower into collective consciousness as a vehicle for political violence.
FLAG would like to acknowledge the participating artists, artist estates, galleries, and private lenders for their generous loans of artworks to this exhibition.
Ann Craven
Contributions by Susan Howe and Richard Kalina.
Conversation between Jay Sanders and Ann Craven
Karma, New York, 2024
124 pages, hardcover
11 × 11 inches
This catalog, accompanying Karma’s three-part exhibition
of new paintings by Ann Craven (born 1967), surveys major
motifs of the artist’s nearly 30-year-long practice. For
the first time, she has set all of her scenes in the
darkness of evening, creating a consistent chromatic
background that intensifies her always-vibrant colors.
These oils of moons, trees, birds, flowers and deer
constitute the latest chapter in her systematic catalog
of what she terms “revisitations,” each of which is also
a reinvention of her subject matter. In this body of work,
and across her practice, figuration morphs into
kaleidoscopic abstraction and back again, each canvas
resisting easy categorization in favor of pure feeling.
In addition to a lush plate section, this volume features
an intimate conversation between the artist and curator
Jay Sanders, an expansive art-historical essay by Richard
Kalina and poems written and collected in dedication to
Craven by Susan Howe.
Oriole is pleased to announce Excitement and Enticement – An Exhibition of Paintings, opening Friday 19th April. Organized in conversation with the New York-based artist Jeanette Mundt, the exhibition assem- bles the work of twenty-two acclaimed American painters whose dynamic practices question how we define representation today. Surveying some of the most significant voices in contemporary painting, Excitement and Enticement will provide a unique opportunity to experience the works of these significant figures firsthand, some of whom have never been exhibited in Germany.
It isn’t easy to believe
the sky comes down to the ground
here, not just in the distance
behind the corner store where darkness
bleeds at the edges, but here, to say—
it is sky I’m breathing, as if that
implied heaven as well and perhaps
required something of us, like the effort
my daughter makes with her blue crayon
filling in between flowers, fence posts,
the branches of trees.
—Betsy Sholl, “Learning to Love the Sky” (1986)
Maine Poet Laureate
Karma presents A Particular Kind of Heaven, an exhibition of nearly one-hundred-and-twenty works spanning multiple disciplines by over seventy artists, on view at 70 Main Street, Thomaston, Maine, July 21 through September 1, 2024.
A Particular Kind of Heaven presents a wide array of empyrean imagery by a multigenerational group of artists. Sited in a deconsecrated Catholic church, the exhibition probes connections between the spiritual and the natural, the everyday and the sublime. While the near-universal motif of the sky unites the expansive contributions on view, the representation of this subject morphs and multiplies to span pictorial fealty, surrealist interpretation, lyrical rumination, narrative landscapes, geometric and gestural abstractions, three-dimensional works made of sweetgrass and post-consumer paper, and more. A Particular Kind of Heaven is titled after a 1983 Ed Ruscha text painting that calls attention to the idiosyncratic nature of our visions of the sublime and our projections about and on to the American landscape. The exhibition proceeds from dawn to dusk, following the transformation of the sky over the course of a day.
DAWN
The rising sun casts a hazy yellow glow through a veil of clouds in Yvonne Jacquette’s Grey Sky / Barn Side (1969), painted from observation at the artist’s summer home in Searsmont, Maine. The artist attends to her prosaic subjects—carefully-laid wooden boards, leaves stretching skyward, dawn—with a care that inches beyond realism and into the poetic. The foreglow of a sun not-quite-risen comes through in Jacquette’s subtly golden blues. Dawn is also the temporal setting of Norman Zammitt’s THEOGREY.4 (1988), in which the artist fractures light into horizontal stripes that thicken incrementally as they transition from black to periwinkle to simulate the diffusion of light through the smoggy skies of Los Angeles. Leonora Carrington described dawn as “the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence.” For a moment, all is still.
MIDDAY
The sun is climbing, and the air is beginning to heat up. Maureen Gallace revisits the landscapes of New England time and time again, here distilling clouded sky, horizon, ocean, sand, rock, into a scene of gesture and muted color. In contrast to her intimate canvas, Nathaniel Oliver’s monumental oil painting Over Here (2024) is a panoramic perspective on a mountainous landscape anchored by a lake whose contours pull the eye from the foreground up and through the horizon. A smoke signal suggests the presence of a figure who needs saving; we can use the remaining daylight to find them. Barkley L. Hendricks took breaks from painting his iconic figurative works each winter from 1983 until the early 2000s, escaping the dreary cold of New London, Connecticut, for the warmth and light of Jamaica, a pilgrimage he described as “following the sun to the Caribbean.” There, he worked en plein air to capture the island’s natural beauty, often finishing his small paintings in a single day. Hendricks’s Calabash Bay (Waterview), Jamaica, W.I. (1997), from his series of gold-framed landscape tondos, is a porthole to a world of sky and saltwater bisected almost symmetrically by an expansive horizon. The religious connotations of its form—tondos first became popular in fifteenth-century Italy as settings for Biblical scenes—honor the spiritual impact Jamaica had on Hendricks.
DUSK
As the day winds down, the clouds take on an apricot tinge in Dike Blair’s Untitled (2023), a gouache, pencil, and chalk rendering of an early evening sky. The chalk’s carefully smudged edges mimic the misty veils of color that change by the second during this transformative hour. Like all of Blair’s tableaux, which are based on the artist’s diaristic point-and-shoot photographs, Untitled is but a fleeting glimpse of the world’s banal sublimity. A new body of sky paintings by Blair inspired the theme of A Particular Kind of Heaven. Karma’s New York location will open an exhibition of these gouache works this fall. The orange glow in Seth Becker’s small oil Outrunning a Storm (2024) is even more transient. In thickly-applied daubs, he depicts a roiling tempest as it overtakes a majestic sunset, threatening a moment of peace as a kangaroo dashes ahead of the storm. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Maine’s most famous poet, wrote: “Into each life some rain must fall / Some days must be dark and dreary.”
NIGHT
When evening sets in, even the brightest of summer days evaporate. Matthew Wong’s August Sky (2016) braids darkness and light; thick strokes of swirling, wet-on-wet acrylic evoke a terrifying, unpredictable nature that overpowers the human subject. The last vestiges of day reflect on a river traversed by a lone boatman, transforming into hallucinatory orange and purple shards. Alex Katz’s Study for Ocean 10 (2022) captures the light of the moon absent its source as it dances on the surface of the sea; the artist’s gestural white-on-black brushstrokes convey the water’s movement, weight, and transparency. Finally, Gertrude Abercrombie’s Landscape with Church (1939) sets the viewer at a distance, gazing down onto a road that leads to a white church suspiciously similar to the one in which the exhibition is set. A full moon glows auspiciously in the distance. In A Particular Kind of Heaven, the sky reaches beyond landscape and into pure abstraction, into the better-than-real texture of realism, into sculpture, into bending arcs of heavenly light refracting off of and changing the plane of the visible.
Gertrude Abercrombie, Henni Alftan, March Avery, Milton Avery, Seth Becker, Dike Blair, Louise Bourgeois, Katherine Bradford, Joe Bradley, Peter Bradley, Tom Burckhardt, David Byrd, Sean Cavanaugh, Mathew Cerletty, Andrew Cranston, Ann Craven, Verne Dawson, Rafael Delacruz, Nancy Diamond, Jane Dickson, Lois Dodd, Lynne Drexler, Matthew Tully Dugan, Inka Essenhigh, Melanie Essex, Hadi Falapishi, Marley Freeman, Jeremy Frey, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Will Gabaldón, Maureen Gallace, Sanaa Gateja, Robert Gober, Barkley L. Hendricks, Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Ulala Imai, Yvonne Jacquette, Tamo Jugeli, Alex Katz, Zenzaburo Kojima, Hughie Lee-Smith, Jacob Littlejohn, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Kathryn Lynch, Calvin Marcus, Keith Mayerson, Richard Mayhew, Donald Moffett, Yu Nishimura, Nathaniel Oliver, Woody De Othello, Nicolas Party, Francis Picabia, Walter Price, James Prosek, Alice Rahon, Ugo Rondinone, Ed Ruscha, Maja Ruznic, Salvo, Trevor Shimizu, Marian Spore Bush, Hirosuke Tasaki, Mungo Thomson, Anh Trần, Tabboo!, Carole Vanderlinden, Nicole Wittenberg, Jonas Wood, Matthew Wong, Randy Wray, Xiao Jiang, Leon Xu, Manoucher Yektai, Joseph Yoakum, Albert York, Norman Zammitt, and Luigi Zuccheri
Maine Is a New Art-World Hotspot. Here Is Painter Ann Craven’s Guide to the Scene
By Julia Halperin
July 2024
Five Contemporary Art Spaces and Shows to Check Out in Maine This Summer
By Elisa Carollo
July, 2024
Your Dog Wants You to Visit This New York Art Exhibit
By Kerensa Cadenas
July, 2024
UPCOMING GROUP SHOW
A Particular Kind of Heaven
Thomaston, Maine
July 21 – September 1, 2024
A New Gallery Show Pays Tribute to Man’s Best Friend
By Julia Halperin
June 2024
Timothy Taylor, New York, NY
James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY
Timothy Taylor is pleased to announce Dog Days of Summer, a group exhibition that centres on man’s best friend as a timeless subject in art history. Opening on 20 June in New York, the exhibition includes more than sixty works exploring the many roles a pup might play in the life of an artist: muse, metaphor, and companion.
This presentation features work by Craigie Aitchison, Trisha Baga, Sophie Barber, Hanna Brody, Gaby Collins-Fernandez, Ann Craven, Scott Csoke, Anthony Cudahy, Alex Da Corte, Armen Eloyan, Camilla Engström, Julia Felsenthal, Louis Fratino, Robert Gober, Camille Henrot, Peter Hujar, Timothy Hull, Paul-Sebastian Japaz, Susumu Kamijo, Alex Katz, Karen Kilimnik, Craig Kucia, Sean Landers, Sophie Larrimore, Sahara Longe, Robert Mapplethorpe, Eddie Martinez, Jesse Mockrin, Matthew Morrocco, Grandma Moses, Rocío Navarro, Justin Liam O’Brien, Gordon Parks, Hilary Pecis, Pablo Picasso, Paula Rego, Robert Roest, Will Ryman, Peter Saul, Allison Schulnik, Dana Schutz, Kiki Smith, Billy Sullivan, David Surman, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, William Wegman, and Jonas Wood.
Artmaking is a famously solitary process. What would art of the last century have been without such faithful studio mates as William Wegman’s Weimaraners or Pablo Picasso’s (ungenerously named) dachshund Lump? Dogs have been a feature of visual culture since at least 8,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherers carved an image of leashed dogs into a sandstone cliff. A symbol of fidelity, protection, playfulness, and unconditional love, canines pop up in the paintings of Titian, Jan van Eyck, John Singer Sargent, and Gustave Courbet, among countless other masters.
Dog Days of Summer will feature Yellow Lab (2022), a stately seaside portrait in meticulous detail by Sean Landers, alongside works created specifically for the exhibition by Hilary Pecis, Jesse Mockrin, and Ann Craven. In Pecis’s Mango (2024), a smart, diminutive pup nestles into an array of pillows whose vibrant patterns seem to distort the perspective of an otherwise familiar domestic scene. Another lapdog appears in Mockrin’s graphite drawing Pearl (2024); here, the dramatic curl of a pug’s tail mirrors the Rococo embellishments of its owner’s gown. Elsewhere, Craven’s lush, painterly Magic and Moonlight in Night Field (2024), evokes the sinewy physicality and anthropomorphic nature of a French Bulldog.
Across these works, artists explore the specific body language and intimacies that humans share with their canine companions. Wegman’s photograph Look (1989) pictures four of the artist’s famous pets sitting uniformly in chairs, perfectly rapt, their piercing amber eyes presumably meeting those of the artist. In Jonas Wood’s etching Three Dogs (2020), the titular crew appears with tongues wagging, each gazing lovingly at the viewer, while Louis Fratino’s work on paper Man and Dog (2018) suggests the similar ways in which humans and dogs find comfort and connection.
Other works reflect the role of dogs in history and fantasy, consumerism and psychology. Karen Kilimnik’s seductive and shadowy painting friends in the woods (2010) references Old Master canine scenes, picturing a nocturnal gathering of dogs of various stock beside a steaming cauldron. Robert Gober’s 1976 photograph Untitled also features an assembly of breeds, zeroing in on three distinguished “eager eaters” in dog food branding. Peter Saul, with characteristic irony, plays on our expectations of our furry friends in the work on paper Watchdog (2011), depicting a dopey, deranged creature with a halo. And with the sculpture Lucy (2021), a Pop-inspired puzzle of a pup holding a flower, Alex Da Corte suggests dogs are more than they seem.
With paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs dating from 1915 to the present day and running the stylistic gamut, Dog Days of Summer offers up a collective portrait of our mutual evolution with our canine companions, in life and in art.
A Study in Form (Chapter Two) marks the second half of a two-part exhibition project curated by Arden Wohl that touches upon various relationships, dialogues, intersections, and companionships between artists and poets; and their poetry and art. Here, a range of disciplines, generations, and perspectives come together to push beyond the boundary of the visual artifact as an end point of the artwork.
Presenting work from over 70 artists, Chapter Two will be the final exhibition at 55 Delancey Street, where James Fuentes has been located since 2010 (the gallery was first established in the same neighborhood in 2007). In community, this project honors the gallery’s legacy on the Lower East Side and at the same time celebrates the future. From June of 2024, the gallery’s sole New York home will be at 52 White Street in Tribeca.
Chapter Two includes artworks by Alia Raza, Alice Attie, Alvaro Barrington, Amy Sillman, Ann Craven, Anton van Dalen, Bambou Gili, Becca Mann, Becky Howland, Ben Estes, Bennett Miller, Bryson Brodie, Charles Mayton, Charlie Ahearn, Cheyenne Julien, Cindy Sherman, Colleen Barry, Dana Schutz, Danny McDonald, Didier William, Dustin Yellin, Eleanor Friedberger, Eliza Douglas, Elsa Rensaa, Emily Sundblad, Gina Beavers, Greer Lankton, Hannah Black, Hannah Lee, Hans Accola, Helen Marden, Izzy Barber, Jane Dickson, Jenna Gribbon, Jennie C. Jones, Jennifer Herrema, Jessica Craig-Martin, Jessica Dickinson, Jim Jarmusch, Jo Messer, Joey Frank, John Ahearn, John McAllister, Jonah Freeman, Joshua Abelow, Julia Chiang, Justin Chance, Justin Lowe, Keegan Monaghan, Keith Riley, Kon Trubkovich, Leah Singer, Lee Dawson, Lee Quinones, Lee Ranaldo, Lily Ludlow, Lisa Robertson, Lizzi Bougatsos, Lua Beaulieu, Lukas Geronimas, Maggie Ellis, Marley Freeman, Matthew Barney, Matthew Higgs, Michael Berryhill, Michael Cline, Natalia Gaia, Nick Sandow, Oscar yi Hou, Pat Steir, Peter Halley, Peter McGough, Rachel Feinstein, Raúl de Nieves, Rebecca Watson Horn, Richard Heinrich, Ryan Johnson, Sadie Laska, Sahra Motalebi, Sam Messer, Sheree Hovsepian, Spencer Sweeney, Stefan Bondell, Stipan Tadić, Tauba Auerbach, Thom Zynwala, Troy Montes-Michie, Zoe McGuire, and poets hannah baer, Matvei Yankelevich, Anselm Berrigan, Anne Waldman, and Zêdan Xelef.
The ecosystem of the creative individual is a hard one to quantify or categorize. Sometimes groups emerge in well-defined movements with easily transmittable names—impressionists, minimalists, feminists—though most often, these descriptive nouns and adjectives only accrue long after the fact. (Alexandra Kollontai and Sheryl Sandberg both belong to the greater history of feminism, for example, but they might be perplexed to find themselves in the same boat.) Often, these names are not self-applied and function more as a marketing device than a useful and plausible heuristic for what is happening in any given historical moment. With any group, there is an individual effort to identify shared characteristics. What is that moment today, and is the situation of culture just as important as the solitary act of creation?
This is the realm of poetry and poet: the spirit that rejects explicit meanings and easily defined packages in favor of the lyrical and allusive. To disregard the pressure of commercial spectacle in favor of the quiet and personal is to defy the misconception that resisting market trends is useless. Poetic speech has its roots in humanity’s primordial creative endeavors. Were not the first written words images? I’d say that the preservation and propagation of poetic practice is just as fundamental as that of visual artwork.
The relationship between the visual arts and poetry is long and well established. “Ut pictura poesis”—pictures like poetry, the formula of the Roman poet Horace—is among the most influential directives to artistic expression since the Renaissance. Michelangelo wrote poems. But poetic and artistic influences often wend their ways along circuitous, unexpected, and perverse routes. Gertrude Stein was as famous for her gatherings that brought together artists and writers as she was for her writing. We know her for “Three Lives” and “The Making of Americans,” but Picasso’s looming, totemic portrait intrudes forcefully even for those who haven’t read her recondite prose and star-splattered verse.
Frank O’Hara was not only a poet but also an art critic and curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Marcel Broodthaers was a poet before he embarked on his mission to make “insincere” art objects. Now he’s accounted as the Arethusa of Institutional Critique: muse of the art world compulsively biting its own tail. Brice Marden’s “Cold Mountain” paintings took inspiration from the Tang Dynasty poet Hanshan—minimalism rerouted through a Floating World. While it would be impossible to make one reducible statement about the symbiosis of poets and artists, I would propose that the nurturing of creative community brings forward a collective energy that gives way to innovations in form and approach.
Though predominantly a collection of visual art, this exhibition beats with the heart of a poet. Its ambition is to position a group of artists and writers across generations and locations who are connected by a social and artistic foment. The scene, rather than something frivolous and fashionable, becomes a space where a group fosters collective boldness in stepping outside of accepted convention. This is not a show organized around simple aesthetic or demographic similarities. This show aims for a locus where the divergence of individual efforts finds communal reciprocity and fortification. In a moment when the social and cultural noise may feel deafening—and the artist’s work seems destined for the palette racks of eyeless dream brokers—this exhibition attempts to shift focus to the communal here and now.
—Arden Wohl
James Fuentes Gallery, NY, NY
Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Ann Craven
By Charles Schultz
January 2024
Ann Craven
By Osman Can Yerebakan
November 2023
Ann Craven’s Wistful Nighttime Tales
By Natasha Sweeten
November 2023
Blurring Books, March, 2024
42 artists, 375+ stickers
Softcover, 48 pages
11 x 13 inches
The Unbelievably Fantastic Artists’ Sticker Book brings
museum artworks to the masses in sticker form, allowing
the public to create their own art galleries: on laptops,
skateboards, cellphones etc.
Includes stickers from:
Allan McCollum, Andy Warhol, Ann Craven,
Anthony Coleman Baraulio Amado, Chapman Brothers,
Daniel Johnston, David Jien, DAZE, Devin Troy Strother,
Donald Sultan, Elmgreen & Dragset, Erik Foss, Fred Tomaselli,
Hank Willis Thomas, Jackson Pollock, Jeff Koons, Jonas Wood,
John Baldessari, John Giorno, Josef Albers, Kay Rosen,
Linder Sterling, Louise Bourgeois, Marcel Dzama, Marilyn Minter,
Mr., Nate Lowman, Pam Glick, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Ray Johnson,
Raymond Pettibon, Rick Griffin, Robert Lazzarini, Rob Pruitt,
Shirin Neshat, Terence Hammonds, Tom Sachs, Tomoo Gokita,
Trenton Doyle Hancock, Wallace Berman and Yoshitomo Nara.
Love Will Come Back is an exhibition of paintings by Ann Craven, with work by Robert Mapplethorpe and Mohammed Z Rahman. The combination of artists, each working with the image and presence of doves, enacts a theme or rhythm of homing and homecoming: back to inspirations, influences, and the act of return. The show draws together the practices of three artists of exceptional sensitivity, iconographical awareness, and compositional acuity.
Craven’s process is compelled by a desire to revisit her own subject matter – a near-spiritual cycle, akin to a repeated prayer or mantra. This exhibition reunites one of Craven’s recurring compositions with the work that inspired it: Robert Mapplethorpe’s 1979 photograph Patti Smith, depicting Smith holding two white doves – one perched on each hand. The photograph was used as the cover art for Smith’s album Wave in the same year it was taken. In Craven’s painting series, titled Night Wave (I Promise) (begun in 2008), she lifts Mapplethorpe’s doves on to two delicately painted branches, holding their original positions and placed against her signature painted backgrounds inspired by the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. Craven’s Night Wave (I Promise, Blue), 2011, and Night Wave (I Promise, Gray), 2024, sit alongside her new work – paintings of doves fluttering and taking flight.
Love Will Come Back is named for the also mantra-like phrase painted in braille across the four matchboxes that constitute Mohammed Z Rahman’s work Hard Vow (2023). Each box features a miniature painting of a dove in flight against an inky background, with one word of the phrase painted in braille above each of the dove’s heads. The work is a declaration for enduring peace and justice as well as a symbol of homing or return – return of love and, specifically, return of those displaced by widespread violence in Palestine, Sudan, Congo and Haiti.
Rahman’s 2024 Ashawalla (Hopemonger), similarly speaks to the honest wish for lasting peace, the historical end to genocides worldwide and the safe return of displaced peoples. The painting depicts a rock dove returning to a dovecote – based on Pimp Hall Dovecote in Chingford, North East London, an area where Rahman carries out voluntary nature conservation – flying over a lush green landscape and a moat-like red river.
The practice of the three artists in Love Will Come Back converse through timeless subject matter. The dove’s presence across the works underscores shared emotional threads and provides a constant, iconic motif, with its connotations of restfulness and hope indicative of its essential heart and understated life force.
Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 1979, courtesy of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York, and Alison Jacques, London.
Karma presents Night, an exhibition of new paintings by Ann Craven, open from November 2 to December 20 at 22 East 2nd Street, New York.
The eight nocturnal paintings in Night survey major motifs of Ann Craven’s nearly thirty-year-long practice. For the first time, she has set all of her scenes in the darkness of evening, creating a consistent chromatic background that intensifies her always-vibrant colors. Craven primarily approaches her subjects in one of two ways: painting from observation or from appropriated sources, both her own former compositions and images from books, postcards, movies, posters, and other painters, notably Georgia O’Keeffe. The methods are intimately connected, as she often scales up and repaints her small en plein air paintings in the studio. These oils of moons, trees, birds, flowers, and deer constitute the latest chapter in her systematic catalog of what she terms “revisitations,” each of which is also a reinvention of her subject matter.
Craven’s methodical revisitations emerge from material and psychic loss. In 1999, a fire decimated her studio, existing work, and personal belongings. Her efforts to recover from the catastrophe led to her first copies, canvases painted from memories of her prior works, and initiated a lifelong project of duplication and reiteration. Lacking a single fixed referent, her paintings multiply serially from the realms of emotion and memory. Each of the artist’s works contains within it the entire history of her practice, forming a link in an index of representations of representations. Marking the mysterious hours between sunset and sunrise, Night acknowledges the centrality of time’s passage in the artist’s oeuvre—the lag between perceiving an object and painting it, the movement from one canvas to the next, the continuous rotation of our earth.
In Night, Craven’s brushstrokes describe her subjects as feathery, lush, and brimming with vital energy and tender feelings. Fawn in Night Field, 2023 (all works 2023) depicts a sad-eyed doe against a sea of brushy grass shrouded in darkness, and yet elemental daisies in white and girlish pink emit an otherworldly illumination as they leave the ground and float hazily through the night sky. This fawn has been a friend of Craven’s since she first painted it in 1998, when she appropriated the original image from the 1973 dystopian science fiction film Soylent Green. Her choice of animal is also in conversation with Gustave Courbet’s epic Realist work The Death of the Stag (1867)—After the studio fire, a deer painting stored offsite was the sole Craven canvas that remained. As such, and in contrast with Courbet’s fatally wounded stag, her fawn represents courage, perseverance, and hope.
Portrait of a Blue Bird (Night Song, After Picabia), 2023 shows the titular creature with its beak agape, as if heralding the beauty of the jimsonweed flowers in the background. A mysterious, anatomically incorrect second eye disrupts the scene’s naturalism, bending it toward the surreal and distinguishing it from past iterations of the composition. The white blooms reference O’Keeffe’s own paintings of the flower, while the title’s nod to Picabia acknowledges inspiration Craven found in the French avant-gardist’s Transparencies (1927–33), paintings that layer art-historical references with portraiture and natural imagery—birds, animals, trees—into multivalent compositions. Behind another warbling, chesty Northern bluebird resting atop a blooming branch in Bold as Love, 2023 is a swirling vortex of pastels. This tempest of abstract color evokes the minimalist-yet-riotous Stripe canvases that Craven makes from the mixed oil paint that remains once she finishes a work from her oeuvre. The rarely-exhibited Stripes comprise an indexical archive that the artist, in her words, “naughtily” hides away from the world, preserving them for her own future reference. Bold as Love, 2023 reprises a painting she first exhibited in 2007, ten years after she began rendering specimens from an ornithology book discovered in the basement of her deceased grandmother’s Boston home.
The bouquet is one of the newest motifs in Night, originating only thirteen years ago. Craven’s marks in Dahlia’s (For the Pink Moon), 2023 feel immediate, as if unmediated transmissions from the artist’s eye to the canvas. Her wet-on-wet technique allows the petals of one flower to flow seamlessly into the next. Here, and across her practice, figuration morphs into kaleidoscopic abstraction and back again, each canvas resisting easy categorization in favor of pure feeling. Craven “is painting,” in the words of poet Ariana Reines, “desire itself.”
In Purple Beech (Night Sky), 2023, a glowing moon peeks through the dense foliage of the titular deciduous shade tree, while in Moon (Crazy 8 Green Clouds), 2023, the earth’s satellite radiates lavender rings of light as gusts of wind and the artist’s signature infinity-symbol-shaped clouds float by. Craven’s moons have been central to her cosmology since they formed the sole subject matter of her one-person debut exhibition in 1995. These lunar paintings originate in nights spent outdoors, closely observing the celestial body and capturing it on canvas in near-darkness, with only the memory of her palette guiding her brush. The eight monumental works are accompanied by corresponding, intimately-scaled oil paintings in the gallery’s viewing room, as well as a parallel group of watercolors on view at the Karma Bookstore at 136 East 3rd Street.
LOVE WILL COME BACK
Ann Craven with Robert Mapplethorpe and Mohammed R. Rahman
London, UK
March 9 – April 13, 2024
Image:
Ann Craven
Night Wave (I Promise, Gray), 2024
2024
Oil on canvas
24 x 18 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Phillida Reid, London
Ann Craven. Flash Art. May 16, 2016
Ann Craven: Night. Brooklyn Rail. December 20, 2023
Ann Craven’s wistful nighttime tales. Two Coats of Paint. November 15, 2023
monograph published by Karma Books, New York © 2023 Ann Craven, Text by Daniel S. Palmer, Rainer Diana Hamilton, Ariana Reines, and SCAD Museum of Art
Long Nights Moon, with Ian Alteveer, The Quin House, Boston, MA
Night, with Susan Howe, moderated by Daniel Palmer, Karma, New York, NY
Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT
Portland, ME
125 Newbury, New York, NY
Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, CA
The Ranch, Montauk, NY
Karma and Dear Advisory, Seoul, KOR
DIMIN, New York, NY
Phillida Reid, London, UK
Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
The Quin House, Boston, MA
Karma, New York, NY
Ann Craven
Twelve Moons
Text by Daniel S. Palmer, Rainer Diana Hamilton, Ariana Reines
SCAD Museum of Art, 2023
176 pages, hardcover
11 × 11 inches
A CONVERSATION WITH ANN CRAVEN, SUSAN HOWE,
AND DANIEL PALMER
New York, NY
December 16, 2023
Image:
Ann Craven with Susan Howe and Daniel Palmer at Night Exhibition
Between The Lines: An RxART Coloring Book Volume 10
Buy RxART Coloring Book Volume 10
Ann Craven is this “greatest hits” edition cover and
sticker page artist, alongside 48 incredible contemporary
artists who have contributed to the RxART Coloring Book over
the last 20 years.
Between the Lines: An RxART Coloring Book by
Contemporary Artists – Volume 10 is a compilation of
“greatest hits” from throughout the RxART coloring book
series, produced in celebration of RxART’s 25th Anniversary.
It features a vibrant cover and sticker spread designed by
Ann Craven and drawings by 48 other extraordinary established
artists, including Joel Mesler, Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson,
Hayal Pozanti, and Anna Weyant, among others!
At Karma’s Summer Outpost in Maine, Color Breaks the Silence of a Former Church
By Hilary Irons
August 2023
Chasing the Moon
By Suzette Mcavoy
June/July 2023
GROUP SHOW
GROUP PORTRAIT
London, UK
July 22- September 23, 2023
Image:
Ann Craven
Portrait (of Elliot Granat, my Godson Cushing, 8-15-21, 5 PM), 2021
2021
Oil on linen
14 x 11 in.
GROUP SHOW
WISHING WELL
Los Angeles, CA
June 25 – August 5, 2023
parkergallery.com
Image:
Installation view
Santa Barbara, CA
Savannah, GA
Rockland, ME
Waterville, ME
Colombo, Sri Lanka
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Miami, FL
Edition of 75 silk scarves, 71 x 51 in (130 x 180 cm), produced by Ann Craven and the Farnsworth Art Museum and Massif Central Editions, 2023
Ann Craven: Animals Birds Flowers Moons. Brooklyn Rail, April 28, 2021
ANN CRAVEN: TWELVE MOONS
By Greg Lindquist
April 2023
brooklynrail.org
Image:
Ann Craven
Moon (After Quiet Harvest Moon, Cushing, 9-9-22, 8:30 PM), 2022
2022
Oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
Ann Craven: Twelve Moons, Brooklyn Rail, April 2023
ANN CRAVEN: TWELVE MOONS
By Greg Lindquist
April 2023
Edition of 60 prints + 10 APs, 9 color screen print on Coventry rag paper, published by Ann Craven and the Farnsworth Art Museum and Kayrock Screenprinting, 2023
TWELVE MOONS
SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN MUSEUM
Savannah GA
February 28 — August 21, 2023
scadmoa.org
EXHIBITIONS
Image:
Installation View
Savannah College of Art and Design Museum, Savannah, GA
Ann Craven paints en plein air to create exuberant depictions of the moon and night sky. These small canvases document the lunar conditions she observes at specific moments and become the source for her larger monumental compositions. Painting in a lush, sensuous palette, Craven describes the moment just past, her memories, and subjective personal experience. For her largest exhibition of these works to date, the artist transforms the gallery into a panorama representing the cycles of the moon, captured over the course of the 2022 lunar year. The works on view reveal both the serial nature of the artist’s larger endeavor and the myriad meanings the moon can convey. Collectively, they chronicle a distinct chapter in her ongoing process to creatively and beautifully encapsulate the wonders of the natural phenomena that surround us.
Edition of 100 prints + 20 APs, + 3 PPs, 16 color screen print on 400gsm paper, produced by Ann Craven and Counter Editions, 2023
GROUP SHOW
LET THE SUNSHINE IN
54 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8EF
January 12 — February 18, 2023
Ann Craven, Cui Jie, Freya Douglas-Morris, Sophie von Hellermann,
Kat Lyons, Tala Madani, Manuel Mathieu, Sofia Mitsola,
Sabine Moritz, Philippe Parreno, Mary Ramsden, Rachel Rose,
Shahzia Sikander, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lina Iris Viktor and Vivien Zhang
Image:
Ann Craven
Moon (Cushing, 7-23-19, 11:55PM), 2019
2019
Oil on linen
14 x 14 inches
Pilar Corrias, London, UK
Edition of 50 prints + 10 APs, 8 color screen print on Coventry rag paper, 30 x 22 inches, Published by Ann Craven and Karma, 2023
Hot Lots: 5 Female Artists Art Buyers Adored at Hong Kong’s Autumn Day Sale, Artnet, December 8, 2022
GROUP SHOW
BODYLAND
Curated by Lauren Taschen
Goethestraße 2/3
4 November – 23 December, 2022
Isabelle Albuquerque, Vanessa Beecroft, Ana Benaroya,
Madeleine Bialke, Brian Calvin, Ann Craven, Sarah Cunningham,
Karon Davis, Sky Glabush, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg,
Ulala Imai, February James, Rae Klein, Kat Lyons, Laurie Nye,
Ariana Papademetropoulos, Ilana Savdie, Eleanor Swordy,
Emma Webster, Alina Zamanova
Image:
Installation View
curated by Lauren Taschen, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, DE
organized by Sanya Kantarovsky and Hannah Hoffman for Blank Forms, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
EXTENSIONS OUT: AN EXHIBITION TO
BENEFIT BLANK FORMS
17 White Street, New York, NY 10013
November 2 — 5, 2022
Organized by Sanya Kantarovsky and Hannah Hoffman
Featuring work by Richard Aldrich, Olga Balema,
Camille Blatrix, Julien Ceccaldi, Leidy Churchman,
Ann Craven, Christina Forrer, Hanna Hur, Robert Janitz,
Sanya Kantarovsky, Monique Mouton, Kate Spencer Stewart,
and Terry Winters
blankforms.org
Image:
Ann Craven
Portrait of a Blue Bird (After Picabia, on Black with
Silvery Light), 2022
2022
Oil on linen
18 x 24 inches
New York Academy of Art, New York, NY
TAKE HOME A NUDE
Art Auction + Party
Benefitting New York Academy of Art
Honoring Tracey Emin
October 25, 2022
nyaa.edu
Image:
Ann Craven
Rose (for the Pink Moon, Red Tree, White St,
May 9, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper, 140lb
13 x 10 inches
Galerie Creveceour, Paris, FR
GROUP SHOW
LA PROIE ET L’OMBRE
7 Rue de Beaune, Paris
October 17 — December 22, 2022
Matthew Barney, Ann Craven, Christopher Culver, Oscar Dominguez,
Sophie Gogl, Ulala Imai, Alain Jacquet, Renaud Jerez, Ernst Yohji
Jaeger, Jochen Lempert, Jannis Marwitz, Wolfgang Matuschek, Stuart
Middleton, Ad Minoliti, Yu Nishimura, Francis Picabia, Autumn Ramsey,
Louise Sartor, Michael E.Smith
Image:
Ann Craven
Snowy Owls (after Abudon, January 2, 2021), 2021
2021
Watercolour on arches paper
76,2 × 55,9 cm / 81,3 × 61 cm (framed)
Organized by Phong H. Bui and Cal McKeever, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, NY
Winter Street Gallery, Edgartown, MA
Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Nina Johnson, Miami, FL
Curated by Beth DeWoody, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA
CMCA, Rockland, ME
Curated by Todd Broadway, Acquavella, New York, NY
deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum and Fruitlands Museum, Boston, MA
Curated by JPW3 and Torie Zalben, Kranzberg Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO
Hales, London, UK
Curated by Russell Tovey and Alexander Petalas, The Perimeter, London, UK
Curated by Mary Manning, White Columns, New York, NY
Curated by Marc Bembekoff and It’s Our Playground, La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain de Noisy-le-Sec, FR
Magenta Plains, New York, NY
Karma, 70 Main Street, Thomaston, ME
curated by Eddie Martinez, Harper’s, East Hampton, NY
Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT
Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY
Phillida Reid, Auckland, NZ
Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, CT
Hannah Hoffman Gallery, LA
GROUP SHOW
SINGING IN UNISON: ARTISTS NEED
TO CREATE ON THE SAME SCALE THAT
SOCIETY HAS THE CAPACITY TO DESTROY
Organized by Phong H. Bui and Cal McKeever
September 7 – October 16, 2022
Miguel Abreu Gallery is pleased to announce the opening,
on Wednesday, September 7th, of Singing In Unison, a
multi-part, large scale group exhibitions organized by
Phong Bui and the Rail Curatorial Projects. The exhibition
will be on view at our 88 Eldridge Street location.
Having witnessed two ruptures—the pandemic and the ongoing
crisis of our social and political condition, implemented in part
by those who deploy technology and social media to create chaos
and anxiety for self-serving purposes—the Brooklyn Rail responded
swiftly by launching its daily Zoom lunchtime series, the New Social
Environment (NSE). NSE cultivates thoughtful discussions on
pertinent topics in the arts, humanities, and sciences and values
the amplification of “social intimacy”—in contrast to “social
distancing”—through culture.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (Green Haze Full, Again, Cushing), 2022
2022
Oil on linen
40 x 30 inches
KARMA, NY
COEX
513 Yeongdong-daero
Gangnam-gu, 06164, Seoul
September 2–5, 2022
Karma is pleased to participate in Frieze Seoul 2022,
presenting works by Henni Alftan, Dike Blair, Will Boone,
Peter Bradley, Ann Craven, Verne Dawson, Marley Freeman,
Peter Halley, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Ulala Imai, Keith
Mayerson, Paul Mogensen, Maja Ruznic, Kathleen Ryan,
Alan Saret, Tabboo!,Mungo Thomson, Ouattara Watts,
Xiao Jiang, and Manoucher Yektai.
IMAGE:
Installation view
GROUP SHOW
SEA SHOW
July 30 – August 28, 2022
Winter Street Gallery is pleased to present Sea Show,
an exhibition featuring 25 artists addressing themes
around the ocean. For centuries a fertile source of
inspiration to artists, the sea and its environs are
newly animated in fresh and unexpected ways by
the artworks presented. Featuring: Gertrude Abercrombie,
Ana Benaroya, Dike Blair, Katherine Bradford, Ann Craven,
Carroll Dunham, Louis Eisner, Jane Freilicher, Maureen Gallace,
Elizabeth Jaeger, Merlin James, Allison Katz, Robert Longo,
Sam McKinniss, Alina Perez, Loïc Raguénès, Kenny Rivero,
Wilhelm Sasnal, Dash Snow, Tabboo!, Rachel Eulena Williams,
Nicole Wittenberg, Joseph E. Yoakum, Coco Young, Jack Yuen
IMAGE:
Installation view
GROUP SHOW
NOTHING IS TO BE DONE FOR WILLIAM T. WILEY
June 12 – August 6, 2022
Parker Gallery is proud to present a group exhibition
in tribute to the late William T. Wiley (1937–2021).
The exhibition features a constellation of artists, including
intimates, acquaintances and many without personal connection
to Wiley, bound toghether by their enigmatic and curious spirits.
The artists include child- hood friends (William Allan and Robert
Hudson), fellow professors, colleagues and co-conspirators (Robert
Arneson, Mike Henderson, Ed Kienholz, Peter Saul, Carlos Villa,
H.C. Westermann), and former students (Deborah Butterfield,
Mary Heilmann, Bruce Nauman, Maija Peeples-Bright), alongside
contemporary artists representing several generations of kindred
spirits (Melissa Brown, Ann Craven, Jimmie Durham, Llyn Foulkes,
Piero Gilardi, Peter Halley, Hugh Hayden, Christine Sun Kim,
Calvin Marcus, Ree Morton, Laura Owens, Nancy Shaver, Sue
Williams, Amy Yao).
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (Blue Crescent, Cushing, 9-6-21, 7:30PM), 2021
2021
Oil on linen
14 x 14 inches
Hannah Hoffman Gallery is pleased to present Flowers (Watercolors), a solo exhibition of new works by Ann Craven, who lives and works in New York City and summers in Cushing, Maine.
“I learned how to paint by looking, by looking at something in the round and painting it,” Craven insisted last year in a conversation with her friend, the painter Lois Dodd. “I’ve always struggled with the idea that I just want to paint what I’m looking at and abandon all these sort of smart-ass things I try to do with birds and stuff [laughs] ….”* Forthright, witty, and self-aware, Craven’s comments hint at the heady mix of contradictions at the heart of her work. Her signature subjects birds, other animals, flowers, the moon – draw on direct observation as well as an expansive, personally curated archive of preexisting images.
For more than three decades, Craven has worked to dismantle the distinction between subjectively expressive art making and the ordered, cerebral practices often grouped under the heading of conceptual practice. She combines ostensibly lighthearted subject matter and a captivating handling of paint with a rule-bound, systematic approach to features like the size and titles of her compositions.
Craven’s effervescent palette and expert paint handling are evidence of her ability to get lost in the visual and textural pleasures of painting. Yet, when viewed together, her works also reveal a deliberate, iterative thinker. Craven’s mind is at once wholly engaged in the moment of making and keenly aware of the way the past always pierces the present. Her subjects exist in a temporal continuum–one that calls forth the purposeful workings and reworkings at the heart of a studio practice and the more mysterious machinations of visual and emotional memory.
The current exhibition features 18 new watercolors, all flowers, a medium particularly wellsuited to her concentration on the objects before her eyes and the drama of color on paper.
Ann Craven presented her first retrospective, titled TIME and curated by Yann Chevalier, at Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers, France in 2014. Recent solo exhibitions include Karma, New York (2021); the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine (2019); Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago (2019); Karma, New York (2018); Southard Reid, London (2017); Maccarone, New York (2016); among others. Craven’s paintings are in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, among others. Craven’s work is currently on display in the 2022 New England Triennial which spans two museum venues—deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and Fruitlands Museum.
* “It’s Going to Take Some Time”. Lois Dodd in conversation with Ann Craven. Animals Birds Flowers Moons, published by Karma, New York, 2021
——————————————————————
CHECKLIST
Ann Craven
Grocery Store Flowers (on Orange, Red Cherries, White St, May 1, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 26 x 20 inches (66 x 50.8 cm). Framed dimensions 28 x 22 inches
–
Ann Craven
Grocery Store Flowers (on Black, Red Cherries, White St, May 1, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 26 x 20 inches (66 x 50.8 cm). Framed dimensions 28 x 22 inches
–
Ann Craven
Sunset Peony (White St, May 7, 2022), 2022, 2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 13 x 10 inches (33 x 25.4 cm). Framed dimensions 17 x 13 inches
–
Ann Craven
Yellow Rose (Light through Queen Ann’s Lace, White St, May 8, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 13 x 10 inches (33 x 25.4 cm). Framed dimensions 17 x 13 inches
–
Ann Craven
Red Rose (Light through Queen Ann’s Lace, White St, May 8, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 13 x 10 inches (33 x 25.4 cm). Framed dimensions 17 x 13 inches
–
Ann Craven
White Roses (Black and White Fade, White St, May 5, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 22.5 x 15 inches (57.2 x 38.1 cm). Framed dimensions 24.5 x 17 inches
–
Ann Craven
Grocery Store Flowers (on Blue, Red Cherries, White St, May 3, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 22.5 x 15 inches (57.2 x 38.1 cm). Framed dimensions 24.5 x 17 inches
–
Ann Craven
Moonlight Brown-Eyed Susans (White St, May 3, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 22.5 x 15 inches (57.2 x 38.1 cm). Framed dimensions 24.5 x 17 inches
–
Ann Craven
Roses (on Red with Hollyhock’s, White St, May 4, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 22.5 x 15 inches (57.2 x 38.1 cm). Framed dimensions 24.5 x 17 inches
–
Ann Craven
Sunset Peonies (White St, May 7, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 13 x 10 inches (33 x 25.4 cm). Framed dimensions 17 x 13 inches
–
Ann Craven
Red Dahlias (for the Moon, White St, March 30, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches Paper
Paper Dimensions: 13 x 10 inches (33 x 25.4 cm). Framed Dimensions 17 x 13 in
–
Ann Craven
Rose (for the Pink Moon, White St, May 9, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 13 x 10 inches (33 x 25.4 cm). Framed dimensions 17 x 13 inches
–
Ann Craven
Red Dahlias (for the Moon, Again, White St, April 1, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 26 x 20 inches (66 x 50.8 cm). Framed dimensions 28 x 22 inches
–
Ann Craven
Roses (on Blue with Red Tree, White St, March 24, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 26 x 20 inches (66 x 50.8 cm). Framed dimensions 28 x 22 inches
–
Ann Craven
Red Dahlias (for the Moon, Again, Again, White St, April 1, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 26 x 20 inches (66 x 50.8 cm). Framed Dimensions: 28 x 22 in
–
Ann Craven
Sunset Brown-Eyed Susan’s with Spring Weeds, (White St, May 6, 2022), 2022
2022
Watercolor on Arches paper
Paper Dimensions: 22.5 x 15 inches (57.2 x 38.1 cm). Framed dimensions 24.5 x 17 inches
——————————————————————
GROUP SHOW
WHEN IN MAINE
June 4 – July 30, 2022
“When In Maine…One swims in the pond, gazes at the stars,
lays amongst the moss, feels the mist of the sea, the echo of
the fog horn, eats lobster with friends, and so on and so forth…”
Artists include: Marvin Bileck, Katherine Bradford, Jenny Brillhart,
Ann Craven,Lois Dodd, Jim Drain, Bob Hiemstra, Alex Katz,
Emily Nelligan, Katie Stout, and Nicole Wittenberg
IMAGE:
Installation view
Contributions by Susan Howe and Christopher Crosman, Karma, New York, 2022
GROUP SHOW
THE VIEW FROM HERE
May 28 – September 11, 2021
CMCA presents the thematic group exhibition, The View
from Here,featuring works by 20 artists (including two
collaboratives) who havepreviously exhibited or otherwise
been involved at CMCA across ourhistory (1952-2022).
The celebratory exhibition coincides with CMCA’s 70th
anniversary, and the unifying concept is unique and dynamic ways
of looking at the world through new or recent works, underscoring
CMCA’s forward-thinking trajectory. Artists include: Katherine
Bradford, Sam Cady, Ann Craven, Lois Dodd, Inka Essenhigh,
Linden Frederick, Alison Hildreth, Hilary Irons, Erin Johnson,
Alex Katz, John Moore, Tessa Green O’Brien, Wade Kavanaugh
& Stephen Nguyen, Probably Joel, Aaron T Stephan, tectonic
industries, Joyce Tenneson, and Nicole Wittenberg.
cmcanow.org
IMAGE:
Installation view
KARMA, NY
1 Harbour Road
Wan Chai, Hong Kong, China
May 25-29, 2022
Karma is pleased to participate in Art Basel
Hong Kong 2022, presenting works by Henni Alftan,
Dike Blair, Ann Craven, and Marley Freeman.
karmakarma.org
IMAGE:
Installation view
KARMA, NY
The Shed
545 W 30th St
New York, NY
May 18-22, 2022
Karma is pleased to participate in Frieze New York 2022,
presenting works by Henni Alftan, Dike Blair, Peter Bradley,
Ann Craven,Robert Duran, Marley Freeman, Peter Halley,
Reggie Burrows Hodges, Keith Mayerson, Paul Mogensen,
Thaddeus Mosley, Woody De Othello, Maja Ruznic, Kathleen
Ryan, Alan Saret, Tabboo!, Mungo Thomson, Ouattara Watts,
Xiao Jiang, and Manoucher Yektai.
karmakarma.org
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Big Moon (Green Haze Full Moon, Cushing), 2022
2022
Oil on canvas
84 × 72 inches
Contributions by Susan Howe and Christopher Crosman
Karma, New York, 2022
72 pages, hardcover
11 1⁄4 × 11 1⁄4 inches
Artists of Color and Women Soar at Christie’s 21st Century Sale, NY Times, May 10, 2022
Christie’s, May 9, 2022
SOLO EXHIBBITION
OPENING JUNE 2
LOS ANGELES
Ann Craven at Hannah Hoffman Gallery
2504 W 7th St, Suite C, Los Angeles
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Rose (on Blue, Guilford, May 16, 2020), 2020
2020
Watercolor on Arches paper, 140lb
13 x 10 inches
EVENING SALE
THE COLLECTION OF THOMAS AND DORIS AMMANN
May 9, 2022
20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020
This May, Christie’s is thrilled to present The Collection of
Thomas and Doris Ammann, offered across two live auctions
at Rockefeller Center during the spring 20/21 Marquee Week
in New York. Doris and Thomas were siblings and cofounders
of Thomas Ammann Fine Art. Throughout their lives, the brother-
sister duo supported creative practices, leading artistic endeavours
with passionate expertise. On offer are over 100 works from the
Ammann’s private collection, exemplifying their superior taste for
20th century art. All of the Foundation’s proceeds from the sales
will benefit the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation, a newly
established organization dedicated to improving the lives of children
worldwide.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
I Wasn’t Sorry, 2003
2003
Oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
LONDON
In collaboration with Southard Reid.
Old Sessions House, 24 Clerkenwell Grn,
London EC1R 0NA, United Kingdom
BOOK RELEASE
Ann Craven and Reggie Burrows Hodges
MOONS AND ANGELS
Contributions by Susan Howe and Christopher Crosman
Karma, New York, 2022
72 pages, hardcover
11 1⁄4 × 11 1⁄4 inches
KARMA, NY
Fashion Industry Gallery
Dallas, TX
April 21-24, 2022
Karma is pleased to participate in Dallas Art Fair 2022,
presenting works by Henni Alftan, Dike Blair, Will Boone,
Peter Bradley, Ann Craven, Verne Dawson, Robert Duran,
Louise Fishman, Marley Freeman, Peter Halley, Reggie Burrows Hodges,
Keith Mayerson, Thaddeus Mosley, Woody De Othello, Maja Ruznic,
Alan Saret, Tabboo!, Mungo Thomson, Ouattara Watts, Xiao Jiang,
and Manoucher Yektai.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Deer in Daisies, 2021
2021
oil on canvas
84 × 60 inches
GROUP SHOW
UNNATURAL NATURE
April 21 – June 10, 2022
Curated by: Todd Bradway
Artists in the New York City exhibition include Henni Alftan,
Hurvin Anderson, Gideon Appah, Jules de Balincourt, Hayley Barker,
Adrian Berg, Jennifer Coates, Ann Craven, Lois Dodd, Maureen Gallace,
Sky Glabush, Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Daniel Heidkamp, David Hockney,
Yvonne Jacquette, Jon Joanis, Yuka Kashihara, Alex Katz, Makiko Kudo,
Patricia Leite, John McAllister, William Monk, Laurie Nye, Nicolas Party,
Lisa Sanditz, Wayne Thiebaud, Nicole Wittenberg, and Matthew Wong.
GROUP SHOW
NEW ENGLAND TRIENNIAL 2022
April 8 – September 11, 2022
Prioritizing change over stability, many of the artists’
practices involve processes of unmaking and remaking—patching
things together, dissecting, and rebuilding forms using
discarded parts. Their collective artistry reveals interconnected
tendencies: a focus on kinship and ancestral lineages; a
search for one’s place in the world; the visualization of
data; themes of ruin and decay, and processes of alchemical
transmutation. Artists in this exhibition grapple with difficult
and unjust moments of history and contemporary life. Some employ
generations-old creative traditions in poetic, passionate, and
informed ways. Altogether, their work unearths hidden energies
and stories surfacing at a time defined by change and resilience.
GROUP SHOW
SONGS OF FIRE
April 1 – July 9, 2022
Sophie’s Artist Lounge
Curated by JPW3 and Torie Zalben
Bringing together twenty-one American artists working
across disciplines, the exhibition heralds a moment
of celebration against a backdrop of knowing uncertainty.
The title Songs of Fire is taken from an offhand
utterance by a TV chef, using the phrase to describe
a dish in progress. Taking the metaphor one step further,
the exhibition revels in a process of transformation
out of chaos.
GROUP SHOW
STAND WITH UKRAINE
March 18 – 19, 2022
Following on from 8 years of war in Ukrainian Donbas,
24 February 2022 marked the beginning of Russia’s full-scale
assault on Ukraine. The world has since become witness to
unjustified destruction, suffering and damage caused by this
aggression, while at the same time being amazed and inspired
by the courage of Ukrainian people. In a crisis that touched
Hales in a very direct way (one of the members of our team is
Ukrainian, born and raised in Kyiv) we want to lend support to
those who need it most.
KARMA, NY
9900 Wilshire Boulevard
Beverly Hills, CA
February 17-20, 2022
Karma is pleased to participate in Frieze LA 2022,
presenting works by Henni Alftan, Dike Blair, Peter Bradley,
Ann Craven, Verne Dawson, Marley Freeman, Peter Halley,
Reggie Burrows Hodges, Keith Mayerson, Paul Mogensen,
Thaddeus Mosley, Woody De Othello, Maja Ruznic, Alan Saret,
Tabboo!, Mungo Thomson, Ouattara Watts, Xiao Jiang, and
Manoucher Yektai
GROUP SHOW
LOOKING BACK / THE 12th WHITE COLUMNS ANNUAL
Selected by Mary Manning
“As the global pandemic raged on for another year
in 2021 I felt that I was still working with confusion
and some heartbreak, so the experience of getting to
go look at art with a purpose of sorts had a different,
more joyful register. I primarily used love as a guiding
metric to select these works, being aware of the messy
hard work that comes with love and the rigorous emotional
work that went into making these pieces.” – Mary Manning, 2022.
GROUP SHOW
DES CHAMPS DE FRAISES POUR L’ÉTERNITÉ
January 22 – April 2, 2022
Curated by: Marc Bembekoff and It’s Our Playground
(Camille Le Houezec & Jocelyn Villemont)
Marc Bembekoff, the director of the art center contacted
It’s Our Playground in January 2020 for the first time,
willing them to take part in a project, designing the
scenography of an exhibition which would be a safe space,
a protecting bubble against worldwide political and social
crisis. That was right before the pandemic and all the
turmoil that had lasted for more than a year, which postponed
all the program… So, when early 2021, the show was once
again considered, all agreed to collaborate on that project,
co-curating it, selecting the artists together and re-thinking
the purpose of the show in this new context, quite conscious
that it would be included in a long list of “post-covid” shows
– a risk and a chance at the same time. A risk for it to be
perceived as another show acting as a second wind, but also a
chance to look at artistic practices in search of magic, of
liveness in our new reality.
KARMA, NY
Fort Mason Center
San Francisco, CA
January 20-23, 2022
Karma is pleased to participate in FOG Design+Art 2022,
presenting works by Gertrude Abercrombie, Henni Alftan,
Dike Blair, Peter Bradley, Ann Craven, Verne Dawson,
Robert Duran, Louise Fishman, Marley Freeman, Peter Halley,
Reggie Burrows Hodges, Keith Mayerson, Thaddeus Mosley,
Maja Ruznic, Alan Saret, Tabboo!, Ouattara Watts, Xiao Jiang,
and Manoucher Yektai.
KARMA, NY
Miami Beach Convention Center
December 2-4, 2021
Karma is pleased to participate in Art Basel
Miami Beach 2021, presenting works by Henni
Alftan, Dike Balir, Will Boone, Peter Bradley,
Ann Craven, Mark Flood, Marley Freeman, Peter
Halley, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Keith Mayerson,
Thaddeus Mosley, Woody De Othello, Nicolas Party,
Maja Ruznic, Kathleen Ryan, Alan Saret, Tabboo!,
Mungo Thompson, Ouattara Watts, Matthew Wong,
Xiao Jiang, and Manoucher Yektai
KARMA, NY
Fashion Industry Gallery
November 11-14, 2021
Karma is pleased to participate in Dallas Art Fair 2021,
presenting works by Henni Alftan, Dike Blair, Will Boone,
Peter Bradley, Mathew Cerletty, Ann Craven, Robert Duran,
Louise Fishman, Marley Freeman, Peter Halley,
Reggie Burrows Hodges, Keith Mayerson, Thaddeus Mosley,
Maja Ruznic, Kathleen Ryan, Tabboo!, Mungo Thomson,
Ouattara Watts, Xiao Jiang, and Manoucher Yektai.
GROUP SHOW
MY REFLECTION OF YOU
February 24 – June 25, 2022
Presented by:Alexander Petalas and Russell Tovey
The Perimeter is proud to present My Reflection of You,
a new group exhibition featuring contemporary works
from two private collections. Alexander Petalas and
Russell Tovey have selected works that highlight common
themes and dialogues running through both of their
collections. This exhibition explores the symbiotic
nature of collecting: the ways in which an individual
informs and shapes their own personal collection and
how this in turn can create a wider dialogue with others.
One of New York City’s Most Famous Galleries Presents a Special Exhibit at The Joule in Dallas, Paper City Magazine, November 2, 2021
SOUTHARD REID, LONDON
Booth G1
October 13-17, 2021
Vivian Lynn, Ann Craven, Celia Hampton, Joanna Piotrowska,
Neal Jones
Image:
Ann Craven
Pink Canary (Stepping Out with Cherries), 2016,
2016
oil on linen
84 x 60 inches
KARMA, NEW YORK
The Regent’s Park
October 13-17, 2021
Karma is pleased to participate in Frieze London 2021,
presenting works by Gertrude Abercrombie, Henni Alftan,
Dike Blair, Will Boone, Peter Bradley, Ann Craven,
Verne Dawson, Louise Fishman, Marley Freeman, Peter Halley,
Reggie Burrows Hodges, Xiao Jiang, Keith Mayerson,
Paul Mogensen, Thaddeus Mosley, Maja Ruznic, Tabboo!,
Mungo Thomson, Outtara Watts and Manoucher Yektai.
IMAGE:
Installation view
PODCAST
ANN CRAVEN
September 9, 2021
In conversation with: Russell Tovey and Rob Diamond
Russell & Robert meet artist Ann Craven. We discuss painting
the Moon in TriBeCa and Harlem, Her fascination with Birds
as a subject in her work, Agnes Martin, grief and the loss of her
father, the influence of Alex Katz’s paintings (who she worked
for having first met in Maine), snowy owls and a devestating
studio fire twenty years ago in which she lost many artworks
and belongings. We discuss an unexpected family connection
to art legend Frank Stella, her close friendships with Karma
Books Matt Shuster and artist Sophie von Hellerman, plus what
it’s like to be part of an artist couple with her husband the painter
Peter Halley.
Edition of 60, Watercolor on Arches paper 140lb, 6 x 5 ½ inches, hand painted by Ann Craven, 2021
Karma is pleased to present a two-person exhibition featuring angel paintings by Reggie Burrows Hodges and moon paintings by Ann Craven. The show is set in the former St James Catholic church at 70 Main Street in Thomaston, Maine.
The angels and moons on display symbolically and literally explore the notion of light found in darkness. Deep hues of black and midnight blue set the stage for the heavenly icons, capturing them with a painterly effulgence—or radiating glow. Appearing throughout the canon of art history, these enduring celestial subjects have served as protectors and messengers. Craven and Hodges create warm and inviting interpretations of these guiding lights that allow the viewer to, in Hodges’s words, “offer up and be offered back.”
In Craven’s large-scale paintings, pink moons cast their light on to still water, through backlit trees. A cherished motif for the artist, Craven’s moons vary in brightness, describing the quality of light present in the specific night of their rendering. She painted her first moon in 1995 in Lincolnville, Maine, an activity that, in her words, “gave me my subject matter, I was literally chasing the moon.” Rendered in vivid hues and loose brushstrokes, her iconic moons are painted in plein air and diaristically titled with the location of their production: by St. George’s River, or in Cushing, Maine. Her true subject is the process of creation itself: in an almost ritualistic act, she serially repeats her lakeside moons, adding or removing trees throughout her variations. The viewer’s continual revisitation of this same subject throughout the exhibition space simulates a familiar encounter, conflating the momentary and the perpetual.
Incandescent and arresting, Hodges’s angels perch on the edge of benches and glide through the air, arranged in poses that echo canonical church-commissioned works by Renaissance masters such as Titian and Botticelli. Soft brushwork, hazy lines, and flat planes of subdued color acknowledge figurative forefathers such as Milton Avery, Edouard Vuillard, and Henri Matisse. Characteristic of his practice, the angels are formed from a dark ground; the artist fills in setting, scenery, and clothing, leaving the silhouettes of the angels to be shaped by negative space. In Sil (2021), a dramatically backlit angel greets the viewer, as if emerging from another world. In Luty (2021), an earth-bound angel gazes over a park, deep in thought.
Awash in light from windows and stained glass panels, the space echoes the luminescence of the paintings inside. The church site explores the historical precedent of placing heavenly icons in devotional spaces; in the words of Hodges, the show “brings these subjects home.” Unlike the standardized light of a traditional exhibition space, the fall of light upon the paintings merges setting and subject, room and artwork.
Photo credits: Dave Clough Photography
Ann Craven
Moon (Silent Pink Light over Saint George’s River), 2021
2021
Oil on canvas
84 × 72 inches; 213.4 × 182.9 cm
AC-21-106
Reggie Burrows Hodges
Effie
2021
Acrylic and pastel on linen
72 1⁄2 × 84 1⁄2 inches; 184 × 215 cm
73 1⁄2 × 851⁄2 inches; 186.7 × 217.2 cm (framed) RH-21-067
Reggie Burrows Hodges
Alle
2021
Acrylic and pastel on linen
40 3⁄4 × 30 1⁄2 inches; 103.5 × 77.5 cm
41 3⁄4 × 31 1⁄2 inches; 106 × 80 cm (framed) RH-21-061
Ann Craven
Moon (Glowing Magenta Trees, Rippling Water, Cushing), 2021
2021
Oil on linen
40 × 30 inches; 101.6 × 76.2 cm
AC-21-114
Ann Craven
Moon (Silent Pink over Saint George’s River), 2021
2021
Oil on canvas
40 × 30 inches; 101.6 × 76.2 cm
AC-21-110
Reggie Burrows Hodges
Ash
2021
Acrylic and pastel on linen
84 1⁄2 × 72 1⁄2 inches; 214.6 × 184.2 cm
85 1⁄2 × 73 1⁄2 inches; 217.2 × 186.7 cm (framed) RH-21-066
Ann Craven
Moon (Pink Glowing Magenta Tree, Cushing), 2021
2021
Oil on canvas
84 × 72 inches; 213.4 × 182.9 cm
AC-21-108
Reggie Burrows Hodges
Luty
2021
Acrylic and pastel on linen
84 1⁄2 × 72 1⁄2 inches; 214.6 × 184.2 cm
85 1⁄2 × 73 1⁄2 inches; 217.2 × 186.7 cm (framed) RH-21-055
Ann Craven
Moon (Silent Magenta Light over Saint George’s River), 2021
2021
Oil on linen
84 × 72 inches; 213.4 × 182.9 cm
AC-21-107
Ann Craven
Moon (Glowing Pink Trees, Rippling Water, Cushing), 2021
2021
Oil on canvas
40 × 30 inches; 101.6 × 76.2 cm
AC-21-113
Reggie Burrows Hodges
Nel
2021
Acrylic and pastel on linen
40 3⁄4 × 30 1⁄2 inches; 103.5 × 77.5 cm
41 3⁄4 × 31 1⁄2 inches; 106 × 80 cm (framed) RH-21-058
Reggie Burrow Hodges
Ruth
2021
Acrylic and pastel on linen
40 3⁄4 × 30 3⁄4 inches; 103.5 × 78.1 cm
41 3⁄4 × 31 1⁄2 inches; 106 × 80 cm (framed) RH-21-059
Moon and Angels Over Thomaston, Part II. The Free Press, August 24, 2021
Moons and Angels Over Thomaston
By: Christopher Crossman
August 10, 2021
REVIEWS
MOONS AND ANGELS OVER THOMASTON
By: Christoper Crossman
August 10, 2021
On bright, spring evenings, while driving north on U.S Route 1,
just past Waldoboro, you will begin to see a full moon hanging
just over Thomaston, a sleepy river town of some two thousand
residents that was once home to deep-water ship masters and
China trade clippers and where their stately homes and civic
buildings linger in varied states of genteel dissolution. Now,
painted moons — emblems of a modern-day Brigadoon — are
seen in a series of paintings by Ann Craven, whose new gallery
has just opened in a beautifully renovated Catholic church in
Thomaston. There, Craven’s moons are accompanied by a choir
of night-enfolded apparitions, a group of “angels” by Reggie
Burrows Hodges.
IMAGE
Ann Craven
Moon (Glowing Pink Trees, Rippling Water), 2021
2021
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 inches
Moon and Angels Over Thomaston, Part I. The Free Press, August 10, 2021
TWO-PERSON SHOW
KARMA
MOONS AND ANGELS
Ann Craven & Reggie Burrows Hodges
July 31 – September 19, 2021
Karma is pleased to present a two-person exhibition featuring
angel paintings by Reggie Burrows Hodges and moon paintings
by Ann Craven. The show is set in the former St James Catholic
church at 70 Main Street in Thomaston, Maine. The angels and moons
on display symbolically and literally explore the notion of light found
in darkness. Deep hues of black and midnight blue set the stage for
the heavenly icons, capturing them with a painterly effulgence—or
radiating glow. Appearing throughout the canon of art history, these
enduring celestial subjects have served as protectors and messengers.
Craven and Hodges create warm and inviting interpretations of these
guiding lights that allow the viewer to, in Hodges’s words, “offer up
and be offered back.”
IMAGE #1:
Installation view
Photo credit: Dave Clough Photography
karmakarma.org
GROUP SHOW
FOR THE BIRDS
Curated by Eddie Martinez
July 24 – August 25, 2021
Participating artists: Bill Adams, Derek Aylward, Ann Craven
Rafael Delacruz, Sara Gernsbacher, Jameson Green, Ray Hamilton
Chris Johanson, Leasho Johnson, Joe Light, Sam Moyer, Alix Pearlstein
Peter Williams
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Little Blue Horizontal Promise, 2019
2019
Oil on linen
GROUP SHOW
EXPEDITION
June 19 – October 11, 2021
For half a century beginning in 1916, travelers entered
through the heavy oak-and-glass doors of the building
that today houses the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center
to embark on expeditions to destinations nearby and
around the world. This was Brattleboro’s Union Station,
and the gallery where EXPEDITION is on view was its
grand lobby — a liminal space charged with the energy and
anticipation of adventures just completed and those that
lay ahead. Participating artists include: Donald Baechler,
André Butzer, Ann Craven, Matt Dillon, Inka Essenhigh,
Torben Giehler, April Gornik, Andy Hope 1930, Richard Jacobs,
Michael Kagan, John McAllister, John Newsom, Erik Parker,
Raymond Pettibon, Alexis Rockman, Ouattara Watts,
Wendy White
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Deer Running in the Snow (after Courbet)
2006
Oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
KARMA, NEW YORK
Stand D07
May 5-9, 2021
Henni Alftan, Dike Blair, Will Boone, Peter Bradley,
Ann Craven, Verne Dawson, Louise Fishman,
Marley Freeman, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Keith Mayerson,
Paul Mogensen, Thaddeus Mosley, Woody De Othello,
Maja Ruznic, Kathleen Ryan, Tabboo!, Mungo Thomson,
Matthew Wong, and Manoucher Yektai
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Peach Moon (Full Lover’s Moon, Red Trees, Cushing), 2021
2021
Oil on linen
84 × 60 inches
GROUP SHOW
and I will wear you in my heart of heart
May 1st – August 13th, 2021
The FLAG Art Foundation presents and I will wear you
in my heart of heart, a group exhibition of contemporary
paintings and textiles on view May 1-August 13, 2021,
on it’s 9th floor. Centering on a gesture of care, the exhibition
explores the myriad ways in which 35 artists evoke tenderness
through depictions of lovers and friends, familial exchanges,
moments of solitude, and even a cowboy and his pastel pink
unicorn. Heart of heart includes recent and new works created
for the exhibition that embody the cross-generational resurgence
in figuration as a mode of exploring identity, cultural histories,
and personal experiences.
IMAGE:
From left: Ann Craven’s Two Love Birds (Yellow Orchids), 2021;
(top) Gareth Cadwallader’s Orange Juice, 2015; (bottom)
Sally J. Han’s Sunset, 2021; GaHee Park’s Shallow Night, 2018
Photography by Steven Probert.
REVIEWS
ANN CRAVEN: ANIMALS BIRDS FLOWERS MOONS
By: David Rhodes
April 28, 2021
“Something seems to have changed between Ann Craven’s
last Karma exhibition in 2018 and Animals Birds Flowers Moons,
the current exhibition. Individual works now advance a particularly
estranging form of romanticism with even more boldness and
adventure than before. Together with this, Craven’s animal pantheon
has expanded to include bear cubs, peacocks, woodpeckers, and horses.
The paintings and watercolors here are all recent, so it is perhaps the
restrictive circumstances of pandemic life that resulted in a longing,
nostalgia, childhood memory: notional time travel rather than
geographic movement. The painterly devices—expressive, broad
brushstrokes, subtle blurring, radiant color—are fresh and vibrant.
This amounts to subversion, as the given imagery is so void of obvious
gravitas—the cute, amenable bear in a tree, the eager group of friendly
horses. It would be all very faux-naif if it weren’t for the painter’s clear
tradecraft. I think of the discrepancies found in Martin Kippenberger’s
work: his painterly ability, intelligence, and humor in deploying
“bad painting” and found imagery.”
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Ann Craven, Roses (on Blue with Orchids, after Buffet), 2021
2021
Oil on canvas
84 x 72 inches
EDITIONS
April 2021
Portrait of Two Birds (After Picabia)
130 x 130cm / 51 x 51 inches
Edition of 100
100% silk
massifcentral.us
ANN CRAVEN AT KARMA
April 26, 2021
Artist: Ann Craven
Venue: KARMA, New York
Exhibition Title: Animals Birds Flowers Moons
Date: March 18 – May 1, 2021
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (after Red Trees, Full Moon), 2021, March 4, 2021), 2021
2021
Watercolor on Arches paper, 140lb
30 × 22 inches; 32 1⁄8 × 23 7⁄8 inches (framed)
Contemporary Art Daily, April 26, 2021
REVIEWS
HANGING ON FOR DEAR LIFE: ANN CRAVEN AT KARMA
By: Zach Seeger
“It’s in the eyes,” a teacher told me about a Giacometti painting
that hung on the wall in his den. “The sitters stare blankly and persistent.
We stare back.” Ann Craven’s current exhibition “Animals Birds Flowers
Moons” at Karma, separated into three locations, is a series of paintings
of birds and other animals set against the moon that blearily share our
collective disbelief and exhausted gaze. Their eyes betray their awareness of
their privileged position as creatures that are free to move, travel, sit and do
nothing, hovering above a crumbling world. Craven masterfully accomplishes
this heightened aloofness not so much with the kitschy tropes of pre-teen
suburban mall posters as with the casual dispatch of sharp, luscious painting.
In insouciant calligraphic flourishes, her swooping brush strokes lather
the canvas, seducing the viewer. Colors ease unmediated from tube to
brush to canvas.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Woodpecker (and the Moon), 2021
2021
Oil on canvas
84 × 72 inches
Hanging on for dear life: Ann Craven at Karma, Two Coats of Paint, April 20, 2021
Ann Craven: Animals Birds Flowers Moons
By: David Rhodes
April 2021
REVIEWS
NEW YORK – ANN CRAVEN:
“ANIMALS BIRDS FLOWERS MOONS”
AT KARMA THROUGH MAY 1ST, 2021
By: D. Creahan
April 14, 2021
“Currently at Karma’s East Side space in New York,
the gallery has brought forth a series of new works by
painter Ann Craven, titled Animals Birds Flowers Moons.
Working between paint and watercolor, the artist’s new
series of pieces bring together the titular bodies in a series
of varying arrangements, displaying bear cubs, peacocks,
woodpeckers, and horses as an exploration of graphical
nostalgia and its expressive capacity.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Horses Three (on Blue, with Orchids), 2021
2021
84 x 72 inches
Oil on canvas
New York – Ann Craven: “Animals Birds Flowers Moons” at Karma, Art Observed, April 14, 2021
Ann Craven: Animals Birds Flowers Moons, Air Mail, April 2021
Karma is pleased to present Animals Birds Flowers Moons, a solo exhibition of recent paintings and watercolors by Ann Craven. Craven’s new subjects, including bear cubs, peacocks, woodpeckers, and horses, are a foray into childhood imagery and nostalgia—a provocative new Romanticism. Craven’s canvases reveal bold brushstrokes; their expressive painterly treatment signals the vitality and bravura of a new chapter in the artist’s oeuvre.
The exhibition is populated by an assorted cast of characters, animals, birds, flowers, and moons are repeated in varied scale and media throughout Karma’s three spaces. In moving from one space to the next, the viewer enters into the artist’s process of revisitation. Craven refers to her repetitions not as series—the term is too clinical—but as revisitations, expressing her tender desire to capture images again, and again, and again.
In each painting the artist superimposes source photographs, her own paintings, and historical works, creating mediated images that feature layers upon layers of referentiality: a collage of the artist’s most treasured curios. The motif in Big Moon (After Pink Full Moon over Quiet Water), 2021, 2021, is recorded and replicated with romantic diaristic affection. Portrait of Two Cardinals (after Picabia), 2021, 2021 indicates Craven’s admiration of an artist who gave her license to self-express, while its cardinals were inspired by the bird’s associations with hope and faith. In Roses (on Blue with Orchids, after Buffet), 2021, 2021, Craven paints the foreground en plein air and refers to her archive of printed images for the background––she becomes both master and copyist.
The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph that mimics the tripartite structure of the show. The book is divided into three parts by installation grouping, each paired with one of three texts: two newly commissioned essays by Durga Chew-Bose and Keith Mayerson, and a 2021 interview between Ann Craven and Lois Dodd.
Karma, New York
BOOK RELEASE
Ann Craven
ANIMALS BIRDS FLOWERS MOON
April 8, 2021
Text by Durga Chew-Bose, Keith Mayerson
Interview with Lois Dodd
Karma, New York, 2021
96 pages, hardcover
11 1⁄4 × 11 1⁄4 inches
ANN CRAVEN: ANIMALS BIRDS FLOWERS MOONS
By: Elena Clavarino
April 2021
For the American artist Ann Craven, the moon is an ideal
subjectfor a painting. “It’s a variable that’s constant but changing …
perfect for my work.” Craven is fascinated with the cyclical
quality of life, with memory, time, and change. She paints in
bold strokes,the childlike simplicity of her subjects layered
with references to photographs, other paintings, and historical
works. Craven’spaintings are divided across Karma’s three spaces,
each accompanied by a monograph. The texts align with Craven’s
assorted animals, flowers, birds, and moons, images she “revisits”
over and over again.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
“Snowy Owls (after Audubon, Blue Night with Full Moon, Again),” 2021
2021
Watercolor on paper
30 x 22 inches
Edition of 100 silk scarves, 51 x 51 inches (130 x 130 cm), produced by Massif Central Editions, April 2021
REVIEWS
THREE EXHIBITIONS TO SEE IN NEW YORK THIS WEEKEND
March 26, 2021
Karma has given all three of its locations—two galleries and a bookstore
in lower Manhattan—over to Ann Craven for her three part solo-show,
which arrives just in time for spring. As the city’s plants, animals, and
inhabitants emerge from what may have been the longest, loneliest
winter of our lives, we are greeted by this ebullient body of work.
Craven is known for her paintings of moons and birds, and here she
mines these motifs as well as dipping into an unapologetic nostalgia
for fantastical childhood musings, with 7ft-tall paintings of horses
galloping before flowers, glamorous peacocks, and bear cubs who
peer sweetly from tree branches. The compositions are repeated
exactly in multiple paintings throughout the three-venue exhibition,
as if each were a prayer. Craven’s belief in the power of beauty, and
the unique earnestness, skill, humour, and charm on display here,
prevent the works from delving into saccharine territory, instead
keeping them ever enticing.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Portrait of Two Cardinals (after Picabia), 2021
Oil on canvas
84 x 72 inches
Three exhibitions to see in New York this weekend: From Ann Craven at Karma to Madeline Hollander at the Whitney, The Art Newspaper, March 26, 2021
Ann Craven with Jessamine Batario: New Social Environment #260
Zoom Event
March 23, 2021
Artist Ann Craven joins art historian and Rail guest critic
Jessamine Batariofor a conversation. We conclude with a
poetry reading from Jessica E. Pierce.
GROUP SHOW
DAY/NIGHT
March 20, 2021
Online from March 31, 2021
Following the exhibition held in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand,
Southard Reid is pleased to present Day/Night for online viewing.
The show, which spanned twelve hours, as other parts of the world
woke and slept, put forward a physical starting point for work that
engages with states, effect and symbolism connected to daily passing
of time and its markers. Work is included by Ann Craven, Bedwyr
Williams, Celia Hempton, Edward Thomasson, Hany Armanious,
Joanna Piotrowska, Prem Sahib, and Vivian Lynn.
IMAGE
Installation view, Aotearoa, New Zealand
SOLO EXHIBITION
ANIMALS BIRDS FLOWERS MOONS
March 18 – May 1, 2021
“Karma is pleased to present Animals Birds Flowers Moons,
a solo exhibition of recent paintings and watercolors by Ann Craven.
Craven’s new subjects, including bear cubs, peacocks, woodpeckers,
and horses, are a foray into childhood imagery and nostalgia—
a provocative new Romanticism. Craven’s canvases reveal bold
brushstrokes; their expressive painterly treatment signals the
vitality and bravura of a new chapter in the artist’s oeuvre.
IMAGE:
Exterior view, KARMA, NY
Texts by Durga Chew-Bose, Keith Mayerson, Interview with Lois Dodd, Karma, New York, 2021, ISBN 978-1-949172-60-7
Texts by Durga Chew-Bose, Keith Mayerson
Interview with Lois Dodd
Karma, New York, 2021
96 pages, hardcover
11 1⁄4 × 11 1⁄4 inches
In Top-Flight Form, An exhibit combines scientific study and artistic interpretation, The Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2021, p.A13
The Free Press, February 9, 2021
The allure of interconnection, December 7, 2020
The allure of interconncection
By: Lindsay Costello
December 7, 2020
REVIEWS
THE ALLURE OF INTERCONNECTION
By: Lindsey Costello
December 7, 2020
“… Across from Bay’s paintings, Ann Craven’s Moon
(Pink Crescent, Cushing, 8-25-19, 1:30AM) is a simple
rendering of a luminous pink moon, part of Craven’s
extensive lunar painting catalog dating back to 1995.
The painting has an immediacy and purity, settling
well alongside the other pieces in the room.”
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (Pink Crescent, Cushing, 8-25-19, 1:30AM), 2019
Oil on linen
14 x 14 inches
KARMA, NEW YORK
December 2 – 6, 2020
Karma is pleased to participate in Art Basel OVR: Miami Beach
with a selection of new and historic works from Henni Alftan,
Dike Blair, Andrew Cranston, Ann Craven, Louise Fishman,
Marley Freeman, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Paul Lee,
Keith Mayerson, Paul Mogensen, Thaddeus Mosley,
Woody De Othello, Nicolas Party, Maja Ruznic, Tabboo!,
Mungo Thomson, Matthew Wong, and Manoucher Yektai.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Big Peacock, 2020
Oil on canvas
84 × 60 inches
CHART, New York
GROUP SHOW
IMPERFECT CLOCKS
December 5 – February 27, 2021
Yuji Agematsu, Genesis Báez, Lakela Brown,
Ann Craven, TM Davy, Spencer Finch, Nir Hod,
Peter Hujar, Erica Mahinay, Suzanne McClelland,
Julie Mehrten, Adam Milner,
Alison Rossiter, & Bri Williams.
This group of fourteen artists reveal a physical manifestation
and/or metaphysical evidence of time through formal
abstraction in their works. The space between this duality
is explored with ideas of perception, history, intimacy,
nature, decay and the collective human experience.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (Full moon, Cushing, 7-16-19, 8:55PM), 2019
Oil on linen
14 x 14 inches
PUBLICATONS
November 19, 2020
Ann Craven – color me
“Each drawing is an original creation and conveys
a story, a wit, in a shared taste for humor, the absurd
and the imaginary. The educational value of coloring
is no longer to be demonstrated: by expressing their
free talent for color, children observe and become
familiar with the way a drawing is constructed.
These “color me” albums are part of the purest
tradition of the coloring book: small format (A5),
glossy lamination of the cover on card stock, clear
line drawing.”
GROUP SHOW
EARTHA
November 7 – December 19, 2020
Adams and Ollman is pleased to present the group
exhibition Eartha. Using painting as a common language,
the artists included in Eartha examine the concept of the
natural world and their relationship to it. Together, the
works offer a different way of being in the world, one that
is personal, interconnected, and spiritual, while raising
questions of representation, politics, gender and pleasure.
Artists included in the exhibition are Hayley Barker,
Amy Bay, Mariel Capanna, Emma Cook, Ann Craven,
Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, and Maureen St. Vincent.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (Pink Crescent, Cushing, 8-25-19, 1:30AM), 2019
Oil on linen
14 x 14 inches
THE PIT, Los Angeles
GROUP SHOW
MIRROR GAZING
November 5, – December 19, 2020
Rafael Baron, Ann Craven, Rosson Crow, Armen Eloyan,
Julie Henson, Elizabeth Ibarra, Pharaoh Kakudji,
Susumu Kamijo, Jennifer King, Becky Kolsrud, Brian Lotti,
Anthony Miler, Julian Pace, Anthony Rianda, Jess Valice,
David “Mr. Star City” White
Ann Craven
Yellow Canary (Stepping Out on Orange, with Cherries)
2019
Oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
(Nothing but) Flowers, September 2020
REVIEWS
(NOTHING BUT) FLOWERS
(NOTHING BUT) FLOWERS at KARMA
By: Alfred Mac Adam
September 2020
“…Craven, unlike Katz, stays close to nature—the pansy
again—but here she immerses usin the flower itself as she
recreates it. Color,patterns, even trompe-l’oeil: all of Craven’s
signature tools, but deployed now in such away that her
powers are fully released.”
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Pensée (Big Pink, Orange, on Blue with Cherries), 2020
Oil on canvas
84 x 72 inches
(Nothing but) Flowers
By: Alfred Mac Adam
September 2020
KARMA, NEW YORK
September 23–26, 2020
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Little Sunset Black-Eyed Susans
(in a Glass, Cushing, 8-16-20), 2020
2020, oil on linen, 14 × 12 inches
3 Los Angeles Exhibitions Exploring the Nature of Things, August 28, 2020
3 Los Angeles Exhibitions Exploring the Nature of Things
By: Paul Laster
August 28, 2020
Karma (Online Viewing Room), New York
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
PRESS RELEASE
CONTEMPORARY ART + DESIGN: NEW ACQUISITIONS
August 30 – March 7, 2021
Contemporary Art + Design presents recently acquired
paintings, installations, jewelry, furnishings,
and design objects. Featuring artists from 11
countries—including artists based in Texas and emerging
painters and designers—the exhibition samples new
directions for the growth of the DMA’s collection.
The painters’ inventive treatments of organic forms
show contemporary approaches to landscapes and still
lifes. These forms resonate with the unique shapes
of the surrounding design works, from the experimental
and functional sculptures by Ron Arad and Misha Kahn
to the elegant and whimsical jewelry by Robert Baines,
Bruno Martinazzi, Jiro Kamata, and Kiff Slemmons.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Diptych (Roses, Stripe, Morning Glory), 2010
2010
Oil on linen and canvas
40 x 96 inches
REVIEWS
3 LOS ANGELES EXHIBITIONS EXPLORING THE NATURE OF THINGS
MATERIA MEDICA at FRANCOIS GHEBALY
By: Paul Laster
August 28, 2020
Presenting artworks that are about nature and
also derived from it, Materia Medica offers a
combination of pseudo-scientific and surreal pieces
to illustrate the perils of our exploitation of the
environment. Curated by multidisciplinary artist
Kelly Akashi, who poses the questions “What does
nature own?” and “What will be inherited when humans
are gone?” in her esoteric exhibition statement,
the show focuses on materials and working methods that
address our fragile relationship with the natural world.
IMAGE:
Installation view
artandobject.com
Dallas Museum of Art Debuts New Acquisitions in New Exhibition Contemporary Art + Design
August 13, 2020
Dallas Museum of Art Debuts New Acquisitions in New Exhibition Contemporary Art + Design, August 13, 2020
PRESS RELEASE
DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART DEBUTS NEW ACQUISITIONS
August 13, 2020
Featuring contemporary artists and designers from
11 countries,the exhibition includes paintings,
jewelry, furnishings, and otherdesign objects, reflecting
the global commitment of the DMA’s acquisitions program.
Contemporary paintings by artists Harold Ancart,
Firelei Báez, Ann Craven, Sarah Crowner, Derek Fordjour,
Rashid Johnson, Shara Hughes, Chris Ofili, Tomie Ohtake,
Marjorie Norman Schwarz, and Michael Williams illustrate
a range of new and emerging approaches to landscapes and
still lifes. The painters’ inventive treatment of organic
forms resonateswith surrounding design works, which employ
a variety of media and applications.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Diptych (Roses, Stripe, Morning Glory), 2010
2010
Oil on linen and canvas
40 x 96 inches
Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections, August 1, 2020
Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections
By: Stephen Maine
August 1, 2020
INTERVIEWS
ARTISTS QUARANTINE WITH THEIR COLLECTIONS
By: Stephen Maine
August 1, 2020
Avery Z. Nelson
Over the past four months I have returned to Craven’s painting
frequently. As I listened to the incessant sirens shriek death up
First Avenue in April, I found serenity, beauty, and decay in Craven’s
flower. As I marched in the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn
during the mayor’s bullshit curfew and police bulldozed into us,
arrested us, beat us, and continued to do their daily job of terrorizing
and murdering Black lives, I began to see the three flowers as a single
flower in motion, either bleeding down into the earth or floating up
into the sky — maybe both at once.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
title and date unknown
Watercolor on paper
12 x 9 inches
Karma, New York
GROUP SHOW
(NOTHING BUT) FLOWERS
July 30 – September 15, 2020
Gertrude Abercrombie, Marina Adams, Henni Alftan,
Ed Baynard, Nell Blaine, Dike Blair, Vern Blosum,
Joe Brainard, Cecily Brown, Charles Burchfield,
MattConnors, Andrew Cranston, Ann Craven,
Stephanie Crawford, Somaya Critchlow, Verne Dawson,
Lois Dodd, Peter Doig, Nicole Eisenman, Ida Ekblad,
Minnie Evans, Marley Freeman, Jane Freilicher,
Mark Grotjahn, James Harrison, Lubaina Himid,
Samuel Hindolo, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Max Jansons,
Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Sanya Kantarovsky, Alex Katz,
Karen Kilimnik, Zenzaburo Kojima, Matvey Levenstein,
Shannon Cartier Lucy, Calvin Marcus, Helen Marden,
Jeanette Mundt, Soumya Netrabile, Woody De Othello,
Sanou Oumar, Jennifer Packer, Nicolas Party, Hilary Pecis,
Richard Pettibone, Elizabeth Peyton, Amy Sillman,
Elaine Sturtevant, Tabboo!, Honor Titus, Uman,
Susan Jane Walp, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood,
Matthew Wong, Albert York, Manoucher Yektai,
and Lisa Yuskavage
IMAGE:
Installation view
Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles
GROUP SHOW
MATERIA MEDICA
Curated by: Kelly Akashi
July 22 – September 4, 2020
Ann Craven, Becca Mann, Candice Lin, Catalina Ouyang,
Diane Severin Nguyen, Evelyn Statsinger, Hugh Hayden,
Janis Miltenberger, Jessie Homer French, Kay Hofmann,
Max Hooper Schneider, Nancy Youdelman, Rindon Johnson
IMAGES (LEFT TO RIGHT):
Ann Craven
Moon, 9-1-06 #1 2006;
2006
Oil on canvas
24 x 18 inches
Ann Craven
Moon, 9-1-06 #2 2006;
2006
Oil on canvas
24 x 18 inches
Ann Craven
Moon, 9-1-06 #3 2006;
2006
Oil on canvas
24 x 18 inches
When Ann remembers, she says stuff that sounds like a turn of phrase—the way sayings are sing-song and contain brief, negotiable wisdoms. Ann’s manner of speaking is arranged but idle. Her choice of words is a picnic. She says things like, “gardens with good edges.” She describes pure love as not being “sticky.” She says things like, “flowers in a vase on a stool.” As a child, her first oil painting was a kitten. She loves animals, beauty. She used to carry a valise with postcards—she paints from postcards. Mid-sentence, and kindly, she’ll characterize her work by saying it’s “straight from the heart.” Ann speaks in postcards. Plainness with affection, because plainness is the past, is a family of roofers from Boston. “Hard workers,” she says. The plainness is a peony, five decades old that belonged to a grandmother who died and came back to life while giving birth, back then in 1938.
The photos Ann shares with me of black pansies are date stamped. February 7th and 9th, 2013. I check my email and find an exchange with my friend Lucy from February 7th, 2013. I’ve just had surgery on some teeth—the result of an accident from years prior that never properly healed. I tell Lucy I’m feeling loopy because of the pain medication but that I’m so happy to be writing her. She replies that same evening: “Tonight’s just one of those lonely Iowa nights. I’m reading about the blizzard that’s headed your way and thinking about boys who used to love me who don’t anymore and I should really get up and make some kale salad, press some garlic, grate some cheese, take some concrete steps toward something.”
Stranger still is that we’ll always believe the deer appeared out of nowhere. Like some kind of glitch in the night. Like some kind of glitch on a dark road. A brown barrel on four stilts—spotted, walleyed, looking. Figurine-like. Deer are such an eBay thing. Deer, Ann tells me, are often found on condolence cards.
In the day, we’ll always say the deer came into view—we might not say anything at all. Just gasp, go Shhhh, or wave over whoever is near. My friend Echo recently texted me a photo of a deer in her backyard in Pennsylvania. It was mostly hidden inside a green meadow of tall grass. There it was, Shhhh. The deer is secret like that. The deer compels the Shhhh. I pinched my index finger to my thumb and then pushed them apart, eager to zoom in on the deer and get a closer look, and text my friend Echo back, “How?” The deer will always be improbable.
In the Disney movie, the butterfly lands on the deer’s tail. The tail of a deer is called a scut. It’s short, erect, similar to that of a rabbit. Rabbits’ tails are also known as scuts. In the Disney movie, the deer has a rabbit friend named Thumper. In the Disney movie, their tails aren’t all that similar.
The deer is idiomatic. Visibly startled, frozen in fear. The deer is me, right now or on most days. The last few months have been strange and painful, long, somehow navy and unreal. I’ve found myself frozen in my own home—static, amazed by this spinning, looping stillness. Terror met with thrumming doubt, like the most resounding Shhhh.
(But—and I only mention them because, aren’t they so lovely?—the daisies! I’m grateful for the daisies. All I see is shuttlecocks, not daisies. Those flying objects that oblige force in order to float. They, too, create the most resounding Shhhh.)
Queen Ann’s Lace is considered, per a knowledge card from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, “an aggressive bully in North America, where it can crowd out native plant species.” Blue jays—I’ve heard—are also bullies.
I can’t be certain but I have a feeling that, saved somewhere on a phone, maybe three phones ago, I took a picture of a rose in the rose garden at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and while this might be pure fiction, I swear there was a rose variety called “Steve Martin.”
It must have been yellow because no rose named Steve would be red. I wouldn’t believe you if you told me it was pink.
There’s a recording on YouTube of Meryl Streep reading Sylvia Plath’s poem “Morning Song.” When she gets to the line, “All night your moth-breath flickers among the flat pink roses,” Meryl dances on the alliterative rhythm of flickers and flat like she’s been anticipating how one F-sound provides lift-off to the next F-sound. Meryl, I imagine, loves the soft target of a letter-F-sound because she can fold something dark and even unlucky into its fricative.
In the poem—which, basically, concerns the frequencies of new motherhood and the baby—this fourth stanza steps outside. The natural world and the night world, according to Plath, are both intimate yet big, impossibly wide with worry. The reader might picture a garden and its holy matter: breath and bloom, baby. A moth and a mother. Flat pink roses and that muted F-sound which touches on fierce attachments, distance, fate.
The tree hollows are spookier than the snowy owls. Ask Ann to talk about anything and she’ll always choose the moon.
Ann tells me about a book “that didn’t burn in the fire.” I don’t ask about the fire, when it happened or how, or how long ago, because we’ve already moved onto the next tangent, and we’re busy talking about being lazy. And soon we’ll be talking about roses, again.
“My work has always been to please my mom, but she loved everything I did,” Ann tells me. “Small critiques.”
I ask Ann about inaccuracies: “Watercolor lets me go further with mistakes.”
I ask Ann about the slipperiness of imagination: “It’s what I saw, what I see, it’s vulnerable. Watercolor is a lot of letting go.”
I ask Ann about painting with watercolors as opposed to painting with oils: she calls them tough. “Tough watercolors.”
I’m not sure I would have ever considered watercolors to be tough, but then I take a look at these horses. Three of them, tough. Solid, but because they are watercolor, suddenly, too.
Ann texts me a photograph of a postcard featuring two cardinals, one more brown than the other. It reads: “The Cardinal” the KENTUCKY STATE BIRD. The vintage look of the birds accompanied by that particular shade of red on old paper reminds me of Christmas, which I love. Ann texts me a photograph of her studio. On a white table, beside a printer, a pen, and a tall cup with orange painted stripes, sits a ceramic Christmas tree, which Ann keeps out year-round. It makes sense to me that Ann would stock Christmas year-round. Her work conjures the word “Greetings.” Greetings and Douglas Sirk (whose work is also so Christmas).
The tall cup with orange painted stripes makes an appearance (as a vase) in this painting. Mary Ruefle’s poem “Short Lecture on the Nature of Things,” makes an appearance (in my mind).
(Turn the vase into a hat and wear it)
You think the vase has become a hat; it has not.
My body has become an upside-down flower
“He’s been busy,” Ann tells me over the phone. She means you, Woodpecker. I count fourteen holes. The pure resolve of a woodpecker, the funny way this bird brings to mind Saturday morning cartoons and our earliest circuits of imagination, because woodpeckers are on the job. Dedicated, laboring. What is it about busyness and cartoons, anyways?
I remember one summer in Kolkata. The sound was ongoing—its own sound among all the other Kolkata sounds. My father raised his finger at the breakfast table and said, “Listen.” He had noticed the sound before us. It’s likely he’d been monitoring the sound the way my father—like our dog—is alert to shuffling or sounds that recur, to flat tires, to faint rustling and those damn backyard racoons who patrol our fence at night. He loves a tip-off, the rumor of a sound. You know what I mean? He loves the bird who’s simply at it. My memories of Kolkata are few but vivid, and the memory of my father scrutinizing the woodpecker—anticipating its sound—that one comes quick and rich because there we were at breakfast, listening for a pattern first thing.
Speaking of Douglas Sirk, if Douglas Sirk were a tree, he would be a Dogwood tree.
In “The Summer Day,” a poem by Mary Oliver, she writes:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
I read Mary Oliver and think of Ann, who tells me, “I literally stop short to see nature.” Ann sends me photos of her easel outside. The sky, the wind, the grass. She describes her home as it relates to “a path” or “the marsh.” The poem goes on, but we’ll re-enter it here:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
I don’t know what a prayer is either. But I do know—sometimes I think it’s the only thing—how to pay attention. And I do know—so does Ann—how to stroll, because what else? And I do know that a black bear can climb 100 feet up a tree in 30 seconds, and have you ever heard of anything so wild and precious, and funny, because once the black bear is up there, the black bear is up there. Perched and so casual, like who are we to wonder what its plans are or how it intends to climb down.
VIEWING ROOM
WATERCOLORS
Text by: Durga Chew-Bose
July 21 – August 30, 2020
IMAGE:
Ann Craven Studio
Semiose éditions, 2020, 24 pages, 8 ¼ x 5 ¾ inches, ISBN 978-2-37739-049-6
Curated by Eric Ruschman, New Release Gallery, New York
GROUP SHOW
DECAMERON DAY 2
Curated by: Eric Ruschman
May 15, 2020
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Cats in Shelter (Lena, Again, May 02, 2020), 2020
2020
Soft pastel on 50lb acid free paper
17 x 14 inches
3 Design Happenings To Check Out Next Week: An Online Auction, April 30, 2020
‘Everyone Is In A State of Panic Right Now’: 7 Mid-Career Artists on How They Are Facing the Enormous Challenges of the Coronavirus Pandemic’, April 15, 2020
KARMA, NEW YORK
FRIEZE VIEWING ROOM
May 8 -15, 2020
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (Full Lavender Halo, Blue Sky,
Cushing, 8-26-18, 11PM), 2018
2018, 24″ x 24″, Oil on linen
A Round Up of New York Design News
By: Michael Kaler
April 30, 2020
THE CUT
AN ONLINE AUCTION
May 1, 2020
Artist Doron Langberg, in collaboration with Yossi Milo Gallery
and Artsy, has launched an online auction to benefit Food Bank
for New York City, the city’s leading hunger-relief organization.
On sale are works by almost 100 artists from a wide range of
backgrounds, including Ann Craven, Marilyn Minter, and Salman Toor.
All of the proceeds will be donated to the Food Bank, which aids
at least 1.4 million New Yorkers in securing meals.
Bidding will end on May 8 at 4 p.m. ET.
ARTSY
April 24, 2020
We are delighted to present an auction to benefit Food Bank For New York City.
This online auction offers the opportunity to purchase works
donated by nearly 100 of today’s most exciting artists, representing
a wide range of practices, backgrounds, and experiences. The incredible
response from artists across all walks of life reflects a call for unity and
collective transformative action.
Some of the artists include:
Dana Schutz, Katherine Bernhardt, Ross Bleckner, Nicole Eisenman, Cecily Brown,
Peter Halley, Ann Craven, Lyle Ashton Harris, Keltie Ferris, James Siena,
Jeffrey Gibson, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Felipe Baeza, Salman Toor, Devan Shimoyama,
Louis Fratino, Marilyn Minter, Alison Rossiter, Betty Tompkins, Didier William,
Jordan Kasey, Sanya Kantarovsky, Elinor Carucci, and many more.
Organized by artist Doron Langberg, facilitated by Yossi Milo Gallery, and powered
by Artsy, the auction will benefit Food Bank For New York City. As the city’s leading
hunger-relief organization, Food Bank provides emergency meals, fresh produce,
and household supplies for low-income New Yorkers, families with school-aged
children, seniors at high-risk of infection, and healthcare workers.
In this “new normal” of social distancing, shuttered businesses, lost wages, and
closed schools thousands more New Yorkers are facing food insecurity. “As artists,
we are uniquely positioned to leverage the power of our work and of our community
to help the ones most affected,” explains Langberg. “Putting together this auction
gave me a feeling of agency which so many of us need right now.”
Founded in 1983, the mission of Food Bank For New York City is to end hunger by
organizing food, information and support for community survival and dignity.
At least 1.4 million New Yorkers rely on its services, with a network of approximately
1,200 emergency and community food providers, including soup kitchens, food
pantries, shelters, low-income day care centers, as well as senior, youth and
rehabilitation centers.
Food Bank Auction Press Release
ARTSY
April 24, 2020
Lot 23
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Pink Bird with Cherries (Blue), 2011,
2011, Reduction Wood Cut on Paper, 34 × 30 in
Bidding open until May 8th at 4pm
CENTER FOR MAINE CONTEMPORARY ART
VIMEO
April 21, 2020
4 minutes 41 seconds
“Ann Craven loves…
Georgia O’Keeffe
John James Audubon
and Lois Dodd”
vimeo.com
‘Everyone Is in a State of Panic Right Now’: 7 Mid-Career Artists on How They Are Facing the Enormous Challenges of the Coronavirus Pandemic’
By: Naomi Rea
April 15, 2020
‘EVERYONE IS IN A STATE OF PANIC RIGHT NOW’:
7 Mid-Career Artists on How They Are Facing
the Enormous Challenges of the Coronavirus Pandemic’
By: Naomi Rea
April 15, 2020
KARMA, NEW YORK
ONLINE VIEWING ROOM
April 14-23, 2020
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Red Song (Singing, on Pink), 2020,
2020, Oil on canvas, 84 × 60 inches
Xippas, Geneva
GROUP SHOW
UPLIFT
March 20 – July 31
IMAGE
“Uplift”, exhibition view,
Xippas Geneva, 2020.
Credit: Julien Gremaud
Ann Craven
Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Maine, 2019
112 pages, hardcover
11 1⁄4 × 11 1⁄4 inches
https://bookstore.karmakarma.org
Birds We Know is the catalog for Ann Craven’s
first exhibition in Maine (Center for Maine Contemporary Art)
of paintings by New York and Maine based artist Ann Craven
(born 1961). It was at her farm house in Lincolnville, Maine,
inspired by the colors of the natural environment, that Craven
completed her very first moon painting in 1995; she says her
time in Lincolnville “gave me my subject matter.” This catalog
includes the imagery that Craven is renowned for including her
lushly colored, mesmerizing moon and stripe paintings, but
here the birds dominate as the primary subject, including work
made between 1997 and 2019. The book includes an essay by
Christopher B. Crosman, formerly of the Crystal Bridges Museum
of American Art and the Farnsworth Art Museum.
CENTER FOR MAINE CONTEMPORARY ART
PADDLE 8
February 14th, 2020
Every auction purchase directly benefits the Center for Maine
Contemporary Art’s exhibitions and educational programming.
Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to support the art
and artists of Maine. Art You Love is a timed auction presented
in partnership with Paddle8.
Contributing artists:
Jeff Ackerman, Gideon Bok, Katherine Bradford, Meghan Brady,
Jenny Brillhart, Marcie Jan Bronstein, Emily Brown, Tom Burckhardt,
Tom Butler, Sam Cady, Julie Crane, Ann Craven, Grace DeGennaro,
Lois Dodd, David Driskell, Lynn Duryea, Carol Eisenberg, Inka Essenhigh,
Melanie Essex, Alan Fishman, Tom Flanagan, Linden Frederick,
Peter Halley, Alex Katz, Sal Taylor Kydd, Tracy Miller, Dan Mills, K. Min,
Anne Neely, Tessa G. O’Brien, Colin Page, Danica Phelps, Peter Ralston,
Alison Rector, David Row, Tollef Runquist, Kate Russo, Claire Seidl,
Gail Skudera, Lesia Sochor, Emilie Stark-Menneg, Sara Stites,
Barbara Sullivan, Greta Van Campen, Susan Headley Van Campen,
Tim Van Campen, Don Voisine, William Wegman, Kathy Weinberg,
Jim Wolfe, Robert Younger, and Dudley Zopp.
CENTER FOR MAINE CONTEMPORARY ART
PADDLE 8
February 14th, 2020
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Pensée #78 (Reims, France, June 21, 2008),
2008, Watercolor on Arches Aquarelle, Cold Press, 140lb Paper
Jonas Wood and Ann Craven Transform Children’s Hospitals With Whimsical Art, February 4th, 2020
published by Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME ©2019 and Ann Craven, Edition of 50, signed and numbered with hand painted cover
Parapet Real Humans, St. Louis
In the French language, a pansy is called pensée, which means “a thought given.” The name is supposedly derived from its likeness to a pensive human face.
It is a flower that possesses a litany of artistic usage throughout history. Pensée is also a “bouquet” of flowers, or “thoughts”, inescapable as a middle ground between the worldly and the ethereal as an extended portrait of the human spirit. Rendering a chronology of thoughts about life and death, the artist dedicated this pensée project to the life of her mother.
Craven’s subjects are often of nature, fleeting things that shift and bloom in cycles of perpetual change, their representations as mercurial as their memories.
Ann Craven’s Pensée watercolors (all 23 x 15 inches) were exhibited first at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in Reims France in 2008, then at Maccarone Gallery in New York City in 2011 as part of the show Ann Craven: Watercolors, and in 2016 at Galerie des Multiples in Paris in the show: 100%, 2015 + Flower Power.
In 2013 Karma Books published “PENSÉE.” This 98 page book gathers the entire series of ninety-two pensée watercolors that Ann Craven painted in 2007-08 while in residency at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in Reims, France.
Ann Craven is renowned for her bold portraits of the moon, birds and flowers. Major solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, KARMA, Southard Reid, and Nina Johnson Gallery, among others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Hammer Museum, among others. She currently lives and works in New York City.
Jonas Wood and Ann Craven Transform Children’s Hospitals With Whimsical Art
By: Lucy Rees
February 4th, 2020
KARMA, NEW YORK
February 14–16, 2020
Gertrude Abercrombie, Henni Alftan, Dike Blair, Will Boone,
Mathew Cerletty, Ann Craven, Alex Da Corte, Robert Duran,
Mark Flood, Marley Freeman, Paul Mogensen, Thaddeus Mosley,
Woody De Othello, Maja Ruznic, Mungo Thomsom
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Pensée (Big Pink, Orange, on Blue with Cherries), 2020,
2020, Oil on canvas, 84 × 72 inches
JONAS WOOD AND ANN CRAVEN TRANSFORM
CHILDREN”S HOSPITALS WITH WHIMSICAL ART
By: Lucy Rees
February 4th, 2020
In partnership with RxArt, these top talents created
site-specific artwork to help uplift children as they heal
Marfamily #5:
Lois Dodd Interviewed by Ann Craven
Photographs by Ann Craven
December 29, 2019
A VERY CULTURED GIFT GUIDE
ANN CRAVEN WRAPPING PAPER
December 17, 2019
A gift that keeps on giving. Artist Ann Craven designed
this wrapping paper in 2013 for the non-profit organization RxArt.
100% of proceeds support RxArt’s contemporary art
commissions in children’s hospitals.
culturedmag.com
RXART
December 20, 2019
RxART is pleased to be working with Ann Craven
on a project for the Chadwick Center at
Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, CA.
Craven plans to incorporate her colorful and calming
animals into her design for wall coverings in the lobby
of the Chadwick Center.
Her work will provide a cheerful distraction for
children and their families who are receiving support
in their recovery from traumatic events.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven,
Sleepy Pandas (for Chadwick), 2019
Vinyl, Dimensions variable
Marfamily #5, Lois Dodd Interviewed by Ann Craven, December 29, 2019
KARMA, NEW YORK
December 5-8, 2019
Gertrude Abercrombie, Dike Blair, Ann Craven, Will Boone,
Alex Da Corte, Robert Duran, Marley Freeman, Paul Mogensen,
Woody De Othello and Maja Ruznic
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Pink Thinking of You (on Black), 2019,
2019, oil on linen, 60 × 48 inches
karmakarma.org
KARMA BOOKSTORE
136 E 3rd St.
November 23, 6–8 pm
Birds We Know Special Edition
Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Maine, 2019
112 pages, hardcover
11 1⁄4 × 11 1⁄4 inches
Signed Edition of 50 with unique, hand-painted cover
Birds We Know book launch and talk
with Ann Craven and Christopher B. Crosman
Introduction by Suzette McAvoy
PADDLE 8
November 21st, 2019
The Counseling In Schools Art Auction will support their
mission to inspire hope and promote healing in children
while they are in school so they can thrive during their
formative years and throughout life. The organization’s
practitioners provide extensive individual and group
counseling programs directly in schools. These include
robust creative arts therapy and youth development activities
that help students awaken possibilities from within.
Participating artists include:
Ann Craven, Peter Halley, Wyatt Kahn, Ajay Kurian, Keith
Mayerson, Kehinde Wiley, and more!
paddle8.com
PADDLE 8
November 21, 2019
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Pensée (Reims, France, June 24, 2008)
2015, Inkjet print on archival paper
KARMA, NEW YORK
October 17-20, 2019
Gertrude Abercrombie, Henni Alftan, Dike Blair, Mathew Cerletty,
Ann Craven, Alex Da Corte, Louise Fishman, Marley Freeman,
Paul Mogensen, Thaddeus Mosley, Woody De Othello
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (Bright Manganese Fade, with Purple Sky), 2018,
2018, Oil on canvas, 84 × 60 inches
karmakarma.org
SOUTHARD REID, LONDON
October 3-6, 2019
Ann Craven, Prem Sahib, Bedwyr Williams
IMAGE:
Installation view
southardreid.com
KARMA, NEW YORK
October 3-6, 2019
Gertrude Abercrombie, Dike Blair, Will Boone, Ann Craven
Alex Da Corte, Robert Duran, Louise Fishman, Marley Freeman,
Paul Mogensen, Thaddeus Mosley, Woody De Othello,
Nicolas Party, Matthew Wong, Jonas Wood
IMAGE:
Installation view
American Birds (Endangered, Extinct, after Audubon), 2018-19 marks the first exhibition of a new series of paintings by Ann Craven (born Boston, lives and works in New York City).
American Birds (Endangered, Extinct, after Audubon), 2018-19 includes paintings of seven distinct birds, rendered in oil on linen, across three scales, lifting from John James Audubon’s compositions whilst with freedom echoing her own language, inserting backdrops or “wallpaper”. These include signature flowers and fruits, sunset fades, and painterly collages of homage, including to Picabia and O’Keefe. In this homage to Audubon, Craven’s selected birds are chosen for their endangered, near extinct or extinct category.
Craven’s selection to begin this new series – her series most often recur, which she calls “continuums” – are from within those birds painted by Audubon in Birds of America, first published 1827, that today are threatened or have been extinguished. The culmination of looking closely at Audubon’s imagery as source material, from her huge accumulated archive of bird books, nature magazines, cinema, YouTube and web screenshots, is significant to Craven’s wider practice. She chooses entities from the natural world that have power in reality, and also as images, symbolically, emotionally, psychologically. Birds, and Craven’s other subjects from nature, foremost the moon, also deer, panda, cats, derive and continue to elicit iconic status as images, across culture “high” and “low”, historically and today.
Humankind’s physical and psychologically conflicted relationship with nature, at once destructive, oppressive, however also commemorative and celebratory, has been a consistent thematic concern for Craven, foundational to her own philosophy being the belief in nature’s ascendancy and ultimate triumph over humans.
In American Birds (Endangered, Extinct, after Audubon), 2018-19, the emphasis on protection and preservation merges conceptually with Craven’s painting process. The blending of emotional and systematic return to a repertoire of subjects from nature, revisited and re-presented, symbolizes an act of life-force, acknowledgement of cycles of life, examination of memory, and the pre-eminence of not only nature, but also time, painting its passing as record. Craven calls this “The continuous just past.”
Hyperallergic, September 7, 2019
Contemporary Art Daily, September 3, 2019
published by Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME ©2019 and Ann Craven
Portland Press Herald, May 26, 2019
Bloomberg, May 2, 2019
Portland Press Herald, April 28, 2019
Newcity Art, April 19, 2019
SOUTHARD REID, LONDON
September 28-November 2, 2020
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Big Passenger Pigeons (Extinct, after Audubon), 2019,
2019, Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in
Extraordinary Paintings of Ordinary Birds
Ann Craven’s painted birds, set against a soft-focus background, have a kitsch quality, but with a provocative edge.
Text by: Carl Little
September 7th, 2019
Ann Craven at Center for Maine Contemporary Art
September 3rd, 2019
CENTER FOR MAINE CONTEMPORARY ART
KARMA BOOKS
August 15th, 2019
Ann Craven
Birds We Know
Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Maine, 2019
112 pages, hardcover
11 1⁄4 × 11 1⁄4 inches
The catalog includes a foreword by CMCA director,
Suzette McAvoy, and an essay by Chris Crosman.
cmcanow.org
Ann Craven finally shows the midcoast what she’s been painting
The Boston-born artist, who has been painting in Maine for years, has her first in-state exhibit this summer at Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland.
By: Bob Keyes
July 1, 2019
36 Hours in Camden and Rockport, Maine (and Environs)
On the central coast of Maine, visitors will find a beguiling nexus of arts, dining and outdoor activities.
By: Melissa Coleman
June 27, 2019
MASSIF CENTRAL
July 8th, 2019
Ann Craven will produce an edition of traditional silk scarves
in collaboration with Massif Central
ANN CRAVEN FINALLY SHOWS THE MIDCOAST
WHAT SHE’S BEEN PAINTING
By: Bob Keyes
July 1st, 2019
Rockland, ME —The Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) will present a major exhibition of artist Ann Craven’s paintings beginning June 29 and continuing through October 13, 2019. The exhibition will be the first show of the noted artist’s work in Maine, where she has been a seasonal resident and has been painting for more than 25 years.
Ann Craven is widely known for her lushly colored, mesmerizing portraits of the moon, birds, flowers, and other images, which she revisits in serial fashion, as well as her painted bands of color, which document her process. Craven says, ”My paintings are a result of mere observation, experiment, and chance, and contain a variable that’s constant and ever-changing—the moment just past.”
Birds We Know will present a comprehensive selection of the artist’s work, and will be accompanied by an illustrated, hardcover catalog with an essay by Christopher B. Crosman, founding curator, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and former director, Farnsworth Art Museum.
In the essay, Crosman states, “…Ann Craven’s birds, moons, trees, and her stripe and palette paintings all enforce the hard stop our mind and eye make before inexplicable paintings, paintings that affirm an inseparability of beauty, truth and virtue. This is painting at its most authentic and original, at its most memorable and tenderly remarkable.”
Craven began painting in Maine in the early 1990s. First in a borrowed barn near Slab City Road in the mid-coast village of Lincolnville, then from her own barn that she converted to a studio on a farm she purchased nearby. Lincolnville and the surrounding region has harbored artists for decades, beginning in the 1950s when Neil Welliver, Alex Katz, Lois Dodd and other New York-based artists started summering in the area. It was on Lincolnville beach, a small strip of sand anchored by The Lobster Pound restaurant, that Craven painted her first “Moon” painting in 1995. The experience, she says, “gave me my subject matter, I was literally chasing the moon.”
For Craven, painting serial versions of the moon on site was a way to conflate the momentary with the constant. The moon became for her a symbol of time and memory, themes that remain the primary focus of her work. The paintings of birds soon followed, inspired by color-plates found in her Italian grandmother’s vintage ornithology books. Like the moon the birds serve as a touchstone for memory, each repetition of the image a revisiting of a moment, a recalling of loved ones.
In 2008, Craven moved from Lincolnville to an historic house on the banks of the St. George River in Cushing. The property had an old garden shed that became her new studio and, importantly, a majestic purple beech tree hugging the shore. This 100-plus-year-old tree is Craven’s newest motif. “It reminded me of the moon,” she says, “because it was round and because of all the life it had seen. Families coming and going, life lived. Like the moon it’s a constant that ebbs and flows, but the opposite of the moon in that it changes with the day and becomes a silhouette against the sunset.”
Craven is a diarist, each of her paintings is inscribed with the date and time of its making, and she meticulously inventories and records each year’s work. Recently she began exhibiting her extensive series of Untitled (Palettes), ranging from 1999 to present. Painting wet on wet in oils, she mixes her colors on light-duty pre-stretched canvases. “The Palettes are my indexed color inventory,” she says. “They are a way for me to hold on to what I just painted—a moon or flower or bird.”
In addition to numerous group exhibitions worldwide, Craven had her first retrospective, titled TIME, at Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers, France, in 2014. Other recent major solo exhibitions include Promise (Birds for Chicago), Shane Campbell, Chicago, 2019; Sunset Moon, Karma, NY, 2018; Snowbirds, Nina Johnson, Miami, 2018; Animals 1999-2017, Southard Reid, London, 2017; Hello, Hello, Hello, Maccarone, NY, 2016, and Ann Craven, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles, 2014.
Her work has been reviewed in publications including The New York Times, Modern Painters, Art News, LA Times, Art in America, Artforum, Flash Art, The New Yorker, Frieze, among others. Craven’s paintings are in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and private collections worldwide.
Ann Craven | Birds We Know is made possible at CMCA with support from Max Mara, and individual donors.
Los Angeles, CA
Curated by Kate James and Kathleen O’Hara, Concord Center for the Visual Arts, Concord, MA
Southard Reid, London, UK
Where to Invest $1 Million in Art Right Now
We asked a few insiders to build a collection from the ground up.
By Text by James Tarmy
May 2, 2019
To Capture the Memory of Light: A Review of Ann Craven’s “Promise (Birds for Chicago)”
By Cody Tumblin
April 19, 2019
Frieze and Felix Turn Heads in Los Angeles
Memorable moments from a weekend of new fairs where art trumps celebrity-watching.
By Text by Jori Finkel, Photographs by Graham Walzer
February 19, 2019
THIS SUMMER TO SEE MAINE ON FULL DISPLAY
By: Bob Keyes
May 26, 2019
PDF
This Summer To See Maine on Full Display
By: Bob Keyes
May 26, 2019
MUSEUMS LOOK AT THE LEGACIES OF 2 MAINE ART COLONIES
By: Bob Keys
April 28, 2019
IMAGE:
Alex Katz
Lincolnville
1953, Oil on canvas
Museums Look At The Legacies of 2 Maine Art Colonies
By: Bob Keyes
April 28, 2019
KARMA, NEW YORK
March 7-10, 2019
Gertrude Abercrombie, Ann Craven,
Nicolas Party, Matthew Wong
PUBLICATION:
Karma, New York, 2019
60 pages
8 1⁄4 × 11 inches
SOUTHARD REID, LONDON
March 7 – 10, 2019
Ann Craven and R.M. Fischer
IMAGE:
Installation view
CENTER FOR MAIN CONTEMPORARY ART
June 29 – October 13, 2019
Ann Craven: Birds We Know is the artist’s
first exhibition in Maine. It will be accompanied
by an illustrated catalog with an essay by
Christopher B. Crosman, former founding curator,
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and former
director, Farnsworth Art Museum.
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Blue Horizontal Promise
2008
Oil on canvas
48×60 inches
cmcanow.org
Karma, New York ©2018; 560 pages, hardcover, 9 1/4 × 7 1/2 inches; Edition of 100, signed and numbered with hand painted cover; Includes unique 8 1/2 x 6 3/4 inch drawing on paper
Dallas, Texas
Curated by Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Nina Johnson, Miami, FL
Curated by Jean-Marie Gallais, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, FR
Tripoli Gallery, Southhampton, NY
CMCA (Center for Maine Contemporary Art), Rockland, ME
Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL
CENTER FOR MAINE CONTEMPORARY ART
ARTSY
February 1st, 2019
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art
is offering its annual “Art You Love” benefit auction in partnership with Artsy,
the global online art platform. Featuring fifty works of art by leading and
emerging artists connected with Maine, the CMCA auction is an opportunity
to purchase art you love and support CMCA’s exhibitions and educational
programming for all ages.
This is the first year CMCA is partnering with Artsy to bring its benefit art
auction to a global collecting market. “The Artsy platform allows people to
bid on works of art to benefit CMCA, no matter where they are located,” says
CMCA director Suzette McAvoy. “We have so many terrific contemporary
artists here in Maine and working with Artsy makes it possible for us to
introduce their art to collectors, both near and far.”
Bidding for CMCA’s “Art You Love” auction, cmcanow.org/auction, opens at
noon on Thursday, February 14, and runs through 5pm EST on Thursday,
February 28. At the close of the auction, successful bidders will be notified
by Artsy and CMCA to make arrangements for shipment of the art directly to the buyers.
Artists contributing to the 2019 CMCA Benefit Art Auction include:
Jeff Ackerman, Daniel Anselmi, Bo Bartlett, John Bisbee, Mattina Blue, Katherine Bradford,
Jenny Brillhart, Tom Butler, Sam Cady, Ann Craven, Lois Dodd, David Driskell, Betsy Eby,
Carol Eisenberg, Jeff Epstein, Inka Essenhigh, Melanie Essex, Donna Festa, Alan Fishman,
Thomas Flanagan, Kathleen Florance, Elizabeth Fox, Linden Frederick, Peter Halley,
Alison Hildreth, Cassie Jones, Alex Katz, Fred Kellogg, Sal Taylor Kydd, Amy Lowry,
Jonathan Mess, K. Min, Kayla Mohammadi, Anne Neely, Ni Rong, Kate Russo, Claire Seidl,
Anneli Skaar, Emilie Stark-Menneg, Sara Stites, Barbara Sullivan, Greta Van Campen,
Don Voisine, John Walker, SB Walker, William Wegman, Kathy Weinberg, Shoshannah White,
James Wolfe, and Dudley Zopp.
CMCA has held a benefit fine art auction showcasing work by national and emerging artists
associated with Maine for over 40 years. For assistance or further information on this year’s
“Art You Love” auction, please call CMCA at 207-701-5005 or email jkablack@cmcanow.org.
CENTER FOR MAINE CONTEMPORARY ART
ARTSY
February 1st, 2019
Lot 7
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Moon (Peach Moon over Maine, 8-16-11, 10PM), 2011
2011, Oil on canvas, 14 x 14 inches
ARTFUL VOLUMES
Bookforum Contributors On The
Season’s Outstanding Art Books
By Canada Choate
December, 2018 — January, 2019
karmakarma.org
bookforum.com
Bookforum, December, 2018 — January, 2019
ARTFUL VOLUMES
Bookforum Contributors On The Season’s Outstanding Art Books
By Canada Choate
December, 2018 — January, 2019
NINA JOHNSON, Miami FL
December 3 – February 2, 2018
Curated by NY and LA based architecture and design
firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero
Pilar Almon, Oona Brangam-Snell, Taylor Colantonio,
Ann Craven, John Graham, Batsheva Hay, Chris Ho,
Nicola L, Emmett Moore, Anne Libby, Nicolas Lobo, Carlo
Mollino, Malik Sidibe, Katie Stout, Sophie Stone,
Cynthia Talmadge, Anna Weyant and Kevin Zucker
ninajohnson.com
CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ, Metz Cedex FR
October 13, 2018 — April 15, 2019
Curated by Jean-Marie Gallais
The event groups about a hundred artists and
historical figures (Winslow Homer, Francis Bacon,
Anna-Eva Bergman, Louise Bourgeois, Brassaï, Helen
Frankenthaler, Paul Klee, Lee Krasner, Henri Michaux,
Joan Mitchell, Amédée Ozenfant, etc.) and contemporary
artists (Etel Adnan, Charbel-joseph H. Boutros,
Ann Craven, Peter Doig, Jennifer Douzenel, Rodney
Graham, Martin Kippenberger, Paul Kneale, Olaf Nicolai,
Gerhard Richter, etc.) as well as a number of
spectacular installations, some of which were created
especially for the project (Harold Ancart, Raphaël
Dallaporta, Spencer Finch, Daisuke Yokota, Navid Nuur).
centrepompidou-metz.fr
TRIPOLI GALLERY, Southampton, NY
October 6 ‐ November 12, 2018
Katherine Bernhardt, Ross Bleckner, Katherine
Bradford, Francesco Clemente, Ann Craven, Félix
Bonilla Gerena, April Gornik, Mary Heilmann,
Bryan Hunt, Adrianne Rubenstein, Hiroshi Sugimoto,
José Luis Vargas, and Lucy Winton.
Image:
Ann Craven
Moon (Crescent), 2007, 2007
oil on canvas
48 x 48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm)
tripoligallery.com
Arts & Living
At the Galleries
October 4, 2018
The Southampton Press, Arts & Living, October 4, 2018
FRIEZE
Reviews
By Diana Hamilton
October, 2018
p. 266, Edition No. 198
“Ann Craven’s Changing Scenes Of The Continuous ‘Just Past.’
At Karma, New York, the artist herself becomes ‘a reproductive
medium’, revisiting natural subjects and bringing realism ever
closer to abstraction.”
Image:
Ann Craven
Sunset Moon (Guilford, Through Trees, 5-21-18,
7:30PM), 2018
2018
Oil on canvas
36 × 36 cm
Courtesy: the artist and Karma, New York
frieze.com
Ann Craven
By Diana Hamilton
Reviews
October, 2018
p. 266, Edition No. 198
Frieze Magazine, Reviews, p. 266, Edition No. 198, October, 2018
Four Contemporary Painters at Tops Gallery in Memphis
Art Review
By Marc Mitchell
September 4, 2018
Burnaway, Art Review, September 4, 2018
essays by David Salle, Sarah French,
and Dana Miller, published by KARMA, New York ©2018 and Ann Craven, ISBN 978-1-949172-01-0
560 pages, edition of 100, signed and numbered with hand painted cover, includes unique 8 1/2 x 6 3/4 inch drawing on paper, KARMA, New York, 2018
The house of Missoni
Sitting atop a mountain in Italy,
Angela Missoni’s light-filled villa
reflects the designer’s love of
pattern and colour.
August 24, 2018
The Sydney Morning Herald, August 24, 2018
The New York Times Style Magazine, p. 116-118, August 14, 2018
STYLE MAGAZINE
Inside Angela Missoni’s Rainbow-Colored World
By Lindsay Talbot
August 14, 2018
Ann Craven’s Changing Scenes Of
The Continuous ‘Just Past’
By Diana Hamilton
Reviews
August 13, 2018
At Karma, New York, the artist herself becomes
‘a reproductive medium’, revisiting natural subjects
and bringing realism ever closer to abstraction
frieze.com
Frieze, August 13, 2018
Contemporary Art Daily, July 28, 2018
Ann Craven at Karma
July 28, 2018
ANN CRAVEN AT KARMA
July 28, 2018
contemporaryartdaily.com
By Sarah Douglas
July 25, 2018
TOPS GALLERY, Memphis
Curated by Hunter Braithwaite
Ann Craven, Dana Frankfort, EJ Hauser, Margaux Ogden
July 21 — September 8, 2018
topsgallery.com
Brooklyn Rail, July 11, 2018
Ann Craven: Sunset Moon
By David Rhodes
July 11, 2018
ANN CRAVEN: SUNSET MOON
By David Rhodes
July 11, 2018
brooklynrail.org
JACK HANLEY, New York
June 28 – August 3, 2018
Curated by Nikki Malooff and Louis Fratino
Sarah Bedford, Holly Coulis, Ann Craven, Ralph Delia,
Lois Dodd, Daniel Gordon, Jenna Gribbon,
Anthony Iacono, Hein Koh, John McAllister, Emily Mullin,
Shota Nakamura, Danielle Orchard, Sally Saul,
Allison Schulnik, Michael Stamm, Tim Wilson
Image:
Ann Craven
Flowers, Feb 9, 2010 (Guilford), 2010
2010
Oil on canvas
36 x 30 inches
jackhanley.com
KARMA, New York, 2018
560 pages, hardcover
9 1/4 × 7 1/2 inches
Edition of 100, signed and
numbered with hand painted cover
Includes unique 8 1/2 x 6 3/4 inch
drawing on paper
Inquire:
karmakarma.org
Karma is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Ann Craven. This is the artist’s first presentation with the gallery.
The exhibition is comprised of two bodies of new paintings: Birds and moons. Like much of Craven’s practice, these works are both jubilant acts of art making and ruminative meditations on time and the nature of memory, or what Craven terms “the continuous just past.”
Craven began painting birds in 1997, and, since 2002, has completed a cycle of works every year. All her birds, including the yellow, pink, and blue canaries present here, are all based on images from a single book, which Craven returns to as both a grounding source and a launchpad for inspiration. The 2018 paintings, are comprised of variable bands of color, like sunsets, which ground both her subject and the viewer in lush hues. When flowers emerge, they are often taken from one of Craven’s art historical inspirations, Georgia O’Keefe. For Craven, her bird paintings have totemic power: each is unique but each is also a stand-in for the people and scenarios she might have painted, were she a portrait painter. They embody memories, and offer a chance for the artist to covet her artistic history while encoding it with her current inner-life.
If the birds are an act of meditation on a mediated image, then Craven’s continuum of moon paintings, initiated in 1995, are a celestial diary. She paints them at night with just a small lantern, barely able to see her tools. And so her palette is set up, from left to right, with white, yellow, orange, red, cobalt blue, green, brown, and black, so that she can stay focused entirely on her subject and paint from instinct. As she told Dana Miller, “Because I have painted with oils (from observation) since a child, with the colors on the palette laid out for mixing in the same order forever, the mixed color is like a non-thought—it’s like breathing for me—it just occurs because it’s supposed to. Meaning I mix color with the same innate sensibility as I use to walk or breathe.” These direct paintings then become sources for larger paintings, in which she can focus on the conscious act of rendering a subject and the remembering of a memory. In this way, as with her canaries, Craven both holds on to her past and expands her present.
Karma has published a comprehensive 560-page monograph of Ann Craven’s paintings, with essays by David Salle and Sarah French, and curator Dana Miller.
KARMA, New York, 2018
Hardcover, 560 pages
7 1/4 × 9 inches
Karma has published a comprehensive
560-page monograph of Ann Craven’s paintings,
with essays by David Salle and Sarah French,
and curator Dana Miller
Columbia University, New York, NY
Poitiers, France
Miami, FL
Miami, FL (promised gift)
curated by Hunter Braithwaite, Tops Gallery, Memphis
Karma, New York
KARMA, New York, 2018
Hardcover, 560 pages
7 1/4 × 9 inches
Karma has published a comprehensive
560-page monograph of Ann Craven’s paintings,
with essays by David Salle and Sarah French,
and curator Dana Miller.
Order:
karmakarma.org
KARMA, New York
June 21 – August 3, 2018
Opening reception: Thursday June 21, 6–8pm
Karma is pleased to announce an exhibition of
new paintings by Ann Craven. This is the
artist’s first presentation with the gallery.
The exhibition is comprised of two bodies of
new paintings: Birds and moons.
Image:
Ann Craven
Pink Canary (Stepping Out, on Pink Sunset), 2018
2018
Oil on canvas
90 × 72 inches
karmakarma.org
curated by Nikki Malooff and Louis Fratino, Jack Hanley, New York
curated by Meredith Darrow and Olivia Davis, Performance Ski, Aspen
PERFORMANCE SKI, Aspen
Curated by Meredith Darrow and Olivia Davis
Summer 2018
The Artists Who Have Made the
Night Sky Their Muse
By Alina Cohen
June 7, 2018
Artsy Magazine, June 7, 2018
Marfa Journal, p. 296-311, March, 2018
ANN CRAVEN
Connoisseur-Worthy Highlights From the
ADAA’s 30th Anniversary Art Fair
By Brian Boucher
March 2, 2018
artnet.com
Ann Craven
By Alexandra Gordienko
p. 296-311
March, 2018
marfajournal.com
Ann Craven
By Alexandra Gordienko
p. 296-311
March, 2018
MACCARONE, New York
ADAA’s The Art Show
Park Avenue Armory
Park Ave at 67th St
New York
February 28 – March 4, 2018
artdealers.org
maccarone.net
Connoisseur-Worthy Highlights From
the ADAA’s 30th Anniversary Art Fair
By Brian Boucher
February 28, 2018
Artnet News, February 28, 2018
MACCARONE, New York
ADAA’s The Art Show
February 28 – March 4, 2018
Park Avenue Armory
Park Avenue at 67th Street
New York
news.artnet.com
maccarone.net
artdealers.org
ADAA, New York
Nina Johnson, Miami
NINA JOHNSON, Miami
January 26 – March 10, 2018
Nina Johnson is pleased to announce Snowbirds, Ann Craven’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, opening with a public reception on Friday, January 26th (7-9 pm), and remaining on view until March 10th, 2018.
As the Northern United States are blanketed in an atmosphere of frost and snow, Ann has found herself delving deep into the coldest recesses of the country, painting extensively in her native Northeast Corridor – from Maine to Connecticut. Continuing her interest of the classical image of a bird perched on a branch, this exhibition is filled with Craven’s iconic bird paintings- intuitive, gestural and responsive to a frosted climate and the creatures that choose to stay within it. These singular small-scale paintings relish in the isolation and frosted blue light of winter, meanwhile Craven’s pinks and bright colors remain steady, bearing and possessing the promise of spring.
About Ann Craven
Having exhibited and worked extensively since the late-90’s, Ann Craven’s works are in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney, The New Museum, the ICA Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and various other institutions and prestigious private collections around the world. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in The New York Times, Modern Painters, Art News, LA Times, Art in America, Artforum, Flash Art, The New Yorker and Frieze, among others.
About Nina Johnson
Nina Johnson is a contemporary art space in Miami, Florida. Opened as Gallery Diet in 2007, the gallery has produced exhibitions by emerging and established artists from around the world.
Contemporary Art Daily, September 26, 2017
ROB TUFNELL, Cologne
September 8 – 30, 2017
Presented in collaboration with Tanya Leighton, Berlin
Image:
Ann Craven
Baby Panda #5 for Chicago, 2008
2008
Oil on canvas
14 x 11 inches
robtufnell.com
in association with Tanya Leighton, Rob Tufnell, Cologne
ICA at MECA, Portland ME
Curated by Michelle Grabner
July 20 – September 15, 2017
Institute of Contemporary Art at
the Maine College of Art
522 Congress St, Portland, Maine
meca.edu
hyperallergic.com
twocoatsofpaint.com
bostonglobe.com
maineartsjournal.com
mainetoday.com
bangordailynews.com
meca.edu
curated by Michelle Grabner, The Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, ME
ANN CRAVEN at SOUTHARD REID
July 1st, 2017
ANN CRAVEN AT SOUTHARD REID
July 1st, 2017
IMAGE:
Ann Craven
Kitty, I Love You, Do You Love Me?, 2002
2002, Oil on linen, 12 x 10 inches
TimeOut London, June 2017
Contemporary Art Daily, June 1, 2017
ANN CRAVEN: ANIMALS 1999-2017
Southard Reid, London
April 26 – June 24, 2017
By Eddy Frankel
Ann Craven, Armand Jalut, Neil Raitt, curated by Marc Bembekoff, Centre d’Art Contemporain la Halle des Bouchers, Vienne FR
CENTRE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN LA
HALLE DES BOUCHERS, Vienne FR
June 3 – August 20, 2017
Curated by Marc Bembekoff
Ann Craven, Armand Jalut, Neil Raitt
Opening June 2nd, 7PM
Image:
Ann Craven
French Panda, 2007
2007
Oil on linen
16 x 16 inches
cac-lahalledesbouchers.fr
Sargent’s Daughters, New York
SARGENT’S DAUGHTERS, New York
May 24-June 30, 2017
Deborah Anzinger, Charlie Billingham, Petra Cortright,
Ann Craven, Keren Cytter, f.marquespenteado, Keltie
Ferris, Daniel Gordon, David Harrison, Paul Heyer,
Jaime Isenstein, Matthew Day Jackson, Jon Kessler,
Suzanne McClelland, Evan Nesbit, Alexis Rockman,
Jennifer Rubell, Cole Sayer, Philip Taaffe,
Leslie Thornton, Theo Triantafyllidis, Chloe Wise
Image:
Ann Craven
Pink Canary (Stepping Out With Cherries,
Black, Facing Right), 2017
2017
Oil on linen
72 x 48 inches
www.sargentsdaughters.com
RxArt INVITES YOU TO THE MINTED 50 EXHIBITION
The Minted 50 is a new collaboration of 50 projects
done in 50 days by 50 artists to support RxArt.
All sales from the exhibition – featuring projects
by Olaf Breuning, Ann Craven, and Daniel Heidkamp
– will be donated to RxArt.
SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2017
6:00 – 10:00 PM
Van’s General Store Yellow Chair Gallery
47 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002
Ann Craven
I love you to the Moon, Blue Moon, 2017
Inkjet print on archival enhanced matte paper, 175 gsm,
water based gouache, archival metallic acid free ink;
colored ink on paper
Bookmarks: 8.5 x 2.5 inches each
Drawing: 11 x 8.5 inches
Signed and dated in color drawing pen
Courtesy of the artist and Maccarone
To purchase, please contact RxArt info@rxart.net.
www.rxart.net
Ann Craven, Animals 1999-2017
Southard Reid, London
Reviewed by Eliel Jones
www.artforum.com
Bedroom: Billy Cotton Studio
Works by Ann Craven, Carol Bove, and others
May 2, 2017 – June 6, 2017
125 East 65th Street | NYC
www.nytimes.com
www.architecturaldigest.com
www.kipsbaydecoratorshowhouse.org
Billy Cotton Studio, New York
ANN CRAVEN: ANIMALS 1999-2017
Southard Reid, London
April 26 – June 24, 2017
By Eddy Frankel
timeout.com
Southard Reid, London, Artforum, Critic’s Picks, April 2017
ANN CRAVEN at SOUTHARD REID, London
By Eliel Jones
Critic’s Picks
April 26 – June 24, 2017
SOUTHARD REID, London
26 April – 24 June, 2017
Animals 1999 – 2017 is the first show devoted to Ann Craven’s Animal subjects. It features oil paintings of Deer, Cats (or Kittens), Pandas and Birds – Craven’s Icons that she has painted, along with the Moon and Flowers, since the outset of her practice.
The works derive from Craven’s extensive photo archive of treasured pets, her thousands of accumulated printouts of screenshots, scans from animal magazines, cinema, you-tube, the web. She is drawn to these animals for personally emotional as well as universal association. The 1973 American sci-fi thriller film Soylent Green proved to be a profound influence on Craven as a child, from the perspective of a nature guardian and devotee. Her animals – although sweet and kind – represent powerful strength. In Craven’s paintings of Animals, humans’ ability to destroy nature fails – she feels that nature will always win in the end.
Craven’s painting Young Buck (The Life Of The Fawn), Facing Left and Facing Right, 2005, 84×120 inches, depicts two Young Deer, mirrored in this case. Craven’s detail in the title “The Life of the Fawn” refers to Gustave Courbet’s 1859 painting “The Death of the Stag”, here asserting a life – not – death discussion, with nature’s ability to survive.
Craven’s Animals have their own iconic status in traditional and popular culture. They appear at once historical and are strongly present in contemporary media. These iconic images are sometimes considered cute or beautiful, and can be infantilized by “girlish” appeal. Meanwhile, acknowledging their given status and association with adorability and handsomeness, Craven’s paintings of a Deer, a Cat, a Panda or a Bird connects with and seeks to explore the genuine meaning of both power and defenselessness.
Craven’s Animals are not harmful or threatening, they all have an association with freedom, wildness and vulnerability.
Deer, Cats and Pandas are usually depicted alone, their gaze directed outside the painting. They meet a human eye with the poignancy of their unarmed status, which at the same time contains a higher knowledge of the ascendancy of Nature, its timelessness if protected, and thus the threat and senselessness of human cruelty.
Birds similarly symbolize freedom, whilst also the desire to tame. In Craven’s practice they are stand-ins for human situations and feelings. She has referred to them as costumed actors in a play or opera, appearing in recurring compositions, on branches in various communicative stances, with Flower “wallpaper” backdrops – the human aspect of the scenarios is reflected also in their recurring series’ titles “Hello, Hello, Hello”, “I’m Sorry”, “So Sorry”, “I Promise”, to name a few.
The exhibition also includes a Stripe painting – the most recent work in the show – Triptych (Pink Canary Stepping Out, Lavender, Stripe, 3-13-17 – 3-14-17), 2017. The stripes in Cravens paintings are literally the unused colour from her palettes of the subject just painted. The simple gesture of placing stripes of colour mixtures documents her painting process as a notation, or transcription of logged time, like a tape recorder – “the lining up, or Striping of the colour allows me to see the raw process unfiltered by association of what I just painted.”
This work closes the show, a reminder of cycles, ends as beginnings, and the conceptual underpinning of Craven’s pursuit, synthesized with exploration of image and emotional response.
Ann Craven (born Boston USA), lives and works in New York City. She has exhibited widely internationally, her retrospective, TIME, curated by Yann Chevalier was at Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers, France (2014) and other recent solo exhibitions include Parapet Real Humans, St. Louis, Missouri, USA (2017); Hello, Hello, Hello, Maccarone, New York, USA (2016); Untitled (Palettes: Naked, Tagged), 2013-14, Southard Reid, London (2015); Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (2014); Hello, Hello, Hello, Southard Reid, London (2013); Shadow’s Moon and Abstract Lies, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France (2008). Her work has been included in shows at Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; White Columns, New York; Gladstone, New York and 39 Great Jones, amongst others. Craven’s work has been reviewed in many publications including Artforum, Flash Art, Art in America, New York Times, Frieze and Modern Painters. Her paintings are in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum, New York, the New Museum, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and The Dallas Museum of Art.
All photos: c. Lewis Ronald
Southard Reid, London
SOUTHARD REID, London
26 April – 24 June 2017
Animals 1999 – 2017 is the first show
devoted to Ann Craven’s Animal subjects.
Image:
Ann Craven
Kitty I Love You Do You Love Me, Yes, No?, 2002
2002
12 x 10 inches
Oil on linen
southardreid.com
timeout.com
Join us for the Artspace Benefit Gala & Auction,
Paris Texas, honoring David Goldblum.
April 29, 2017
All proceeds benefit Artspace’s free exhibitions
and educational program and the 30th Anniversary
endowment campaign.
Image:
Ann Craven
Moon (Paris, 1-04-09, #9), 2009
2009
16 x 16 in (40.64 x 40.64 cm)
Oil on linen
paddle8.com
artspacenewhaven.org
SCULPTURE CENTER, Long Island City
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
5pm Doors Open
7:30pm Draw Begins
SculptureCenter will be open from 11am-6pm on
Friday, April 14, Saturday, April 15,
and Monday, April 17 to preview the artworks.
Image:
Ann Craven
Flower (Isabel’s LA Rose, 12-31-11, 4:10PM), 2011
Graphite pencil on strathmore 130 g/m paper
Unique
12 x 9 in.
sculpture-center.org
Sculpture Center, Long Island City
Two Coats of Paint, April 17, 2017
Parapet Real Humans, St Louis
PARAPET REAL HUMANS, St Louis
April 13 – May 30, 2017
Curated by Amy Granat
Ann Craven in conversation with Amy Granat
April 14, 2017 @ NOON
2901 Sidney St, St. Louis, MO 63104
Image:
Ann Craven
A Robin Singing, 2011
2011
30 x 24 inches
Oil on linen
parapetrealhumans.com
PARAPET REAL HUMANS, St Louis
April 14 – May 30, 2017
Curated by Amy Granat
Ann Craven is a painter based in New York City. The portrait and moon paintings record specific coordinates that the artist occupies at a given moment. They reflect back on the artist’s life, like a sky map. The painting Portrait of Amy (8-20-12), 2012 was painted in Cushing Maine on August 20, 2012. Craven’s oil paintings of the moon and portraits began in 1990’s as a way to explore variations on a theme or prolongation of “subject” or “subject matter” from an observation starting point.
In 2015, Craven began exhibiting her extensive series of Untitled (Palettes) – created from 1999 to present – in which she has been mixing color directly onto light-duty pre-stretched canvases. The palette at Parapet Real Humans titled Untitled (Robin, 2-21-11), 2011 was used to mix the colors for A Robin Singing, 2011.
Guided by minimalist tendencies, Craven’s Stripe Paintings contain the unused colors from her palettes. The simple gesture of striping or painting her unconscious color mixtures records the process as a “notation” or “transcription of logged time” like a tape recorder. This stripe painting titled Stripe (Portrait of a Robin, 2-23-11), 2011 was made from the unused color from the palette after painting A Robin Singing, 2011.
Craven sees no differentiation from the four canvases in this exhibition – a portrait, a bird, a stripe or a palette and treats them as the same entity, thus taking the hierarchy out of “subject” – placing more emphasis on the unbridled process of “form”.
To be sure, Craven uses subject matter such as birds, birds, flowers and the moons in her multiple wet on wet paintings. Meanwhile, she neutralizes her storybook content through continual variations and repetitions, thus removing any sense of preciousness in the work whilst shifting the conversation about her work into a theoretical frame that considers the body as a whole, rather than its individual parts. By reworking, re-presenting and returning to the same stock subject matter, Craven engages questions of authenticity, collection, consumption and skill, thus examining the durability of a painted icon in a world that consumes mass imagery at record speeds.
About Ann Craven:
In addition to numerous group exhibitions, Ann Craven’s (American) major solo exhibitions include her current show: Animals 1999- 2017 at Southard Reid, London; Hello, Hello, Hello at Maccarone, NYC in 2015; I like Blue at Gallery DIET, Miami in 2015; Untitled (Palettes: Naked, Tagged), 2014-15, at Southard Reid Gallery, London in 2015, and Ann Craven at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles in 2014. She has three Artist Monologues of her work including Ann Craven: TIME (Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers France); Ann Craven: Shadows Moon and Abstract Lies (JRP Ringier and FRAC Champagne Ardenne); Ann Craven: Pensée, (Karma Books and Maccarone) which highlights ninety-two watercolors of the pansy flower painted by Craven between 2007-2008 while in residence at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne. Ann Craven lives and works in New York.
PARAPET REAL HUMANS, St Louis
April 14, 2017 @ NOON
2901 Sidney St, St. Louis, MO 63104
On the occasion of an exhibition by
Ann Craven: “A Robin Singing, 2011”
April 13 – May 30, 2017
Image:
Ann Craven
Portrait of Amy (8-20-12), 2012
2012
14 x 11 inches
Oil on linen
parapetrealhumans.com
Hyperallergic, April 8, 2017
Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2, 2017
Blouin ArtInfo, March 23, 2017
curated by Julia Trotta, Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris
Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia
ROSENWALD-WOLF GALLERY
The University of the Arts, Philadelphia
March 13 – April 22, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday March 16, 5–7:30PM
Ann Craven, Amy Feldman, Marina Adams,
Melissa Meyer, Patricia Treib
Image:
Ann Craven
Tree (Purple Beech, Cushing), 2013
24X24 inches
Oil on linen
www.uarts.edu
philly.com
hyperallergic.com
twocoatsofpaint.com
GALERIE FRANK ELBAZ, Paris
Curated by Julia Trotta
March 18 – May 20, 2017
Opening March 18, 2017
Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Talia Chetrit, Ann Craven,
Thea Djordjadze, Howardena Pindell, Hannah Weinberger
Image:
Ann Craven
Moon (White St, 1-08-12, 10PM), 2012
2012
14 x 14
Oil on Linen
galeriefrankelbaz.com
dailyartfair.com
fondation-entreprise-ricard.com
frieze.com
blouinartinfo.com
Artist Buys Thomaston Properties
By Dan Otis Smith
January 2017
Flash Art, November 23, 2016
JOSH SMITH/ANN CRAVEN
November 23, 2016
FEATURES
JOSH SMITH/ANN CRAVEN
November 23, 2016
flash—art.com
Works by Ann Craven at
NADA Miami Beach
Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago
Southard Reid, London
December 1–4, 2016
Deauville Beach Resort
newartdealers.org
CENTER FOR MAINE CONTEMPORARY ART, Rockland ME
PADDLE 8
The CMCA online benefit art auction ends at
5pm on Wednesday, November 23, 2016
cmcanow.org/auction
Thank you very much for your support of CMCA!
Image:
Ann Craven
Pensée #41, 2015
#8 of 10
Inkjet print on archival Epson enhanced matte paper, 135 gsm
28 ¾ x 19 3/8 in (73.025 x 49.2125 cm); unframed
Edition of 10 with 4 AP’s
Numbered, titled and signed by the artist (on recto)
Retail price: $1000
project curated by Wade Guyton, Meredyth Sparks, Josh Smith, University of Tennessee, School of Art, 2016 Editions/Artists Books Fair, The Tunnel, New York
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, SCHOOL OF ART
Project curated by Wade Guyton, Meredyth Sparks, Josh Smith
In 2013, the School of Art at the University of Tennessee
launched an exciting project with selected artists from
among the School of Art alumni and former
Artists-in-Residence to contribute an image for their
individualized box as part of a Limited Box Edition.
All proceeds from this project will be directed to the
endowment of the Artist-in-Residence (AIR) Program in
Painting and Drawing, now celebrating its 35th year.
Artists: Cheryl Donegan, Richard Phillips, Carrie Moyer,
Suzanne Joelson, Michael St. John, Kelly White, Mira Schor,
Richard Aldrich, Marlo Pascual, Melissa Gordon, Ezra Johnson,
Ashley Nason, Judith Eisler, Pam Jorden, Jon Boles, Pinkney
Herbert, Amy Green, Jackie Gendel, Alisha Kerlin, Sam Gordon,
Ann Craven, Keltie Ferris, Wallace Whitney, Gary Stephan,
Virginia Overton, Josephine Halvorson, Guyton\Walker.
GET YOURS HERE!
or visit
2016 Editions/Artists Books Fair
The Tunnel, 269 11th Ave, New York
November 3 – 6, 2016
eabfair.org
digital print (archival inks on Epson Bright Smooth Matte archival paper), 19” x 13”, edition of 100, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, SCHOOL OF ART, 2016
Karma, Amagansett NY
KARMA, Amagansett NY
August 13 – 29, 2016
Opening Saturday, August 13, 6–8PM
Milton Avery, Mathew Cerletty, Ann Craven,
Henri Rousseau, Victor Brauner, among others
karmakarma.org
SHANE CAMPBELL GALLERY, Chicago IL
July 9 – August 27, 2016
Opening Saturday, July 9, 1-3PM
Phyllis Bramson, Ann Craven, Ellen Gronemeyer,
Jim Lutes, Eric Mack, Dianna Molzan, Ivan Morley
shanecampbellgallery.com
Ann Craven by Sarina Basta
May 16, 2016
curated by Chris Sharp, Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles
curated by Agathe Snow and Eric Firestone, Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, NY
curated by Tim Hawkinson, Marc Straus, New York
HANNAH HOFFMAN GALLERY, Los Angeles
curated by Chris Sharp
June 4 – July 16, 2016
Polly Apflebaum, Bas Jan Ader, Becky Beasley, Juliette Blightman,
Joe Brainard, Matthew Cerletty, Leidy Churchman, Caitlin Keogh,
Ann Craven, Sam Falls, Saul Fletcher, Jane Freilicher,
Maureen Gallace, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Camille Henrot,
Paul Heyer, David Hockney, Alex Katz, Allison Katz,
Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Kushner, Jochen Lempert, Maria Loboda,
Robert Mapplethorpe, Jenine Marsh, Ryan Mrozowski,
Aliza Nisenbaum, D’Ette Nogle, Carissa Rodriguez,
Mark A. Rodriguez, Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Willem de Rooij,
Melanie Smith, Dylan Spaysky, Kunié Sugiura, Walter Sutin,
Wolfgang Tillmans, Kyle Thurman, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann,
Hannah Wilke, Christopher Williams, Amy Yao, Nathan Zeidman
hannahhoffmangallery.com
galleriesnow.net
daily-lazy.com
artviewer.org
moussemagazine.it
artnews.com
contemporaryartdaily.com
thisistomorrow.info
ERIC FIRESTONE GALLERY, East Hampton NY
Curated by Agathe Snow and Eric Firestone
May 28 – June 19, 2016
Shoppy, Marco Barrera, Donald Baechler,
Sanford Biggers, Kelsey Brookes, Ann Craven,
Rosson Crow, Todd Eberle, Sally Egbert,
Leo Fitzpatrick, Danny Fox, Anthony Holbrooke,
Cody Hoyt, Hanna Liden, Nate Lowman,
Robert Mapplethorpe,Jessica Craig Martin,
Jacolby Satterwhite, Miriam Schapiro,
Odessa Straub, Sage Vaughn, Paul Wackers
ericfirestonegallery.com
MARC STRAUS, New York
May 25 – July 29, 2016
Nicole Eisenman, Anj Smith, Joan Levinson,
Tomona Matsukawa, Eleanor Ray, Ann Craven,
Rachel Selekman, Holly Coulis, Bettina Blohm,
Lily Kelly Napangardi, Anna Leonhardt,
Genieve Figgis, Emma Rivers, Sarah Crowner,
Shara Hughes, Nicole Cherubini, Shirin Neshat,
Emily Wardill, Kirsi Mikkola and Liliane Tomasko
marcstraus.com
Shane Campbell, Chicago IL
Gesso Artspace, Vienna
HANNAH HOFFMAN GALLERY, Los Angeles
Olga Balema, Ann Craven, Sam Falls
March 3 – 6, 2016
Spring Studios
50 Varick Street
New York, NY 10013
independenthq.com
Brand New Gallery, Milan, IT
BRAND NEW GALLERY, Milan
March 2 – April 2, 2016
Opening March 2, 2016 | 7-9 pm
Brand New Gallery is pleased to present “Imagine” a group
exhibition that features more than 60 artists who are
experimenting the possibilities of figuration in painting.
Jonathan Baldock, Manfredi Beninati, Leon Benn, Jesse Benson,
Ellen Berkenblit, Johnny Bicos, Katherine Bradford, Thomas Braida,
Sefano Calligaro, Valerio Carrubba , Nina Chanel Abney,
Michael Cline, Ann Craven, John Currin, Folkert de Jong,
Gabriele De Santis, Michael Dotson, Austin Eddy, Inka Essenhigh,
Nick Farhi, Giulio Frigo, Magalie Guerin, Heather Guertin,
Daniel Heidkamp, Anton Henning, Elliott Hundley, Raffi Kalenderian,
Laureen Keeley, Yashua Klos, Becky Kolsrud, Denise Kupferschmidt,
José Lerma, Lauren Luloff, Nikki Maloof, Margherita Manzelli,
Max Maslansky, Simon Mathers, Anthony Miler, Ryan Mosley,
Joshua Nathanson, William J. O’Brien, Enoc Perez,
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Josh Reames, Andrea Romano, Giuliano Sale,
Nicola Samorì, Christian Schoeler, John Seal, Lui Shtini,
Jim Thorell, Ann Toebbe, Santo Tolone, Ian Tweedy,
Kristen Van Deventer, Matthew Watson, Caroline Wells Chandrel,
John Wesley, Sam Windett, Rose Wylie, Konrad Wyrebek,
Eric Yahnker, Guy Yanai
brandnew-gallery.com
Contemporary Art Daily, February 23, 2016
ANN CRAVEN at MACCARONE
February 23, 2016
contemporaryartdaily.com
ANN CRAVEN at MACCARONE
February 23, 2016
Ann Craven, Time Out New York, February 17 – March 1, 2016
ANN CRAVEN at Maccarone, New York
By Michael Wilson
February 17 – March 1, 2016
ANN CRAVEN at Maccarone, New York
By Michael Wilson
February 22, 2016
timeout.com
The Top 10 Flower Paintings of All Time, Time Out New York, February 18, 2016
The top 10 flower paintings of all time
By Howard Halle
February 18, 2016
ArtNews, February 10, 2016
CONSUMER REPORTS: ANN CRAVEN
By The Editors of ArtNews
February 10, 2016
CONSUMER REPORTS: ANN CRAVEN
By The Editors of ArtNews
February 10, 2016
artnews.com
GALERIE DE MULTIPLES, Paris
06 February – 26 March 2016
Stéphane Calais, Viriya Chotpanyavisut, Isabelle Cornaro,
Ann Craven, Marie Denis, Thea Djordjadze, Didier Marcel,
Bernhard Rudiger, Lei Saito, Alain Séchas
galeriedemultiples.com
curated by Nicola Trezzi, Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, NY
Maccarone, New York, NY
MACCARONE, New York
January 21 – March 5, 2016
630 Greenwich Street
98 Morton Street
Maccarone is pleased to present Hello, Hello, Hello, an exhibition focusing on three historical bodies of work from Ann Craven’s singular practice that show the painter moving forward through constant referral to earlier moments. In several ongoing series of paintings, the artist’s decade-spanning reiterations confront the issue of authenticity through a strategy of limitless repetition.
The show takes its title from three sets of triptychs painted over the past fourteen years. Each is an increasingly mediated representation of the same source image: an African grey parrot the artist first discovered in her grandmother’s book on caring for caged birds. The original triptych was painted in 2002. The title, Hello, Hello, Hello, mimics the vocalizations of the birds — rote and sonic, devoid of linguistic heft. In 2004, she repainted the series, scaling up their size and retitling them as HELLO, HELLO, HELLO. She revisited the series once more in 2013, creating three new images. Though Craven paints from observation, often en plein air, when painting birds, she insists upon the distance provided by a mediating image, be it a photograph of a bird or an earlier painting. Each painting is both a continuation of that which came before, and a response; it is in this conversational volley that the performative element in Craven’s practice becomes clear. Her paintings breathe in the liminal space between original and copy, between call and response.
A fourteen-piece stripe work accompanies the 2013 parrot paintings. Completed in tandem with her other works, these minimalist compositions are a depository for paint leftover from other paintings in her studio. The works on display were painted over a three-month period in 2013 during which Craven worked on the third series of parrot paintings. As such, the colors of beaks, plumage, and the floral backdrop condense into bands of color on the canvas. The stripe paintings are simultaneously an abstracted version of her other work and a series of tree rings — a core sample boring through the entire practice.
A selection of recent works and several of Craven’s untitled palette paintings will also be on display. For many years, Craven has used 24-by-18-inch canvases as palettes, completing them alongside her other series. Like the stripe paintings, they index the materials, gestures, and time spent painting. Here, the record is unmoored from imagery, composition, and intention; it is pure evidence, raw time.
Hello, Hello, Hello operates through conceptual subterfuge. By stripping the rigors of conceptualism of any opaque posturing, the artist communicates the bare, immediate truths of painting.
Ann Craven lives and works in New York City and Cushing, Maine. She recently had her first retrospective, Time, curated by Yann Chevalier at Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers, France (2014). She has exhibited widely, including the Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2013); Galerie Perrotin, Paris (2013); White Columns, New York (2013); Eva Presenhuber, Zurich (2013); Gladstone, New York (2012); and Marianne Boesky, New York (2012). Craven’s work has been reviewed in publications including the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, the New York Times, Artforum, Flash Art, the New Yorker, Frieze and Modern Painters. Her paintings are in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum, New York; the New Museum, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, among others. Craven’s new monograph Time, designed by Manon Lutanie, was published by Le Confort Moderne this past year.
ANDREA MEISLIN, New York
January 21 – February 13, 2016
Curated by Nicolla Trezzi
A benefit exhibition to support the
Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.
Ilit Azoulay, Shai Azoulay, Matteo Callegari,
Ann Craven, Peter Halley, John Henderson,
Reuven Israel, Alex Katz, Esther Kläs, Ido Michaeli,
Joseph Montgomery, Joshua Neustein, Adam Pendleton,
Halsey Rodman, Jan Tichy and Sharon Ya’ari
andreameislin.com
MACCARONE, New York
January 21 – March 5, 2016
Opening Reception January 21, 6-8pm
630 Greenwich Street & 98 Morton Street
maccarone.net
Published by LE CONFORT MODERNE
Editor/Designer: Manon Lutanie
Printed in France by Snel
Pub Date: November 2015
Texts by Yann Chevallier, David Évrard
Edition of 1000
11 x 8 inches
278 Pages
Signing events TBA
Inkjet print onf archival Epson enhanced matte paper, 135 gsm; 28 ¾ x 19 3/8 in (73.025 x 49.2125 cm); Edition of 10 with 4 AP’s; Numbered, titled and signed by the artist
Image:
Thomaston Maine
August 30, 2021, 6:20 pm
Ann Craven is a painter living and working in New York City. She summers in Cushing, Maine.
Categorically, like the history of the medium itself, Craven’s painting can be divided in two – the iconographic and the abstract. Craven is well-known for her lushly colored, bold, serial portraits of the moon, various animals but often birds, flowers, trees and other iconic images from everyday life. No less significant are Craven’s series of abstract canvases employing diagonal stripes of color as well as her Untitled (Palettes,) series which serve to both document her process and reflect on the notion of time just past.
Craven has been making paintings of the moon, a symbol of time and memory, since 1995 from varying vistas in Maine and her studio rooftop n New York. The small oil paintings are sketched from life, intended to be returned to and scaled up into larger works back in the studio. The simple, continuous subject matter gives a nod to minimalist painting, while their economic execution and visible brushstrokes conflate the momentary with the constant.
Craven has been making paintings of birds since the late 1990s, inspired by color-plates found in her Italian grandmother’s vintage ornithology books. Like the moon the birds serve as a touchstone for memory, each repetition of the image a revisiting of a moment, a recalling of loved ones. Paintings of other animals, flowers, portraits of family and friends soon followed, in the same diaristic deployment.
Each of Craven’s paintings is inscribed with the date and time of its making, and she meticulously inventories and records each year’s work. Afurther kind of archiving comes with each iconographic work’s abstract stripe/banded “sister” canvases, painted since 2002. Craven has said, “My paintings are a result of mere observation, experiment and chance, and contain a variable that’s constant and ever-changing — the moment just past. The stripes are so I can see what I just mixed. The mixing process is a very unconscious progression and so the stripes are a way to list the colors that I just painted. It is a memory and a documentation of the work at the same time.”
Craven’s extensive series of Untitled (Palettes), range from 1999 to present. Painting wet on wet in oils, she mixes her colors on light-duty pre-stretched canvases, storing for future research and color matching. “The Palettes are my indexed color inventory,” she says. “They are a way for me to hold on to what I just painted—a moon or flower or bird. I sometimes tag the top of the palettes with a quick drawing of what I just painted. I always date and title the palettes the same as the paintings that they came from. After that the paint is physically useless. The abstraction in the palettes and stripes informs the figuration in my work, and vice versa, and further brackets how they work togetherin the context of how my exhibitions are conceived and installed.”
In the summer of 2025, Craven’s retrospective exhibitions included Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory) at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, curated by Anne Collins Goodyear, Jay Sanders, and Adam Weinberg; a retrospective presentation at the New York Studio School, curated by Julia Trotta, Clémence White, and Matthew Higgs; Spotlight: Ann Craven at the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME curated by Sayantan Mukhopadhyay; and Ann Craven: Painted Time (2020–2024) at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME curated by Jaime DeSimone.Craven’s museum retrospective exhibitions include: Shadows Moon and Abstract Lies, co-curated by Florence Derieux and Francois Quintin at Le FRAC Champagne Ardenne in Reims, France (2008), accompanied by an illustrated catalogue designed by Joseph Logan and published by JRP Ringier; TIME, curated by Yann Chevalier at Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers, France (2014), accompanied by an illustrated catalog edited and designed by Manon Lutanie; and most recently, Ann Craven: Birds We Know, organized by Suzette McAvoy at The Maine Center for Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine in 2019, accompanied by an illustrated catalog with an essay by Christopher B. Crosman, former founding curator, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and former director, Farnsworth Art Museum; 12 Moons, SCAD Museum of Art, Savanah GA.
In addition to numerous group exhibitions, Ann Craven’s major solo gallery exhibitions include: Night, Karma New York (2023); 12 Moons, SCAD Museum of Art, Savanah; Flowers (Watercolors), Hannah Hoffman Gallery, LA (2022); Promise (Birds for Chicago), Shane Campbell, Chicago (2019); Sunset Moon, KARMA, New York (2018); Animals 1999-2017, Southard Reid, London (2017); Hello, Hello, Hello at Maccarone, New York(2016); I like Blue at Nina Johnson, Miami (2015); Untitled (Palettes: Naked, Tagged), 2014-15 at Southard Reid Gallery, London (2015); Ann Craven at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (2014) and Flowers, Maccarone, New York, among others.
Ann Craven’s recent publications include Ann Craven: Night, with contributions by Susan Howe and Richard Kalina and a conversation between the artist and Jay Sanders, published by Karma Books in January 2025; Ann Craven: Twelve Moons, edited by Rainer Diana Hamilton, Ariana Reines, and Daniel S. Palmer, published by the SCAD Museum of Art in February 2024. Craven’s 560-page monograph titled Ann Craven was published by Karma Books in 2018. Other publications include Ann Craven: Twelve Moons, SCAD, 2023, published by SCAD and designed by Karma Books; Ann Craven: Animals, Birds, Flowers, Moons, published and designed by Karma Books. Birds We Know, 2019, published by CMCA and designed by Karma Books; Ann Craven: Pensée, an artist book comprehending the entire watercolor series of ninety-two pansies painted by Craven between 2007-2008, while in residence at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in Reims France, published by Karma Books and Maccarone in 2013. Ann Craven: Shadows Moon and Abstract Lies was published in 2009 by JRP Ringier and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, following Craven’s exhibition at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims (2008).
Her work has been reviewed in publications including The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Frieze, The New Yorker, The LA Times, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Bomb, Brooklyn Rail, among others. Her paintings are in the public collections of: the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland Maine, PMA, Portland Maine, The Henri Art Gallery, Seattle WA, SBMA, Santa Barbara, CA, SCAD Museum of Art, Savanah GA, among others.
Photo by Dave Clough Photography
davecloughphotography.com
Gallery Diet, Miami, FL
STUDIO CHECK: ANN CRAVEN
By Scott Indrisek
Portrait by Peter Halley
December 2015
p. 50-51
Blouinartinfo.com
Studio Check: Ann Craven
by Scott Indrisek
portrait by Peter Halley
December 2015
p. 50-51
Blouinartinfo.com
Gallery Diet, Miami
Opening November 30th 5-8 pm
November 30th – January 9th, 2016
MIAMI (November 25th, 2015) – Gallery Diet is pleased to present I Like Blue, an exhibition of new paintings by Ann Craven opening November 30th, 2015 with a public reception (5-8 pm) and remaining on view until January 9th, 2016. Through these paintings, Craven converses with the histories of landscape painting and conceptual art, and with the passage of time itself.
These paintingscome from summers spent in Cushing, Maine, where Craven has kept a home and studio for years. At night, she paints the moon en plein air, often by candlelight. Slightly larger than a square foot, they are hasty compositions, with a pared down palette and an economy of gesture. Like consecutive views of the moon, they manage to be both the same and different. Painting outdoors, under a sky quite different than that above New York, Craven engages contemporary and historic painters such as Alex Katz (who she assisted for seven years) Georgia O’Keeffe and Claude Monet. Yet the landscape is just a starting place. Craven returns to her New York studio and remakes the paintings, scaling up the intimate size of the originals to five square feet. They are not exact remakes; neither the palette nor the brushstroke are the same, merely similar.
By repainting the original paintings, she does not delegate a hierarchy of preparatory version and final product. Rather, she loosely stacks three moments of time: the time spent on the first painting, the time elapsed between the two paintings, and the time spent painting the second version. In this, she charges the landscape genre with the understanding of temporality similar to the conceptual practices of On Kawara or Agnes Martin. The system Craven uses to employ the leftover, unused paint into bands of color can be seen as the forth phase or a closure to the three moments mentioned above.It is an added pleasure to see these works in Miami, a place known for its charged relationship to nature and history.
I Like Blue continues Craven’s exploration of painting as an index of our lived experience. Though painted with immediacy, Craven understands that these works can never fully capture the moment they seek to address. Instead, there is a lag, an inescapable temporal parallax. It is in that space that she best operates. Her work is playful, yet, since inseparable from time’s flight, bittersweet. Also on view is a painting of a bird.
Ann Craven lives and works in New York City and Maine. She recently had her first retrospective, Time, curated by Yann Chevalier at Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers, France (2014).She has exhibited widely, including Southard Reid, London (2015); Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (2014); Maccarone, New York (2013); The Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2013); Galerie Perrotin, Paris (2013); White Columns, New York (2013); Eva Presenhuber, Zurich (2013); Gladstone, New York (2012); and Marianne Boesky, New York (2012). Craven’s work has been reviewed in publications including LA Times, Art in America, the New York Times, Artforum, Flash Art, The New Yorker, Frieze and Modern Painters. Her paintings are in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum, New York; the New Museum, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, among others. Gallery Diet owner Nina Johnson-Milewski assisted Craven in 2005
Gallery Diet is a contemporary art space in Miami, Florida. Since 2007, the gallery has produced exhibitions by emerging and established artists from around the world. The gallery works alongside artists to produce ambitious projects both within the confines of the gallery space and beyond.
GALLERY DIET 6315 NW 2nd AVE MIAMI FL 33150 WWW.GALLERYDIET.COM +1.305.571.2288
Image: Ann Craven, Moon (Manganese Moon, Cushing, 8-30-15, 933PM), 2015, 2015, 14 x 14 inches
GALLERY DIET, Miami
November 30, 2015 – January 9, 2016
gallerydiet.com
KIMMERICH, Berlin
November 28, 2015 – January 30, 2016
Organized by Shane Campbell
With Alma Allen, John McAllister, Ann Craven,
Tony Lewis, Anthony Pearson
kimmerich.com
organized by Shane Campbell, Kimmerich, Berlin, DE
Artists II
By Jason Schmidt
November, 2015
Inside the Artists’ Studios
By Hilary Moss
November, 2015
Inkjet print on archival enhanced matte paper, 135 gsm, 30 ¾ x 21 3/8 in (78.105 x 54.29 cm); Edition of 30 with 7 AP’s and 7 P/P’s; Numbered, titled and signed by the artist
published by Le Confort Modern, Poitiers, France ©2015 and Ann Craven, ISBN 2-908252-54-5
T MAGAZINE
Artists II
By Jason Schmidt
Published by Steidl
Schmidt and the publisher Steidl release Artists II,
the follow-up to his 2006 book Artists, comprising
portraits of 166 painters, sculptors, performers and
multidisciplinary creators in their element.
Available on artbook.com
Published by SKIRA RIZZOLI
Launch: November 05, 2015, 7-10pm
Apartment by the Line, New York
Contribution by Tracey Emin, John Baldessari,
Ryan McGinley, Sarah Nicole Prickett and Simon Castets
Featuring Ann Craven’s complete series:
Yello Fello
Dear in Daisies
rizzoliusa.com
Published by SKIRA RIZZOLI
November 3, 2015
Contributors: Tracey Emin, John Baldessari,
Ryan McGinley, Sarah Nicole Prickett and Simon Castets
Featuring Ann Craven’s complete series:
Yello Fello
Dear in Daisies
Published by LE CONFORT MODERNE
Editor/Designer: Manon Lutanie
Printed in France by Snel
Pub Date: November 2015
Texts by Yann Chevallier, David Évrard
Edition of 1000
11 x 8 inches
278 Pages
Signing events TBA
confort-moderne.fr
Ann Craven
SOUTHARD REID
by Sherman Sam
October 2015
artforum.com/inprint
Ann Craven
SOUTHARD REID
by Sherman Sam
October 2015
organized by Renaud Regnery, L40, Berlin, DE
L40, Berlin
September 11 — October 3, 2015
Opening: September 10, 7pm
Organized by Renaud Regnery
Ann Craven, Friederike Feldmann, Keltie Ferris,
Renaud Regnery, Marie Reinert, Antoine Renard,
Alexander Wagner
rosa-luxemburg-platz.net
Art Matters, The New York Times, July 30, 2015
Art Matters
The Young Curator Bringing the Lower East Side to the West Coast
by Nate Freeman
July 30, 2015
Shane Campbell, Chicago
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts – PAFA
November 12, 2015
Time TBA
118 N Broad St
Philadelphia, PA 19102
pafa.org
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts – PAFA, November 12, 2015
SHANE CAMPBELL, Chicago
Opening: July 11, 2015
SOUTH LOOP
2021 S WABASH AVE
CHICAGO IL 60616
shanecampbellgallery.com
Published by SKIRA RIZZOLI
Pub Date: November 3, 2015
Contribution by Tracey Emin, John Baldessari,
Ryan McGinley, Sarah Nicole Prickett and Simon Castets
Featuring Ann Craven’s complete series:
Yello Fello
Dear in Dasies
FRAC CHAMPAGNE-ARDENNE, Reims
Curated by Florence Derieux
June 26 – September 20, 2015
“On the occasion of her exhibition in Reims,
entitled Hereditary Language, Lisa Oppenheim presents
two works specifically produced by the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne.
(…) The second is an ambitious photographic installation that
echoes a series of paintings created by Ann Craven during her
residency at Reims in 2008, and presented the same year in her
solo exhibition at the FRAC.”
frac-champagneardenne.org
Published by ANN CRAVEN STUDIO
New York, 2015
Edition of 100
11 X 8.5 inches
146 Pages
Launched on the occasion of
ANN CRAVEN: UNTITLED (PALETTES: NAKED, TAGGED), 2013-14
SOUTHARD REID, London
6 June – 18 July 2015
Published by ANN CRAVEN STUDIO
New York, 2015
Edition of 100
8 X 5 inches
110 Pages
Launched on the occasion of
ANN CRAVEN: UNTITLED (PALETTES: NAKED, TAGGED), 2013-14
SOUTHARD REID, London
6 June – 18 July 2015
published by Ann Craven Studio, New York ©2015
Southard Reid, London
Published by ANN CRAVEN STUDIO
New York, 2015
Edition of 100
11 X 8.5 inches
146 Pages
SOUTHARD REID, London
June 6 – July 18, 2015
southardreid.com
SOUTHARD REID, London
6 June – 18 July 2015
Southard Reid is proud to present Ann Craven’s third solo show at the gallery.
Untitled (Palettes: Naked, Tagged), 2013-14 is based around Craven’s Untitled (Palette) paintings, the works that are the starting point of her cyclical, time-based painting practice. The following is extracted from Untitled (Palettes, Moons, Birds, Flowers), 2014, published by the Ann Craven Studio on the occasion of this exhibition:
“In November and December 2014, I showed the small Moon, Bird and Flower paintings (which I call my ‘2014 Laboratory’) along with the large Bird and Moon paintings at Hannah Hoffman Gallery in Los Angeles. In the summer of 2015, I am showing all the Untitled (Palettes) that were used to make the Lab and larger paintings, at Southard Reid in London.
At Southard Reid, the Untitled (Palette) paintings are on the wall in the order that they were made. My palettes are stretched canvases and they contain the dried leftover paint that I used to mix the colors of the paintings – Moon, Bird and Flower paintings – large Bird and Moon paintings – from 2013 and 2014.
I use stretched canvases for palettes because its easier to mix color on a canvas than on paper palettes, and two 24 x 18 inch canvases fit perfectly side by side on my studio table. They are strong and sit steady on the table so I can mix and not worry about anything. It’s always been like this.
I title the paintings Untitled (Palettes) because I feel they are no longer palettes once I finish mixing the color for the Moon or Bird or Flower or Deer paintings.
I mark them with a quick drawing on the top of the palette it helps me to remember what I just painted but it also adds something special to the process for me. It allows me to call to mind the color I mixed – which makes it more like a recall or a repeat of that moment. And sometimes I leave the Untitled (Palettes) naked because they look good without a drawing.
I think that the Untitled (Palettes) function as memory.
They are an echo of the time spent making a painting and a ricochet of the moment just past. They are an innocent by-stander to the memory of what was painted. And I can revisit these colors when I need them. It’s like revisiting an old friend.
It is hard for me to show these paintings because they are so close to me. Showing them always makes me nervous because I feel like I am exposing myself to everyone. But that’s ok, because sometimes things have to be hard to make the difference.”
– Ann Craven, May 25, 2015
published by Ann Craven Studio, New York ©2015
Published by ANN CRAVEN STUDIO
New York, 2015
Edition of 100
8 X 5 inches
110 Pages
2015, edition of 50 + 3 AP’s + 2 PP’s, inkjet print on archival paper, 60 x 40 cm; Edition Galerie des Multiples, Paris; signed and numbered by the artist, 2015
2015, edition of 50 + 3 AP’s + 2 PP’s, inkjet print on archival paper, 60 x 40 cm; Edition Galerie des Multiples, Paris; signed and numbered by the artist, 2015
68PROJECTS, Berlin
January 24 – April 11, 2015
Tom Anholt, Kevin Baker, Donald Baechler, Amy Bessone,
Maya Bloch, Matt Bollinger, Ann Craven, Jared Deery,
Laeh Glen, Baris Gokturk, MacGregor Harp, Vera Iliatova,
Max Janson, Doron Langberg, Alissa McKendrick, Marton Nemes,
Aliza Nisenbaum, Giacinto Occhionero, Nadia Haji Omar,
Jennifer Packer, Jennifer Steinkamp and others
68projects.com
The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York
Abstracting the Set: Monet’s Cathedrals and Stable Mental Concepts from Serial Pictorial Artworks
by Jason Kass, Beth Harland, and Nick Donnelly
published in ART & PERCEPTION 3, 2015
p. 139–150
68Projects, Berlin
Mousse, December 7, 2014
“Faire des Fleures” at Florence Loewy, Paris
December 7, 2014
“Faire des Fleures” at Florence Loewy, Paris
December 7, 2014
moussemagazine.it
by Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, December 4, 2014
Ann Craven, across many moons
by Christopher Knight
December 4, 2014
“Ann Craven, across many moons”
by Christopher Knight
December 4, 2014
latimes.com
GALERIE CORTEX ATHLETICO, Paris
December 13, 2014
Launch of Staging Interruptions (Stream of Life),
a magazine edited by Mary Rinebold, designed by Maria Eisl,
based on the exhibition Staging Interruptions (Stream of Life)
(curators : Sarina Basta & Mary Rinebold),
Southard Reid, London (January 2014)
cortexathletico.com
by Ashley Garrett, FIGURE / GROUND, November 28, 2014
FIGURE / GROUND
November 28, 2014
by Ashley Garrett
figureground.org
A Conversation with Ann Craven
by Ashley Garrett
November 28, 2014
Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles
November 15 – December 20, 2014
Hannah Hoffman Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new oil paintings by Ann Craven, November 15th – December 20, 2014. These paintings of Birds, Moons, and Flowers were made during Craven’s time in her Maine studio along the St. Georges River.
2014 marks the nineteenth year of Craven’s moon paintings. Craven paints her small oil canvases by nocturnal observation, creating anywhere from one to ten paintings on a given night. The size is always the same, like a song or repeated mantra, and in this exhibition they are hung like one long sequential thought or filmstrip.
Also present and painted by observation are the Jewelweed and Rosa rugosa flowers that grow abundant around her studio in Maine. The Jewelweed is revisited many times throughout the exhibition. Acting as both atmosphere and environment for the birds the Jewelweed is as invasive in the show as it is in the Maine landscape where it grows wild and widespread. This flower also acts as a backdrop – like what you might find in formal portraiture – and is housed in Craven’s acid pink color.
Painted from the 14 x 14 inch moon paintings are the larger canvases titled Moon (Simple Bright Moon With Purple Sky), 2014, 2014 and Moon (Bright Moon Through Trees With Purple Sky), 2014, 2014. These larger paintings are realized with upgraded scale and bigger brushstrokes. “This action of transferring and enlarging charts the distance between lived experience and recreation. The past is folded imperfectly into the present, sacrificing one notion of truth in pursuit of another.’ (Blair Hansen, 2013)
As with the moon and flower paintings, the owls in Owl (Barred Owl Looking), 2014, 2014, Owl (Barred Owl Looking Slightly Away), 2014, 2014, and Owl (Great Horned Looking), 2014, 2014, are subjects taken from the landscape of Maine. Instead of working observationally from life, Craven paints them from an archive of thousands of printed pictures and found images that she has collected. The final paintings embody a constant push and pull – coupling the digital with the natural and the observational with the mediated.
Doves (Pink Thinking Of You With Doves), 2014, 2014 is a pair of Doves nestled against a background of yellow orchids. Echoing across time, exhibition histories, past and present the work is a recollection of Pink Thinking Of You, 2004 and I Promise, 2004, originally shown at Paolo Curti / Annamaria Gambuzzi & Co in Milan. Shown here in the City of Angels, the Doves in Doves (Pink Thinking Of You With Doves), 2014, 2014, are pulled from the album cover of Patti Smith’s Wave (1979).
Ann Craven has exhibited widely in USA and Europe. Selected solo shows include Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France (2014); Maccarone, NYC (2013, 2011 and 2010); Southard Reid, London (2013 and 2011); Ann Craven, Reims Moon at 39 Great Jones, New York; Ann Craven at Conduits, Re-map3, Athens, Greece, 2011; Shadows Moon, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne Reims, France, 2009; Against the Stream, The Sculp- ture Centre, NYC, Snoom, Delaware Centre for Contemporary Art, DE, 2008; Selected recent group shows include Ambulance Blues curated by Erin Falls, 2014, Basilica Hudson; Souvenir curated by Lucie Fontaine, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, 2013; 39GreatJones, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, 2013; and The Spirit Level, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 2012, both curated by Ugo Rondinone; Chaos as Usual, Bergen Kunsthall Nor- way, 2011. Ann Craven Penseé published by Karma International and Maccarone was published in 2013. Shadows Moons and Abstract Lies by JRP Ringier, 2009.
HANNAH HOFFMAN GALLERY, Los Angeles
November 15 — December 20, 2014
hannahhoffmangallery.com
White Flag Projects, St Louis
FLORENCE LOEWY… BY ARTISTS, Paris
November 15 — December 20, 2014
Curated by Camille Azais
Rémy Brière, Morgan Courtois, Ann Craven,
Daniel Gordon, Inga Kerber, Christophe Lemaitre,
Aurélien Mole, Jean-Luc Moulène, Kate Owens, Batia Suter
florenceloewy.com
WHITE FLAG PROJECTS, Saint Louis
November 1, 2015, 5:30 – 8 PM
Markus Amm, Ann Craven, Mira Dancy, Michael Dean,
Cheryl Donegan, Sam Falls, Michelle Grabner,
Jesse Greenberg, Amy Granat, Peter Halley, Lena Henke,
James Hoff, Cooper Jacoby, Jacob Kassay, Sanya Kantarovsky,
Richard Kern, Ajay Kurian, Israel Lund, Tony Matelli,
Win McCarthy, Jeanette Mundt, Asher Penn, Stephen Powers,
Davina Semo, Joshua Smith, Emily Sundblad, and others
whiteflagprojects.org
LESLEY HELLER WORKSPACE, New York
October 23 – December 7, 2014
Curated By Catherine Howe
Polly Apfelbaum, Ross Bleckner, Nicholas Borelli,
Mary Carlson, Lawrence Carroll, Ann Craven, Julie Evans,
Elizabeth Glaessner, Catherine Howe, Judith Linhares,
Allison Schulnik, Simone Shubuck, Michael Velliquette,
Thomas Woodruff
lesleyheller.com
W MAGAZINE
September 29, 2014
by Andrea Lee
The Missoni clan gathered in the pool room,
in front of Ann Craven’s Pink Thinking of You, 2004
wmagazine.com
W Magazine, September 29, 2014
Style Dynasty
by Andrea Lee
September 29, 2014
CONTEMPORARY ART DAILY
August 25, 2014
contemporaryartdaily.com
Contemporary Art Daily, August 25th, 2014
Ann Craven at Confort Moderne
August 25, 2014
curated by Camille Azaïs, Florence Loewy, Paris
curated by Catherine Howe, Leslie Heller Workspace, New York
Shane Campbell, Chicago
Contemporary Art Daily, August 8, 2014
Two Coats Of Paint (twocoatsofpaint.com), August 4, 2014
SHANE CAMPBELL GALLERY, Chicago
August 23 – October 4, 2014
Michael Bauer, Katherine Bernhardt, Ann Craven,
Mark Grotjahn, Friedrich Kunath, Sean Landers,
Lily Ludlow, John McAllister, William J. O’Brien,
Tyson Reeder, Nick Schutzenhofer, Henry Taylor,
Torey Thornton, Michael Williams, Jonas Wood
shanecampbellgallery.com
Time Out, New York, Jul 8, 2014
Nicola Trezzi Named Head of Bezalel Academy’s MFA Program
By M.H. Miller
July 8, 2014
Trezzi portrait by Ann Craven
Nicola Trezzi Named Head of Bezalel Academy’s MFA Program
By M.H. Miller
July 8, 2014
Trezzi portrait by Ann Craven
observer.com
nyogalleristny.files.wordpress.com
RETROSPECTIVE, Basilica, Hudson NY
August 2 – 24, 2014
Curated by Erin Falls
Rey Akdogan, Polly Apfelbaum, Uri Aran, Donald Baechler,
Milano Chow, Peter Coffin, Ann Craven, Sam Falls,
Deborah Falls, Jack Goldstein, Elias Hansen, Marc Hundley,
Mirabelle Marden, Nancy Shaver, Matt Sheridan Smith,
Jordan Wolfson, and Joe Zorrilla
with performances by Mick Barr and Heart of Gold
retrospectivegallery.com
basilicahudson.com
curated by Erin Falls, Retrospective Gallery, Basilica, Hudson, NY
edition of 52, silkscreen print on 300 gr cotton paper, 13 3/4 x 13 1/8 in (35 x 33.5 cm); 5 Artist Proofs (AP), 5 Printer’s Proofs (PP), 5 Le Confort Moderne Proofs (CMP); signed and numbered by the artist, published by Ann Craven and Le Confort Moderne, 2014
edition of 50, inkjet print on archival paper, 28 3/4 x 19 3/8 in (73.2 x 49.2 cm); 4 Artist Proofs (AP); signed and numbered by the artist, published by Ann Craven and Le Confort Moderne, 2014
New York, NY
Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles, CA
curated by Sherman Sam, Ancient & Modern, London
Visual Arts Graduate Program, Columbia University, New York, NY
Visual Arts Graduate Program, Columbia University, New York, NY
curated by Jesse Greenberg and MacGregor Harp, Zach Feuer, New York
ANCIENT & MODERN, London
3 July – 6 September, 2014
Curated by Sherman Sam
Ann Craven, Matthias Dornfeld, Roy Dowell, Jane Freilicher,
Clive Hodgson, Eithne Jordan, Alex Katz, Markus Karstiess,
Winifred Nicholson, Norbert Prangenberg, Audrey Reynolds,
Emily Sundblad, Phoebe Unwin
ancientandmodern.org
ZACH FEUER, New York
June 26 – July 26, 2014
Curated by Jesse Greenberg & MacGregor Harp (247365)
Joshua Abelow, Gina Beavers, Brian Belott, Katherine Bernhardt,
Charles Burchfield, Caitlin Cherry, Ann Craven, Cynthia Daignault,
Mira Dancy, Nicole Eisenman, Al Freeman, Ted Gahl, Van Hanos,
Daniel Heidkamp, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Nikki Maloof,
Keith Mayerson, John McAllister, and Torey Thornton
zachfeuer.com
New York, NY
Pleine Nature
Ann Craven
June 11-17, 2014
Printemps-Été 2014
No. 967
CD 14 Titles
Artribune, June 10, 2014
Ann Craven: Nature and Time
by Sara Boggio
June 10, 2014
Concerts / Expositions / Performances, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, Jun 6, 2014
Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers
May 28 – August 24, 2014
Curated by Yann Chevallier
An exhibition by Ann Craven. Including the entire AC laboratory from 2013 and related large scale works from 2002 to 2013.
To select a group of Ann Craven’s works to organize an exhibition seems simple at first since all works originate from an identical process, are crossed by recurring motifs, and share a style that is immediately recognizable. One considers selecting the works randomly by bringing together subject, motif or format. It then strikes us the exceptional amount of work produced by the artist, and it comes to mind that the only valid exhibition would be to gather all, to show everything. Again a problem, the warehouse gallery is not large enough … Once this first hypothesis was dismissed with regret, we chose to highlight several fundamental ideas in Craven’s work: time, profusion, system and attachment.
Time
A fundamental aspect of Craven’s work lies in its ability to register itself within time. Behind each canvas, we irreparably find the same information: year, month, day, and even the hour of completion of the works. A futile attempt to secure the passing of time, to retain the evanescent memories, to feel once again the emotions that had accompanied the brush. The exhibition brings together the whole collection of works painted in 2013, hung in the order of their production. This objective chronology partially structures the exhibition.
Profusion
The exhibition features over 200 works by the artist; this is her most substantial exhibition yet. This quantitative element cannot stand as a critical argument, although it helps to understand the intensity of the work, both the abnegation and voracity of the artist, and gives a new dimension to the idea of series, paramount in her work.
A Seamless System
Painting is often a history of systems and the one set up by the artist is impressive. Ann paints in series, motifs found on the spot at first, as the moons painted outdoors in her native Maine. These primal works are what she calls her laboratory, a collection of paintings that serve as her reservoir. These paintings are reinterpreted, reframed, resized in the studio to make new works emerge. The paint used is recycled into diagonal stripes on other canvases and the palettes also become paintings. Everything is recycled and a distance to the original subject is created, while keeping its memory. An attempt to empty the subject from its meaning, from its original story, to reduce it to the state of motif.
A Sustained Sympathy
Despite the systematic activity and infinite reproduction of subjects without an a priori quality, a sustained sympathy establishes itself amidst Craven’s works. A persistent affection operates in front of each canvas, as if each one of its flowers, its moons, its birds and its trees referred us to a love gone, a friendship lost or a loved one that we remember with nostalgia and goodwill.
Yann Chevallier, Poitiers, 2014
confort-moderne.fr | On Youtube
contemporaryartdaily.com
LE CONFORT MODERNE, Poitiers, France
May 28 – August 24 2014
Curated by Yann Chevallier
Including the entire AC laboratory from 2013
and related large scale works from 2002 to 2013
confort-moderne.fr
youtube.com
contemporaryartdaily.com
images
Prends ton “Time”
May 28 – June 3, 2014
No. 74
TV France 3 Poitou-Charentes, May 2014
Chicago, Illinois
New York, NY
Stars, a Bridge and Birds
GALERIE BERNARD CEYSSON, Paris
March 29 – May 18, 2014
Curated by Yann Chevallier
bernardceysson.com
Ann Craven and Marianne Vitale, curated by Yann Chevalier, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris
Reims, France
Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France
SOUTHARD REID, London
January 23 – March 1, 2014
Curated by Sarina Basta and Mary Reinbold
southardreid.com
curated by Sarina Basta and Mary Reinbold, Southard Reid, London
Essex Flowers, New York
Visual Arts Graduate Program, Columbia University, New York, NY
ESSEX FLOWERS, New York
January 12 – February 16, 2014
Ellen Berkenblit,
Josh Brand, Ann Craven,
Keith Haring,
Kyle Knodell,
Lydia Anne McCarthy
essexflowers.us
Seattle, Washington
MACCARONE and KARMA, New York, 2013
Edition of 500
11.5 X 8.5 inches (29.21 X 21.59 cm)
98 Pages
SPECIAL EDITION OF 50 WATERCOLORS BY ANN CRAVEN:
PENSÉE Book NUMBER 1-50 INCLUDES a 10 X 8 INCH ORIGINAL
HAND PAINTED WATERCOLOR by the artist
SIGNED AND NUMBERED #1 through #50 on 300 G ARCHES PAPER
karmakarma.org
Contemporay Art Daily, Week in Review, December 7th, 2013
Scene & Herd, Artforum.com, November 14, 2013
MACCARONE and KARMA, New York, 2013
Edition of 500
11.5 X 8.5 inches (29.21 X 21.59 cm)
98 Pages
SPECIAL EDITION OF 50 WATERCOLORS BY ANN CRAVEN:
PENSÉE Book NUMBER 1-50 INCLUDES a 10 X 8 INCH ORIGINAL HAND PAINTED WATERCOLOR by the artist SIGNED AND NUMBERED #1 through #50 on 300 G ARCHES PAPER
Maccarone, New York
November 8 – December 14, 2013
Maccarone is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Ann Craven, opening November 8th, 2013. These paintings grew out of Craven’s recent time in her Maine studio along the St Georges River.
2013 marks the eighteenth year of Craven’s moon paintings. Craven paints small oil canvases by nocturnal observation – creating anywhere from one to ten paintings on a given night. In a process she regularly applies, Craven remakes a selection of these on larger canvases. This action of transferring and enlarging charts the distance between lived experience and recreation. The past is folded imperfectly into the present, sacrificing one notion of truth in pursuit of another.
A new subject for Craven is the purple beech tree. As with the moon paintings, Craven paints the tree at dusk or through the night. There are clear dichotomies between Craven’s moon and tree: the moon forever shifts its shape behind a morphing shroud of cloud and atmosphere, emanating and reflecting light; the beech tree, represented in vibrating silhouette, goes nowhere in particular – a dark witness anchored to the ground, concealing and absorbing. Though pared toward abstraction, both moon and tree lose nothing of their potency by way of Craven’s ardent brushstroke. These subjects summon the volatility of both micro- and macro-physical forms; they seem to describe as much a gigantic, silent explosion in outer space as they do a subatomic particle itching to burst open.
Although the paintings originate from diverse moments, their singular memories are fused together when presented in sequence. The repetition of subject bounces the eye between similar points in order to confirm their differences, favoring the prospect of the infinite over the sanctity of the original.
Craven’s band paintings are diagonal strips of color laid down from the remaining paint on her palette after every moon and tree’s completion. Here, we read the story of Craven’s laboratory process in perpetual, leaning hues of hypnotic thickness; each band painting describes its kindred artwork, interlocking the entirety of Craven’s project. The ticking bands of color further unbind her paint from the stasis of subject matter to form an evolving record of, in Craven’s words, “the continuous just-past.” – Blair Hansen, 2013
MACCARONE
, New York
November 8 – December 14, 2013
maccarone.net
Maccarone, New York, NY
Ann Craven, Southard Reid, London
by Mary Margaret Reinbold
Flash Art, International Edition, no. 293
November–December 2013
Flash Art, International Edition, no. 293, November–December 2013
American Academy of Arts and Letters
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
Tisch School for the Arts, Painting Program, New York University
Salmagundi Foundation, New York, NY
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York, NY
Art Production Fund and The Lawrence Rockefeller Foundation, Foundation Claude Monet, Academie des Beaux-Arts, Giverny, France
Graduate Painting Department, Rutgers University, NJ
New York, NY
International Association of Art Critics, USA (AICA New England), Allston-Skirt Gallery, Boston, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Cranbrook Academy Graduate School of the Arts, Bloomfield Hills, MI
Triple Candie, New York, NY
Graduate Program, Hunter College, New York, NY
Graduate School of the Arts, New York University, NY
Graduate School of the Arts, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Columbia University, New York, NY
Frac –Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
Graduate School of the Arts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Graduate School of the Arts, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR
Graduate School of the Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center For Advanced Studies, Cambridge
with Tony Conrad, Leslie Hewitt and Haim Steinbach; Moderated by Matt Keegan, organized by Bianca Beck and Josh Brand, Yale University School of the Arts, New Haven, CT
Visual Arts Graduate Program, Columbia University, New York, NY
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA
New York Studio School, New York, NY
organized by Michelle Grabner, CAA, Chicago, IL
Columbia University, New York, NY
School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Visual Arts Graduate Program, Columbia University, New York, NY
2 Color Woodcut Print, 15 x 11 in, Edition of 75, The Leroy Neiman Center For Print Studies, 2011
Reduction Woodblock Print, 30 x 33 1/2 in, Edition of 4, The Leroy Neiman Center For Print Studies, 2011
Reduction Woodblock Print, 30 x 33 1/2 in, Edition of 4, The Leroy Neiman Center For Print Studies, 2011 columbia.edu
Reduction Woodblock Print, 30 x 33 1/2 in, Edition of 12, The Leroy Neiman Center For Print Studies, 2011 columbia.edu
Reduction Woodblock Print, 30 x 33 1/2 in, Edition of 12, The Leroy Neiman Center For Print Studies, 2011 columbia.edu
Art Production Fund, Dorado Beach Resort, Puerto Rico
4 offset prints, 45 x 32 cm each, in a silkscreen portfolio, 48 x 38 cm each, Edition of 100, Numbered and Signed, Published by Ann Craven and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, 2012
4 offset prints, 45 x 32 cm each, in a silkscreen portfolio, 48 x 38 cm each, Edition of 100, Numbered and Signed, Published by Ann Craven and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, 2013
Mandrake, Los Angeles, CA
2011-2013 Copertine d’Autore, La Triennale de Milano, Fondazione Corriere Della Sera, Milan
curated by Sarina Basta, The Dairy Art Center, London
Financial Times, FT.com/Arts, October 16, 2013
LA LETTURA, Fondazione Corriere della Sera
and Corriere della Sera, Triennale di Milano, Milano
October 16 – November 24, 2013
Curated by Ginaluigi Colin
triennale.it
SKIRA Catalogue
video.corriere.it
THE GREEN GALLERY, Milwaukee
October 12 – November 24, 2013
Curated by Drew Heitzler
Catharine Ahearn, Ann Craven, Sam Durant,
Nicholas Frank, Cyprien Gaillard, Hannah Greely,
Sharon Lockhart, Tom Marioni, Tony Matelli,
Pentti Monkkonen, Pruitt and Early, Vincent Szarek,
Henry Taylor, Tom Wesselmann
thegreengallery.biz
Southard Reid, London
12 October – 23 November 2013
Southard Reid is proud to present Hello, Hello, Hello by Ann Craven, her second solo show with the gallery. Craven’s show sets up a series of echoes in painted and printed form, across time and exhibition histories, past and present.
Craven first painted an African grey parrot, the subject of the series of Hello, Hello, Hello paintings, in 2002, as a triptych. Its thrice copied form and reiterated greeting mimicked the habit of the parrot subject, and underscored a notion of a timeless cry of repeated greeting, incipient request for acknowledgment, emphatic enquiry, anyone-outthere assertion or wake-up call, in to infinity.
In 2009 during a six month residency at the FRAC Champagne-Ardennes, Reims that culminated in her exhibition Shadows Moons, Craven instigated the 16000 Mistakes project, where in the community building next door to the FRAC, local teenagers learned off-set screenprinting using Craven’s four iconic motifs – the Bird, Moon, Flower and Stripe. Craven collected all attempts, despite ‘mistakes’, accumulating a number around 16000. An ongoing project, first having been printed in black, Southard Reid’s Hello, Hello, Helloexhibition is the first showing of the Magenta Mistakes ; they entirely cover one of the long walls of the gallery, downstairs and upstairs, each a copy of one of the four motifs, each unique with its own accidents. Those not on the wall are exhibited in four stacks depending on their motif, on a pallet sent from the FRAC in Champagne, to which it and any further remaining prints – Craven invites visitors to take a Magenta Mistake each – will be returned at the end of the show, from where it can be exhibited/distributed again until they run out.
Hello, Hello, Hello as a triptych has been revisited, repeated, enlarged and shrunk for other shows, as is Craven’s practice. The 2002 original is currently on view at the Dairy Art Centre, London, supported by a large-scale wall painting made with bands of colour matched precisely to the Hellos palette, unfolding diagonally across the wall, in an interlocked continuum with and from the representational original. For Craven a counter-point and also integral element to the process of making work is the archival-like use of remaining paint when a work or series’ of works is completed, which she reconstitutes into painted Stripes or Bands of pure colour. Moving along canvases from right to left, Craven makes diagonal bands until all leftover paint is used up. The Stripes/Bands are therefore a recording, an echo in themselves of what has just passed. They are their own entity as a work or group of works’ but ever-tied to in the making of her paintings and containing that which they originated from – Craven refers to them as the paintings’ DNA.
In the summer of 2013 Craven returned to the Hello, Hello, Hellos, making a triptych and a four-part piece for the Southard Reid show, the latter work containing the addition of a Stripe of the same scale, conjoined with the three parrots. She preserved the paint used to make the new Hello works in a series of thirteenStripe paintings from which in turn the Dairy wall painting was matched.
Craven’s adoption of seriality melded with her diaristic approach has for many years been illustrated in the ongoing series’ of moons, as a subject its ever-present ever-changing identity providing a constant focal point from which to explore the passing of time in paint. Southard Reid’s Hello, Hello, Hello exhibition contains a set of six moons painted from life (as are all her 14 x 14 inch moons), during summer in Maine, at the same time as the 2013 Hello, Hello, Hellos and a pair of enlarged Moons in Magenta, a nod to the accompanying Mistakes. Painted simultaneously, one Magenta Moon is a mirrored version of the original other. The Sun Flower painting in the show, also painted as a pair, is exhibited solo – it will be echoed by its sister painting in Craven’s forthcoming solo show at Maccarone, NYC, opening November 8.
Ann Craven has exhibited widely in USA and Europe. Selected solo shows include Maccarone, NYC (forthcoming, 2011 and 2010), Ann Craven, Reims Moon at 39 Great Jones, New York, Ann Craven at Conduits, Re-map3, Athens, Greece, 2011, Shadows Moon, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne Reims, France, 2009, Against the Stream, The Sculpture Centre, NYC, Snoom, Delaware Centre for Contemporary Art, DE, 2008. Selected recent group shows include Souvenir curated by Lucie Fontaine, Galerie Perrotin, Paris,39GreatJones, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, 2013 and The Spirit Level, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, 2012, both curated by Ugo Rondinone, Chaos as Usual, Bergen Kunsthall Norway, 2011. Ann Craven Penseé published by Karma International and Maccarone was published in 2013.
SOUTHARD REID, London
October 12 – November 23, 2013
southardreid.com
DAIRY ART CENTRE, London
October 11 – December 8, 2013
Curated by Sarina Basta
Ai Weiwei, John Armleder, Sylvie Auvray, Jake and Dinos Chapman,
George Condo, Ann Craven, Thomas Demand, Urs Fischer,
Sylvie Fleury, Cyprien Gaillard, Anthea Hamilton,
Thilo Heinzmann, Terence Koh, Sergej Jensen, Rashid Johnson,
Per Kirkeby, Adriana Lara, Ursula Mayer, Takashi Murakami,
Mai-Thu Perret, Sigmar Polke, Laure Prouvost, R.H. Quaytman,
Ugo Rondinone, Sterling Ruby, Tomàs Saraceno, Julian Schnabel,
Cindy Sherman, Dirk Skreber, Haim Steinbach, Rirkrit Tiravanija,
Andro Wekua
dairyartcentre.org.uk
Front cover of La Lettura #93
CORRIERE DELLA SERA, Milan, Italy
September 1, 2013
Ann Craven, Penseé
Ann Craven per il Corriere della Sera
Southard Reid, London, UK
curated by Drew Heitzler, The Green Gallery, Milwaukee
Ann Craven: Pensée
Per Gianluigi Colin curation
September 1, 2013
no. 93
La Lettura (Cover) #93, Corriere della Sera, Milan, September 1, 2013
published by Karma and Maccarone Gallery, New York, 2013, ISBN 978-1-938560-02-6
MICHAEL BENEVENTO, Los Angeles
July 13 – August 24, 2013
Louis & Bebe Barron, Jesse Benson, John Coplans,
Ann Craven, Michael Curran, Daniel Handal,
Jonathan Horowitz, Louise Lawler, Mark Roeder
beneventolosangeles.com
GALERIE PERROTIN, Paris
June 22- July 27, 2013
Curated by Lucie Fontaine
David Adamo, Luca Bertolo, Ann Craven,
Patrizio Di Massimo, Quynh Dong, Lucie Fontaine,
Simon Fujiwara, Vibha Galhotra, Luigi Ghirri,
Anthea Hamilton, Oliver Laric, Agnes Lux,
Monali Meher, Aleksandra Mir, Ylva Ogland, Luigi Ontani,
Matteo Rubbi, Bianca Sforni, Santo Tolone,
Alice Tomaselli, Josh Tonsfeldt, Entang Wiharso
perrotin.com
curated by Lucie Fontaine, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France
Art In America, June-July, 2013
WHITE COLUMNS, New York
June 14 – July 27
Curated by Rhonda Lieberman
Organized in association with
social tees animal rescue [animalrescuenyc.org]
whitecolumns.org
Michael Benevento, Los Angeles
Portfolio by Ann Craven
Pages 138-145
June – July 2013
Curated & edited by Sara Boggio
Published by In Arco Books
Galleria In Arco, Turin, Italy, 2013
GALLERIA IN ARCO, Turin, Italy
May 3 – July 13, 2013
Curated by Sara Boggio
in-arco.com
ART IN AMERICA
June – July 2013
Pages 138-145
For this issue, the artist [Ann Craven] contributes
a portfolio featuring four recent 60-inch square “Tree” and
“Moon” paintings, which she photographed outside her studio
in Cushing, Maine
artinamericamagazine.com
curated by Rhonda Lieberman, White Columns, New York
Arte Al Limite, p. 40, May—June 2013
Die Frucht in der bildenden Kunst des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts
Published by Stiftung fur Fruchtmalerei und Skulptur, Heidelberg, 2013
Ann Craven in the collection of Dr. Rainer Wild, Germany
In Arco Books, Galleria In Arco, Turin, Italy, 2013
Ann Craven
Birds, Deers, Cats and Flowers
by Demetrio Paparoni
p. 40-48
May – June 2013
ARTE AL LIMITE
May – June 2013
by Demetrio Paparoni
Pages 40-48
arteallimite.com
Fairy Tales About Shoes And Shoemakers
FERRAGAMO MUSEUM, Florence, Italy
April 18, 2013 – March 31, 2014
ferragamo.com/museo/
[Catalogue]
Edited by Stefania Ricci,
published by Museo Salvatore Ferragamo and
SKIRA Editore, Milan, 2013
[Essay]
Paparoni, Demetrio. Fairy Tales, Myth and
Reality in Narration and Style, p. 150-173
curated by Sara Boggio, Galleria In Arco, Turin, Italy
edited by Veronica Levitt and Nicola Trezzi, published by Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, 2013, ISBN 978-0-9882752-4-9
catalogue published by Stiftung fur Fruchtmalerei und Skulptur, Heidelberg, 2013
Artribune, April 2013
Fairy Tales About Shoes and Shoemakers, Salvatore Ferragamo
Museum, Florence, Italy
Fairy Tales, Myth and Reality in Narration and Style
by Demetrio Paparoni
p. 150-173
Edited by Stefania Ricci, Museo Salvatore Ferragamo
Published by SKIRA Editore, Milan, 2013
edited by Stefania Ricci, Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, published by SKIRA Editore, Milan, 2013, ISBN 978-88-572-1928-8
curated by Ugo Rondinone, Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland
Erratic Systems and Irregular Cycles, Straight to the Moon Alice!
By Matt Keegan
Modern Painters
February, 2007
Texts by Elena Tavecchia and Nicola Trezzi
Edited by Veronica Levitt and Nicola Trezzi
Published by Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, 2013
GALERIE EVA PRESENHUBER, Zürich
February 2, 2013 – March 23, 2013
Curated By Ugo Rondinone
Martin Boyce, John Giorno, Wesley Martin Berg,
Matteo Callegari, Wyatt Kahn, Alan Shields,
Bruno Gironcoli, Ann Craven, Joyce Pensato, Josh Smith,
Andrew Brischler, Giorgio Griffa, Tamuna Sirbiladze,
Davis Rhodes, Ron Gorchov, Anne Chu, George Ortman, Kes Zapkus
39greatjones [catalogue]
Published by Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, 2013
evapresenhuber.com
exhibition catalogue designed by ACRUSH, published by Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, 2013
with an essay by Ann Craven, Poor Farm Press, Manawa, Wisconsin, 2012
Atelier D’Artista, Sette, Corriere Della Sera, Milan, December 7, 2012
Che Cosa Sta Preparando, Ann Craven
by Francesca Pini
December 7, 2012
No 49
Whitney Museum of American Art’, Time Out New York, October 24, 2012
curated by Mario Diacono, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy
“Painting as Re-Production” Page 214, Silvana Editoriale (Cinisello Balsamo, Milano), 2012
COLLEZIONE MARAMOTTI, Reggio Emilia, Italy
October 7, 2012 – February 3, 2013
Curated by Mario Diacono
Matthew Antezzo, Pedro Barbeito, David Bowes,
Ann Craven, Andy Cross, Jules de Balincourt,
Benjamin Degen, Steve Di Benedetto, David Dupuis,
Jason Fox, Wayne Gonzales, Scott Grodesky, Nicky Hoberman,
Jacqueline Humphries, Matthew Day Jackson, Jutta Koether,
Damian Loeb, Christopher Lucas, Lisa Ruyter, Dana Schutz,
John Tremblay, Kelley Walker, Dan Walsh, Kevin Zucker
collezionemaramotti.org
Painting and Other Radical Forms
1995-2007
By Mario Diacono
Published by Silvana Editoriale, Milano, 2012
[Essay on Ann Craven]
Painting as Re-Production
By Mario Diacono
Pages 214-216
silvanaeditoriale.it
Painting and Other Radical Forms 1995-2007
“Painting as Re-Production”
by Mario Diacono
p. 214-216
Published by Silvana Editoriale, Milano, 2012
Arte, October 2012
FRAC Champagne-Ardenne 2011-12 Aquisitions, Museé de L’Ardenne, Charleville-Mézières, France
curated by Lucie Fontaine, Marianne Boesky, New York, NY
MARIANNE BOESKY, New York
August 15 – October 15, 2012
Curated by Lucie Fontaine
marianneboeskygallery.com
curated by Olivier Mosset, Galerie des Multiples, Paris, France
Dickinson Gallery, New York, NY
Yablonsky, Linda. Treasure Island, Scene & Herd, Artforum.com, May 4, 2012
News, Art in America, May 04, 2012
MACCARONE, New York
May 3 – 7, 2012
friezenewyork.com
The Artist and the Night Sky from Old Masters to Today
DICKINSON GALLERY, New York
May 3 – July 3, 2012
simondickinson.com
The New York Times, April 13, 2012
Tapping Pyschic Undercurrents
by Karen Rosenberg
Review of The Spirit Level curated by Ugo Rondinone
April 13, 2012
The New York Observer, April 2, 2012, p. B5
Arta: Revista de Arte Vizuale, April 2012
Art in America, March 28, 2012
T Magazine, March 27th, 2012
GLADSTONE GALLERY, New York
March 24 – April 21, 2012
Curated by Ugo Rondinone
Martin Boyce, Al Hansen, Joe Bradley, Kim Jones,
Peter Buggenhout, Hans Josephsohn, Ann Craven,
Klara Liden, Jay DeFeo, Andrew Lord, Latifa Echakhch,
Sarah Lucas, Saul Fletcher, Hans Schärer, Sam Gilliam,
Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Amy Granat, Alan Shields
gladstonegallery.com
curated by Ugo Rondinone, Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY
Galeristny.com, March 13, 2012
Essay by Ann Craven
Edited by Michelle Grabner
Published by Poor Farm Press, Manawa, Wisconsin, 2012
Edited by Ugo Rondinone
Published by Gladstone and Karma, New York, 2012
Text by Ann Craven, New York, 2012
Photo by Jason Schmidt, Harlem, New York, 2006
Published by Jason Schmidt, 2012
curated by Nicola Trezzi, Cluj Museum, Cluj, Romania
MUSEUM OF ART CLUJ-NAPOCA, Cluj, Romenia
February 15 – April 15 2012
Curated by Nicola Trezzi
Sonia Almeida, Mark Barrow, Baldur Geir Bragason,
Vittorio Brodmann, Ana Cardoso, Aline Cautis, Radu Coma,
Ann Craven, Francesca DiMattio, Ida Ekblad, Enzo Giordano,
Heather Guertin, Davíð Örn Halldórsson,
Ingunn Fjóla Ingþórsdóttir, Jacob Kassay, Gilda Mautone,
Florin Maxa, Dan Mciuc, Elizabeth Neel, Ylva Ogland,
Sarah Ortmeyer, Paloma Presents [Urs Zahn & Roman Gysin],
Zak Prekop, Jo Robertson, Magorzata Szymankiewicz,
Patricia Treib, Daniel Turner, Garth Weiser
macluj.ro
Reviews Marathon, Art Review, p. 105, Issue 56, January-February, 2012
curated by Amy Granat and Joao Simoes, Fitzroy Gallery, New York, NY
FITZROY GALLERY, New York
January 14 – March 10, 2012
Curated by Amy Granat and Joao Simoes
Ann Craven, John Giorno, Amy Granat, Amanda Keeley,
Amir Mogharabi, Jeff Perkins, Karin Schneider,
Bruce Sherman and Jessie Stead.
Accompanying the exhibition will be a series of
musical events by Taketo Shimada, Jessie Stead and others
fitzroygallery.com
Ann Craven
Southard Reid, London
by Sherman Sam
Critic’s Picks
Artforum.com, January 1, 2012
Critic’s Picks, Artforum.com, January 1, 2012
[Edition]
Published by Ann Craven and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, 2012
Ann Craven, 2008 – 2011
4 offset prints, 45 x 32 cm each
In silkscreen portfolio, 48 x 38 cm each
Edition of 100
Numbered and Signed by the Artist
The London Galleries In December With Paul Carey-Kent, Artlyst.com, December 1, 2011
Southard Reid, London
November 25, 2011 – January 28, 2012
Southard Reid is proud to present the exhibition Summer by New York based artist, Ann Craven.
Ann Cravenʼs subjects draw from a stable of generic popular imagery including birds, deer, cats, kittens, flowers and the moon, as well as paint itself, and her own practice of making work. She paints from life, from images in books, magazines, the internet, othersʼ paintings, mirror images of her own paintings, copies made an hour or day later. Utilising repetition, each work holds an individuality along with a sense of participation in a potentially infinite lifetime series.
Throughout her practice runs timeʼs persistent heartbeat. Craven describes her paintings as time-pieces – timeʼs passing necessitating the rendering of all experience as memory a little out of sync, the continuous just-past.
Craven conceived of Summer in the spring of this year and began painting the works throughout her summer in Maine. It is now well in to autumn and by the time her show closes in January, it will be deepest winter and summerʼs memory at its most distant. The material is that which illustrated her summertime – flowers, a tree, the moon – and those that peopled it, portraits of her family and friends that will be rotated throughout the show, like figures leaving and returning to a room.
The exhibition includes her other ubiquitous painting presences, paintings that are the actual palettes from which she works, their change of use signified at the point that she paints, in this case the silhouette of a bird, across the abstract surface. And her stripe paintings, completions to the act of finishing a representational work, where the leftover paint is automatically applied to another canvas in diagonal stripes of pure colour, sealing the memory of the painting that has gone before and the paint that made it – wasting nothing, and preparing for the next. This process is an unconscious act that Craven sometimes compares to breathing.
Summer presents as a diary, memories in paint. Like a summer album, the works are at once singular and universal, just as Cravenʼs painting fuses the conceptual, the painting of time, with the richly aesthetic, her expressive virtuosity of touch applied with sincerity to an ever-changing moon, flower, or face.
This is Ann Cravenʼs first solo show in London.
SOUTHARD REID, London
November 25, 2011 – January 28, 2012
southardreid.com
curated by Marysol Nieves, Espacio 1414, Santurce, Puerto Rico
Southard Reid, London
CCA UJAZDOWSKI CASTLE, Warsaw, Poland
October 8, 2011 – January 29, 2012
Curated by Ewa Gorządek, Helena Kontova,
Giancarlo Politi, Nicola Trezzi
Sonia Almeida, Mark Barrow, Baldur Geir Bragason,
Vittorio Brodmann, Ana Cardoso, Aline Cautis, Ann Craven,
Francesca DiMattio, Ida Ekblad, Enzo Giordano,
Heather Guertin, Davíð Orn Halldorsso,
Ingunn Fjóla Ingþórsdóttir, Jacob Kassay, Gilda Mautone,
Elizabeth Neel, Ylva Ogland, Paloma Presents
[Urs Zahn & Roman Gysin], Zak Prekop, Jo Robertson,
Małgorzata Szymankiewicz, Patricia Treib,
Daniel Turner, Garth Weiser, Pietro Roccasalva
csw.art.pl
curated by Ewa Gorządek, Helena Kontova, Giancarlo Politi, Nicola Trezzi, Centre For Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle [CSW Zamek], Warsaw, Poland
39 GREAT JONES, New York
October – November, 2011
39 Great Jones is a project by Ugo Rondinone
39greatjones.com
39 GREAT JONES, New York
October – November, 2011
39 Great Jones is a project by Ugo Rondinone
organized by West Street Gallery, Harris Lieberman, New York, NY
organized by Keith Mayerson, Maruani & Noirhomme Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
Scene & Heard, Athens, Artforum.com, September 20, 2011
39 Great Jones, New York, NY
CONDUITS (IT), ReMap3, Athens
September 12 – October 30, 2011
Conceptual Romantic with Irini Miga (two solo shows)
.
REMAP is An International Contemporary Art Program
ReMap –firstly organised in 2007- is an international contemporary art platform that has become known for its participatory nature, hosting a unique mix of projects with current and up-and-coming -artists, curators, institutions and galleries- from across the world, all presented within the existing urban context accessible for free to its visitors. More than 700 artists from around the world have taken part in ReMap since its inception, many of whom have further presented their work in Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennale, Palais de Tokyo, Kunsthalle Zurich and more.
.
CONDUITS at REMAP3, Athens
September 12 – October 30, 2011
An International Contemporary Art Program
remapkm.com
MARUANI & NOIRHOMME GALLERY, Brussels
September 10 – October 29, 2011
Organized by Keith Mayerson
Hilary Berseth, Joe Bradley, Ann Craven,
Francesca DiMattio, Wade Guyton, Jacob Kassay,
Keith Mayerson, Dana Schutz
Rue de la Régence 17 1000 Brussels, Belgium
maruani-noirhomme.com
BERGEN KUNSTHALL, Bergen, Norway
September 9 – October 2, 2011
Curated by Hanne Mugaas Philip
Kwame Apagya, Ann Craven, Liz Deschenes, Thomas Julier
(in collaboration with Cédric Eisenring and Kaspar Mueller),
Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied, Takeshi Murata,
Seth Price, Antek Walczak, among others
kunsthall.no
curated by Hanne Mugaas, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway
Conduits (IT), ReMap3, Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio, Athens, Greece
Ireland, Organized by Josephine Kelliher, Rubicon Gallery, Dublin
RUBICON GALLERY
CASTLE YARD STUDIO, Dublin
Summer 2011
Curated by Josephine Kelliher
kilkennyarts.ie
issuu.com/kilkennyartsfestival
in collaboration w/ Peter Halley, curated by Amy Granat, Non-Objectif Sud, Tulette, France
NON-OBJECTIF SUD, Tulette, France
July – August, 2011
Curated by Amy Granat
Ann Craven in collaboration w/ Peter Halley
nonobjectifsud.org
Organized by Ellen Langan and Jasmine Tsou, Maccarone, New York
FONDATION D’ENTREPRISE RICARD, Paris
June 7 – July 9, 2011
Neïl Beloufa, Ann Craven, Vidya Gastaldon,
Markus Hansen, Alexandre Joly, Laurent Le Deunff,
Julia Lohmann, Théo Mercier, Alex Pou,
Julien Salaud and Stéphane Vigny
fondation-entreprise-ricard.com
La Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris, France
PRAGUE BIENNALE 5, Prague
Curated by Giancarlo Politi and Helena Kontova
in collaboration with Nicola Trezzi
May 19 – September 11, 2011
praguebiennale.org
Art Review, p. 128, Issue 50, May 2011
Prague Biennale, curated by Giancarlo Politi and
Helena Kontova in collaboration with Nicola Trezzi, Czech Republic
HARRIS LIEBERMAN, New York
May 6 – June 24, 2011
Curated by Jessie Washburne-Harris and Laura Raicovich
Polly Apfelbaum, Kristin Baker, Cecily Brown,
Ann Craven, Moira Dryer, Nicole Eisenman,
Keltie Ferris, Michelle Grabner, Alexandra Grant,
Joanne Greenbaum, Heather Guertin, Mary Heilmann,
Jacqueline Humphries, Rosy Keyser, Suzanne McClelland,
Haley Mellin, Rebecca Morris, Carrie Moyer,
Elizabeth Murray, Elizabeth Neel, Dona Nelson, Laura Owens,
Joyce Pensato, Analia Saban, Jackie Saccoccio, Dana Schutz,
Amy Sillman, Kianja Strobert, Patricia Treib, Nicola Tyson,
Lesley Vance, Mary Weatherford, Wendy White,
Brenna Youngblood, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
harrislieberman.com
Hysteria, Laughter and a Sense of Seriousness
by Quinn Latimer
Art Review, Issue 50, May 2011
PAINTING OVERALL
“The Color of The Sky”
Nicola Trezzi and Ann Craven in conversation
Edited by Helena Kontova, Giancarlo Politi, Nicola Trezzi
Published by The Prague Biennale, Prague, 2011
Curated by Laura Raicovich and Jessie Washburne-Harris, Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York, NY
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland
VILMA GOLD, London
April 17 – May 29, 2011
Trisha Baga, Ann Craven, Michaela Eichwald,
Helena Huneke, Hannah Sawtell,
Katharina Sieverding and Julia Wachtel
vilmagold.com
Galleries, The Boston Globe, Arts, March 23, 2011
Vilma Gold, London, UK
GALERIE FORSBLOM, Helsinki
March 10 – April 3, 2011
galerieforsblom.com
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki
March 11 – April 3, 2011
Galerie Forsblom is pleased to announce an exhibition by Ann Craven, her first solo exhibition with the gallery.
Ann Craven’s paintings seduce with their color, light and imagery. At the same time, Craven’s work addresses the many paradoxes that are intrinsic to a world that is saturated with images, and in which images become inseparable from reality. Her symbolic subjects, like birds and flowers, are often drawn from popular sources like field guides or nature books, sometimes painted from observation. The images in the paintings can be likened to actors in a play or an opera. They express human situations and feelings.
Craven’s use of repetition is an important element in her painting process. She expands her brushwork from painting to painting, creating variations in each repeated performance, raising complex questions with each variant about originality and meaning.
Included in the show are Craven’s “stripe” paintings. Using the extra paint on her palette after a painting is completed, these small canvases are keynotes for the entire exhibition and act as negatives to a positive – abstractions that prevent any simple reading of her paintings as representations.
Ann Craven lives and works in New York City. Her last solo exhibition Watercolors 2005-2010 was at Maccarone Gallery, New York. Her works can be found in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, both in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami Fl, and Henry Art Gallery, Faye G. Allen Center for the Visual Arts in Seattle.
Conceived by Mareike Dittmer & Raphael Gygax, Karma International and Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich
KARMA INTERNATIONAL, Zürich
February 19 – March 26, 2011
Conceived by Mareike Dittmer & Raphael Gygax
Monika Baer, Anne-Lise Coste, Ann Craven, Nicole Eisenman,
Ida Ekblad, Gabrìela Fridriksdòttir, Ellen Gronemeyer,
Elke Krystufek, Dawn Mellor, Lucy Stein, Michelle Ussher
karmainternational.org
Contemporary Art Daily, February 7, 2011
Organized by Bk Projects, Drive-By, Watertown, MA
Maccarone, New York, NY
Scene & Heard, Artforum.com, January 11, 2011
Maccarone, New York
January 8 – February 12, 2011
“Craven’s prolific, serial output manifests here with an exploration of the artist’s accumulating watercolors from 2005-2010. Overlapping the subject matter of her oil paintings, their imagery includes flowers, cats, birds and owls – Craven’s menagerie. In contrast to the studied refinement of her oil painting, her watercolors emphasize an intuitive improvisational method yielding charged, haunting images. In each series, Craven’s brushwork records changes in her response to the subject as she moves from work to work. Craven utilizes the medium of watercolor as a laboratory of psychological exploration, producing works that speak through vibrant color and virtuosic execution.”
MACCARONE, New York
January 8 – February 12, 2011
maccarone.net
THE LEROY NEIMAN CENTER FOR PRINTS STUDIES
Columbia University, New York
Pink Bird With Cherries (Pink), Edition of 12
Pink Bird With Cherries (Blue), Edition of 12
Silhouette Bird (Pink), Edition of 4
Silhouette Bird (Blue), Edition of 4
Reduction Woodblock Print, 30 x 33 ½ in
The Leroy Neiman Center For Print Studies, 2011
p.102, Artforum, Vol. XLIX No. 4, December 2010
The Artists’ Artists
Best of 2010
by Ann Craven
December 2010
curated by Keith Meyerson, Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, New York, NY
Ann Craven
Maccarone
by Barbara Pollack
Artnews, Vol. 109, No. 8, September 2010
ARTnews, p. 113, Vol. 109, No. 8, September 2010
“NeoIntegrity: Comics Edition” High culture and low, comics are everywhere
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA)
By Joseph R. Wolin
Aug 19–25, 2010
Issue 777
Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo, Milano, 2010
organized by João Simões, Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, NY
p. 29, The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010
Ann Craven
Ivre de Peinture
Interview
by Nicolas Trembley
Número Magazine, June 2010
Ann Craven
Goings On Around Town, Galleries Downtown
June 14 & 21, 2010
Interview, Portrait by Martha Camarillo, Numero Magazine, p. 34-36, June 2010
Summer Campaign Catalogue, 2010
Critics Pick, p. 58, Time Out New York, May 6-12, 2010
Painting to Its Bare Essence
by Sarina Basta
Cover and Feature Article, p. 76-79
Flash Art, Vol. XLIII, No. 272, May–June 2010
Summer 2010
The Missoni family at their Sumirago residence
Photographed by Jurgen Teller
Painting by Ann Craven
Cover and Feature Article, p. 76-79, Flash Art, Vol. XLIII, No. 272, May – June 2010
MACCARONE, New York
May 1 – June 26, 2010
maccarone.net
Flash Art International Edition, Vol. XLIII, No. 272
May – June 2010
[Feature Article]
Painting to its Bare Essence
by Sarina Basta
Pages 76-79
flashartonline.com
Maccarone Gallery, New York, NY
MACCARONE, New York
May 1 – June 26, 2010
When we see Craven’s paintings…we are picturing the repetition of language, vision, and painting. As a form reoccurs, it becomes more and more like a word — more like a symbol and a signal. *
Maccarone Gallery is pleased to present “Flowers”, an exhibition of new paintings by Ann Craven.
In previous work, Craven has explored symbolic images such as birds, deer, and the moon, pulled from thousands of her collected print outs, images she scanned and printed from nature books and magazines or gathered from the internet. In her first solo exhibition at Maccarone Gallery, the artist undertakes a new subject, still-life arrangements of white roses, painted from life. Painting with bravura improvisational intensity, and using primarily a palette of black and white, Craven reanimates the anachronistic genre of still-life flower-painting.
Craven began painting flowers from observation several years ago when, following the death of a loved one, she made paintings of the roses taken home from the funeral as gifts for her family. From the start, she approached the subject with a deep intuitive connection to both the historical and popular symbolism of the rose. The paintings in this exhibition build on this symbolism, immersing us in a dramatic black-and-white world of fluid scale, where rose petals become spiraling, almost galactic form, slashes of black paint, depicting rose leaves, become swift-moving vectors, and dashes of white, used to represent baby’s breath, suggest clusters of stars.
The exhibition is organized around three groups of paintings, each installed in a separate part of the gallery. The first room contains a series of nine paintings of bouquets of white roses in glass or crystal vases situated on a simple studio stool, all painted from observation. For the backgrounds, Craven uses flower motifs redeployed from her previous paintings, making these new paintings, in effect, flowers on flowers.
In the second room are “copies” of the paintings in the first room. The copies are mirror images of the “original” paintings, flipped left to right along their vertical axes. The copies are installed in clockwise rotation, also mirroring the counter-clockwise rotation of the paintings in the first room.
Around the street-facing perimeter wall of the gallery, Craven has installed her “stripe paintings” – that she makes using the paint left over on her palette after completing each painting. Craven considers these stripe paintings to be “born” from the flower paintings and refers to them as a third set of flowers.
Craven’s paintings — the originals, mirrored copies, and stripes — raise complex questions. What exactly occurs when Craven makes a mirrored copy, stroke for stroke, of an original, painted alla prima from a three-dimensional motif? The spontaneous, focused gesture is repeated and thus reified, an image of an object becomes a mirror image of an image. The improvisational brushstroke, usually considered a recording of a unique movement of a body in time, is re-performed, becoming choreographed. With the stripe paintings, representation and execution are still further reified. Left-over paint, applied in parallel brush strokes, becomes another sign for a bouquet of flowers.
With Craven’s acute departure from her previous iconography, she takes on a new language to communicate the deep psychological rigor it takes to re-paint paintings, brush stroke for brushstroke, color by color, line by line. As Craven stated in 2006, ” I often take the memory of the last painting and bring it into the next painting. The new painting becomes the memory of the moment just past.”
*Bianca Beck and Josh Brand, On Ann Craven, or Painting Again: Memory, Mirror, Moon, March, 2008.
Blancpain Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland
BLANCPAIN ART CONTEMPORAIN, Geneva
March 19 – May 8, 2010
Ann Craven’s flowers are her most daring work thus far. She has taken on the difficult task of painting bouquets of flowers — a fundamental symbol of sympathy and sentiment. Craven has completely drained the arrangements of color using a limited palette of black, white, yellow and grey. Although this gesture imbues the paintings with solemnity, they are not emptied of life. Craven’s vibrant improvisational brushwork infuses the paintings with an almost explosive sense of vitality.
Painting from life, Craven works fast. At this speed she is at her best, filtering an immense amount of detail and capturing it in a single brush stroke. She shows us the reflective surface of a vase or the cavernous center of a rose with a precise swoop of her hand.
In her previous iconic paintings of birds and deer, Craven’s subject matter was pulled from thousands of her collected printouts, images she scanned and printed from vintage books and magazines or gathered from the Internet. She is now painting directly from observation, taking on one of the most iconic of still life subjects — a bouquet of flowers. Several years ago, Craven started painting flowers privately, following the death of her mother, using the roses from the funeral as subject matter. She approached the motif of flowers with a sincere connection to their symbolic value. These recent flower paintings, here exhibited for the first time, leave the viewer with complex questions of life and mortality.
Les fleurs d’Ann Craven sont de loin son œuvre la plus audacieuse à ce jour. Elle a entrepris la tâche difficile de peindre des bouquets de fleurs – symbole fondamental de compassion et de sentiment. Ann Craven a entièrement épuisé ses arrangements de couleur en utilisant une palette limitée au noir, blanc, jaune et gris. Même si ce geste imprègne ses peintures de gravité, elles ne sont pas sans vie. L’improvisation vibrante du pinceau d’Ann Craven insuffle à la peinture un sens presque explosif de vitalité.
Peignant le réel, Craven travaille vite. A cette vitesse, elle atteint son meilleur, filtrant de nombreux détails, les capturant en un seul trait de pinceau. Elle met en valeur la surface réfléchissante d’un vase ou le centre caverneux d’une rose en un coup précis de la main.
Dans ses précédentes toiles emblématiques d’oiseaux et de cerfs, les sujets d’Ann Craven provenaient de sa collection d’innombrables impressions, soit d’images scannées ou copiées de vieux livres ou magazines, soit reprises d’Internet. Elle peint désormais directement par observation, utilisant l’un des sujets le plus représentatif de la nature morte – le bouquet de fleurs. Il y a plusieurs années, Ann Craven commença à peindre des fleurs pour elle-même à la suite du décès de sa mère, utilisant les fleurs de l’enterrement comme sujet. Elle s’attacha au motif de la fleur avec un réel lien à leur valeur symbolique. Ces récentes peintures de fleurs, présentées ici pour la première fois, laisse le spectateur face à des questions complexes touchant à la vie et à la mortalité.
BLANCPAIN ART CONTEMPORAIN, Geneva
March 19 – May 8, 2010
blancpain-artcontemporain.ch
Ann Craven, Peter Halley and Jon Pestoni, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL
School of the Art Institute of Chicago presents Picturing the Studio
February 2010
Artdaily.org, February 2010
organized by Matt Sheridan Smith, Harris Lieberman, New York
curated by Michelle Grabner and Annika Marie, Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL
SULLIVAN GALLERIES, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
December 12, 2009 – February 13, 2010
Curated by Michelle Grabner (SAIC) and
Annika Marie (Columbia College)
Bas Jan Ader, Conrad Bakker, John Baldessari, Stephanie Brooks,
Ivan Brunetti, Ann Craven, Julian Dashper, Dana DeGiulio,
Susanne Doremus, Joe Fig, Dan Fischer, Julia Fish, Nicholas Frank,
Alicia Frankovich, Judith Geichman, Rodney Graham, Karl Haendel,
Shane Huffman, Barbara Kasten, Matt Keegan, Daniel Lavitt,
Adelheid Mers, Tom Moody, Bruce Nauman, Paul Nudd, Frank Piatek,
Leland Rice, David Robbins, Kay Rosen, Amanda Ross-Ho,
Carrie Schneider, Roman Signer, Amy Sillman, Frances Stark,
Nicholas Steindorf, and James Welling
proximitymagazine.com
Benson-Keys Arts, South Hampton, NY
curated by Sarina Basta and Tyler Colburn, Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York, NY
FlashArt, p. 101, November/December 2009
Feature article, FlashArt, p. 60-62. November/December 2009
Moon Birds
by Ann Craven
November – December, 2009
No. 269
Ann Craven at Conduits/Gea Politi, Milan
by Guia Cortassa
November – December, 2009
No. 269
White Columns, New York, NY
Xerox print, edition of 50 + 10 APs, 2 prints – 11 (h) x 8 1/2 (w) in. each, White Columns Xerox Editions, White Columns, New York, NY
CONDUITS, Milan
October 2 – November 21, 2009
flashartonline.com
CONDUITS, Milan
October 1 – December 3, 2009
Conduits is proud to present a solo exhibition by Ann Craven
Working in the field of painting for more than a decade, Ann Craven exhibits on this occasion new paintings and watercolors, many of which are presented for the first time.
Greeting visitors will be four paintings entitled “Puff, Puff”. Seemingly identical, differentiated only through their brushwork, they depict exactly the same thing: a couple of birds, one of the major subjects through which Craven engages her characteristic idea of repetition. To describe this delicate oscillation between painterly beauty and the legacy of kitsch is the Swedish word “fulsnygg” (ugly-cute), a term that summarizes this complex topic in American culture, which is the basis and the starting point for Craven’s conception of polymorphous painterly proliferations.
Accompanying this strong presence within the space — which reminds us of an Operais — is a collection of watercolors featuring the artist’s cat and beloved friend Shadow. Never exhibited before, this series (conceived like a movie strip) shows again how important the idea of a continuum is within Craven’s production, a deep engagement that goes around and around between universal issues and personal affects.
Concluding the show, after this gracious Minuetto, is a diptych hung behind the corner, over the corridor that leads to the storage of the gallery, featuring one Stripe and a “Palette”, the two major series in which the artist structures her oeuvres. Conceived using the leftover paint from the four paintings that title the show, these small canvases, displayed in order to be seen properly only by children’s eyes, are sort of keynotes for the entire set: they speak about abstraction and the continuous readjustment of the medium of painting in a way that can really be defined as “expanded”.
Craven’s new type of “Palette”, displayed here for the first time representing a bird, probably a Phoenix, which will be consumed by the flames, and will be reborn out of the ashes, again (1) and again (2) and again (3) and again (4).
Ann Craven was born in Boston and lives between Harlem and Maine. Artists Amy Granat, Matt Keegan and Josh Smith have written about her work, which has been exhibited recently at CIAP in Hasselt, Belguim; the Sculpture Center in New York; Frac-Champagne-Ardenne in Reims France; and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in Wilmington Virginia.
–Nicola Trezzi
Viale Stelvio, 66
20159 Milan IT
theconduits.com | flashartonline.com
White Columns, New York, NY
Sculpture Center Curators’ Notebook, September 16, 2009
CIAP – Association For Contemporary Art, Hasselt, Belgium
September 5 – October 31, 2009
ciap.be
CIAP, Hasselt, Belgium
CIAP –Association For Contemporary Art, Hasselt
September 5 – October 31, 2009
While Ann Craven is, fundamentally, a painter, her work unfolds within a conceptual framework which constantly reflects on the production, reproduction and distribution of images. As a painter she consciously situates her oeuvre on the divide between the ‘aura’ of uniqueness of the iconic image, as in traditional religious imagery, and the devaluation of images in ‘the age of mechanical reproduction’ (W. Benjamin). Craven’s work incorporates the many paradoxes that are intrinsic to a world which is saturated with images to the point that these images become inseperable from reality. The grid of images through which nature is perceived is one of the main focal points of her work. Ann Craven paints traditional subjects like birds, flowers or deer, often refering to popular sources like field guides or greeting cards. These images might at one point have represented real emotions, but by reproducing them in even bolder colors on large canvases, the sweetness of the pictures is highlighted up to the point that they become perverse. By hanging various handpainted copies of one and the same painting side by side with large ‘Stripes paintings’ composed of oblique lines in the same colors, we are barred from an all too easy reading of these pictures as nothing more than appealing representations of nature. We are reminded that these paintings are – indeed – paintings, colored patterns on a flat surface, as well as cultural artifacts that mediate our perception.
Text: Peter Pollers
Site Gelatinefabriek
Armand Hertzstraat 21 bus 1
BE-3500 Hasselt, Belgium
Review of Shadows Moon at CIAP, Hassalt, Belgium, September 16, 2009 By Peter Pollers
Flash Art Online, August 20, 2009
MIT Tech TV (2009), Retrieved 10 August 2009 from MIT
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, June
Monograph Published by JRP/Ringer, Zurich, 2009
Sculpture Center Curators’ Notebook, Jun 22, 2009
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
Starr Space, Brooklyn, NY
Conduits Gallery, Milan, Italy
Apartment Show, New York, NY
Vogue, Japan, no.116, p. 349, April 2009
A project by Test, Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, NY
Interview Magazine, March 2, 2009
V magazine, no. 57, spring review, 2009
Shane Campbell Gallery, Oak Park, IL
Galerie LHK, Paris, France
Contemporary Art Daily, February 4, 2009
Apartment Show at Artists Space, New York, NY
Picks and Reviews, Art Slant [Paris], January 11, 2009
GALERIE LHK, Paris
January 10 – February 28, 2009
GALERIE LHK, Paris
January 10 – February 28, 2009
Golden Swamp Warbler
For Ann Craven
Vermivora Chrysoptera is the scientific name of the marsh warbler with wings of gold. It is a small bird with a colorful beak, strong and truncated, whose flight is divided into successive twists, alternating flapping and slipping on the air, with wings closed. If all these details have little importance to us, to understand the work of Ann Craven, we need to know it has no interest in it either.
Ann Craven is a painter. She seeks the essence of the usual gestures of painting – but with a strong and sensitive paradoxical distance: her images are responsible for the most fragile of conscience of being but are also imbued with a serenity that is resolutely frivolous. She paints tirelessly, in vain to defy the “iconophagous” era that presently overwhelms us.
The color, the form and the substance, the respiration in the gesture, the internal time, the reverie – at the surface everything is distilled in a substance organized with birds, pandas or flowers, fifty orchids, four hundred moons repainted four hundred times. All these subjects represented, reproduced and repeated are above all objects of our attention. Ann Craven paints in the moonlight memories of the beloved. In a similar light she will share a prime ‘beer’ with friends amidst a painting of a ‘deer’. The benevolence of her thought is continuously rekindled in the repetitive present of her oblique lines, her stripes paintings, which she paints with the colors of ongoing works.
Ann might recall the secrets of a teenager from Reims who gave her the stack of bird cards she had collected in an ornithological magazine during her childhood spent podding romantic names such as “Warbler Marsh” and being fascinated by golden feathers she will probably never see. The mind’s eye often finds the most dazzling drives to leave the nest – in the images commitment to reality to describe the exact truth. Ann Craven paints the somewhere else of images – the thoughts. Ephemeral, stubborn, invasive, sometimes unfathomable, and flying they sometimes perch on the gesture of the hand as the Golden Swamp Warbler swings on a reed in the wind.
Golden Swamp Warbler
Pour Ann Craven
Vermivora Chrysoptera est le nom scientifique de la fauvette des marais à aile d’or. C’est un petit oiseau coloré au bec fort et tronqué, dont le vol se structure en rebondissements successifs, alternant le battement et le glissement sur l’air, les ailes fermées. Si tous ces détails ont peu d’importance pour nous, il faut savoir pour bien comprendre le travail d’Ann Craven, qu’ils n’ont aucun intérêt pour elle non plus.
Ann Craven est peintre. Elle cherche dans l’essence même des gestes habituels de la peinture l’accomplissement d’un acte fort et sensible mais paradoxalement distant de son sujet : ses images sont tout à la fois chargées de la plus fragile des consciences de l’être et empreintes d’une sérénité résolument futile. Elle peint sans relâche comme pour défier en vain l’ère iconophage qui nous submerge. La couleur, le fond et la forme, la respiration dans le geste, le temps intérieur, la rêverie, tout se condense à la surface, dans une matière qui s’organise en oiseaux, pandas ou fleurs, cinquante orchidées, quatre cents lunes, elles-mêmes recopiées quatre cents fois, autant de sujets représentés, reproduis et répétés dont chacun est avant tout un objet d’attention. Ann Craven peint le souvenir des êtres chers dans les lueurs de la lune. Elle peint l’envie légère et primordiale de partager une bière avec des amis dans la figure d’une biche. La bienveillance de sa pensée est sans cesse ravivée dans le présent répétitif de ses bandes obliques, ses stripes paintings, qu’elle peint avec les couleurs des autres travaux en cours. Elle ranime peut-être les secrets d’une adolescente de Reims qui lui avait confié ses « fiches oiseaux » de la revue ornithologique de son enfance toute proche où elle égrenait des noms romantiques comme « Fauvette des marais » et s’émerveillait des plumages dorés qu’elle ne verrait sans doute jamais. Souvent l’imaginaire trouve les ressorts les plus flamboyants de son envol dans l’attachement même des images à décrire le réel avec exactitude. Ann Craven peint l’ailleurs des images, les pensées, passagères, obstinées, envahissantes, indéchiffrables, volantes, qui parfois se perchent sur le geste de la main comme la Fauvette dorée des marais se pose sur le roseau pour se laisser balancer par le vent.
Monograph published by JRP RINGIER
and FRAC CHAMPAGNE-ARDENNE, Reims
January 2009
Designed by Joseph Logan
Essays by Josh Smith, Matt Keegan, Amy Granat
curated by Karma International, Parisa Kind Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany
PARISA KIND GALERIE, Frankfurt
December 19, 2008 – February 15, 2009
curated by Karma International
Ann Craven, Latifa Echakhch, Benoît Maire,
Mamiko Otsubo, Pamela Rosenkranz, Jordan Wolfson
parisakind.com
Whispers and Murmurs, Flash Art online, December 2008
THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
The Hort, New York
December 10, 2008 – January 28, 2009
Curated by Jodie Vicenta Jacobson
Darren Almond, Carol Bove, Julia Margaret Cameron, Ian Campbell,
Peter Coffin, Sharon Core, Ann Craven, Tacita Dean,
William Eggleston, Roe Ethridge, Jane Freilicher,
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Amy Granat, Zach Harris, Susannah Hewlett,
Katie Holten, Ellsworth Kelly, Jude Miller, John O,
Dennis Oppenheim, Edgar Orlaineta, Giuseppe Penone, Pipilotti Rist,
Gino Saccone, Jim Sams, Hiraki Sawa, Roman Signer, James Welling,
Carol Woodin, and Francesca Woodman
thehort.org
LA SALLE DE BAINS, Lyon
December 6, 2008 at 10:00 pm
A+A’s Moon Tunes for La Salle de Bains
As part of L’Eternel Retour 1: La Meduse
Special A+A Handout
lasalledebains.net
Exhibition Catalogue, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, 2008
Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY
SCULPTURE CENTER and
ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES, New York
November 17, 2008, 7:30 PM
Landscape and Narrative
MOON SHADOW PART. 1
by Amy Granat and Ann Craven
sculpture-center.org
curated by Matt Keegan and Amy Granat, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, MN
MIDWAY CONTEMPORARY ART, Minneapolis
November 8 – December, 2008
Curated by Matt Keegan and Amy Granat
Richard Aldrich, Ann Craven, Nancy de Holl,
Shannon Ebner, Amy Granat, Matt Keegan
and Michael Queenland
midwayart.org
Emily Harvey foundation, New York, NY
Flash Art, Vol. XLI, No. 263, November/December 2008
MFA VISUAL ARTS PROGRAM, New York
September 30, 2008, 8pm
Visual Artist Lecture Series: Ann Craven
curated by Alison Gingeras, Maccarone Gallery, New York, NY
AND/OR GALLERY, Dallas
September 13 – October 4, 2008
Show #18
Guest-Curated by Ludwig Schwarz
The Estate of Uma Klick, Ann Craven,
and Danius Kesminas & The Histrionics
andorgallery.com
The Village Voice, September 10, 2008
Implant
by R.C. Baker
September 10, 2008
SCULPTURE CENTER, New York
September 7 – November 30, 2008
Curated by Sarina Basta
sculpture-center.org
SCULPTURE CENTER, Queens
September 7 – November 30, 2008
SculptureCenter presents Ann Craven’s Against the Stream, 2008, the next installment in an ongoing artist dialog inscribed on SculptureCenter’s main gate. The work will be on view September 7 – November 30, 2008 with an opening reception on Sunday, September 7, 4-6pm. Taking place on the corrugated metal of SculptureCenter’s façade door, this series of gate works was conceived in 2007 for The Happiness of Objects exhibition with an inaugural work by Olivier Mosset titled Golden Shower, 2007.
This year, SculptureCenter has the pleasure to continue the gate series with Ann Craven’s Against the Stream, 2008. Taking its title from a 1946 novel by Barbara Cartland, the work responds in part to the stripes of Mosset’s Golden Shower, while further exploring the possibilities of scale and the language of visual abstraction.
Ann Craven is a painter based in New York. She is widely recognized for her small and largescale paintings of bird-and-branch motifs along with her paintings of the stages of the moon – which were completed almost entirely on the roof of her Harlem, New York studio. In 2005 Craven moved a step further into abstraction, taking with her the palette used in her figurative work and sparking her current painterly investigations into a non-objective relation to color. With the use of diagonal stripes, Craven emphasizes the location where stripes meet and highlights the points where colors collide. The version now depicted on SculptureCenter’s gate is the third incarnation of the color palette used in Against the Stream and Craven’s largest painting to date. For the gate version, Craven has blown up an 18 by 24 inch striped canvas first inspired by a five by five foot painting from her 2007 moon series, thus demonstrating her movement from figurative to abstraction in her investigations of color.
Ann Craven has had solo exhibitions at the Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain de Champagne- Ardenne (Champagne-Ardenne, France, 2008); Knoedler & Company (New York, 2008); Galerie Catherine Bastide (Brussels, 2006) and Klemins Gasser + Tanja Grunert, Inc. (New York, 2006). Her work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions including What we Do Is Secret at BLANCPAIN ART CONTEMPORAIN (Geneva, 2007); Cluster at Participant Inc. (New York, 2006); CarreRond in Paris at Centre Cultural Suisse (Paris, 2006); and with Cinema Zero in An Evening with Cinema Zero: Ann Craven collaboration with Amy Granat and Dusty Santos, (New York, 2006), and at the New Museum (New York, 2004).
sculpture-center.org
Monograph
Published by JRP/Ringer, Zurich, 2009
This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Ann Craven: Shadows Moon at the Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, June 27 – September 21, 2008
ANNE MOSSERI-MARLIO GALERIE, Zurich
August 29 – October 4, 2008
NEW YORK GROUP SHOW
Beth Campbell, Ann Craven, Wayne Gonzales,
Joanne Greenbaum, Terry Haggerty,
Christian Marclay, John Tremblay
annemoma.com
DCCA – DELAWARE CENTER FOR
THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS, Wilmington
August 27 – November 26, 2008
DCCA DELAWARE CENTER FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS, Wilmington
2008
curated by Gianni Jetzer, Karma International, Zurich, Switzerland
Curiosité, Semaine 33, August 2008
THE FIREPLACE PROJECT, East Hampton
August 15 – 25, 2008
Curated by Anne Pasternak
thefireplaceproject.com
The New York Sun, August 7, 2008
Time Out New York, Issue 671, Aug 7–13, 2008
Natural Beauty, Unnatural Balance
by Lance Esplund
August 7, 2008
Art Review: Pretty Ugly
by Barbara Pollack
August 7 – 13, 2008
Issue 671
THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
The UBS Art Gallery, New York
August 7- October 31, 2008
Curated by Jodie Vicenta Jacobson
Darren Almond, Lothar Baumgarten, Judith Belzer,
Dale Berning, Carol Bove, Stan Brakhage,
Julia Margaret Cameron, Ian Campbell, Nick Cave,
CAW + NG, Peter Coffin, Sharon Core, Ann Craven,
Tacita Dean, William Eggleston, Roe Ethridge,
Jane Freilicher, Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres,
Amy Granat, Zach Harris, Susannah Hewlett, Carston Holler,
Katie Holten, Ellsworth Kelly, Karen Kilmnik, Jude Miller,
David Melrose, John O, Hiroko Ohno, Dennis Oppenheim,
Edgar Orlaineta, Gabriel Orozco, Guiseppe Penone,
Pipilotti Rist, Gino Saccone, Jim Sams, Hiraki Sawa,
Roman Signer, Simon Starling, Helen Van Meene,
Klaus Weber, James Welling, Carol Woodin, Francesca Woodman
thehort.org
Josh Smith: Hidden Darts Reader, MUMOK – Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, p. 79, 2008
curated by Haley Mellin, Rental, New York, NY
Art Contemporain: Aux Clairs De La Lune
July 17, 2008
L’Union, 17 July 2008
RENTAL GALLERY, New York
July 17 – August 17, 2008
Curated by Haley Mellin
rental-gallery.com
Lunatique Ann Craven
by Katia Feltrin
July 15, 2008
MACCARONE and GAVIN BROWN’S ENTREPRISE, New York
July 10 – August 29, 2008
Curated by Alison Gingeras
John Armleder, Georg Baselitz, Hans Bellmer,
Lynda Benglis, Carol Bove, Louise Bourgeois,
James Lee Byars, Brian Calvin, Ann Craven,
John Currin, Verne Dawson, Otto Dix,
Richard Diebenkorn, Gelitin, Isa Genzken,
Nan Goldin, Leon Golub, Mark Grotjahn, Eva Hesse,
Jonathan Horowitz, Gary Hume, Jörg Immendorff,
Alex Katz, Karen Kilimnik, Martin Kippenberger,
Lee Lozano, Markus Lüpertz, Paul McCarthy,
John McCracken, Otto Muehl, Alice Neel,
Hermann Nitsch, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens,
Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, Francis Picabia,
Jack Pierson, Rob Pruitt, Charles Ray, Anselm Reyle,
Julian Schnabel, Agathe Snow, Frances Stark, Pat Steir,
Haim Steinbach, Richard Tuttle, Piotr Uklanski,
Stan VanDerBeek, Erik van Lieshout, Andy Warhol,
Franz West, Hannah Wilke, Sue Williams and others
nytimes.com
karmakarma.org
flashartonline.com
Mouvement, July 2008
FRAC CHAMPAGNE-ARDENNE, Reims, France
June 26 – September 21, 2008
Curated by François Quintin
frac-champagneardenne.org
FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims
June 26 – September 21, 2008
“Ann Craven is fundamentally a painter. She paints the moon. Sometimes birds, flowers, deers or diagonal colored bands. She painted 400 moons, not as an ephemeris, but as if the pale light of the eternal face summoned the distant or missing loved ones, in a nocturnal reverie where the brush plays master of the ceremonies. The works silently carry that emotional weight. Then the artist copies those same moons, to challenge a persistent painting demand that always wants to produce an original. This stubbornly repetitive work is imbued with great spiritual inwardness, a way of harmonizing the mind, the body and the breath, with a rigorous practice where painting becomes a strong tense in life’s physiological rhythm. She paints obsolete subjects as she knows the symbolic power of the images that accompany us, even the most insignificant ones: images without content kept by our grandmothers, for no real reason, the good grades the schoolboy proudly pins in his room… Her bird or flower series endlessly conjugate painting’s essential relationship between figure and ground, the vibration of dazzling colors that are all signs of time. As one color is applied Craven draws a diagonal line on a canvas. Nothing is lost, everything “is made painting” and all paintings are of equal importance to her eyes, be it a copy, an original, color palette, abstract bands or birds on a branch.”
François Quintin, « Une pensée pour Ann », in Ann Craven, Shadows Moon And Abstract Lies. Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims. JRP Ringier édition, Zurich 2009
Vernissage Thursday June 26, 6-10pm
‘Moon Shadow Part. 1’ a film by Amy Granat and Ann Craven – Screened in 16mm: 9PM, 10PM, 10:15, 10:30
1 Place Museux
Reims 51100
France
Selier + Mosseri-Marlio Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland
Frac-Champagne-Ardenne; Reims, France
Review: Ann Craven, Knoedler Gallery, New York
By Katie Sonnenborn
June – August, 2008
Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE
Cover Story, Florida Design, vol. 17, no. 3, p. 282-291, 2008
curated by Amy Granat, White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO
WHITE FLAG PROJECTS, St. Louis
May 10, 2008, 8 PM
Organized by Amy Granat
Performances by Richard Aldrich, Felicia Ballos
& Flora Weigmann, Stefan Tcherepnin, and Amy Granat
Paintings and Prints by William S. Burroughs, Ana
Cardoso, Ann Craven, Jacob Kassay and Matt Keegan
Films by Drew Heitzler, Fia Backstrom, Charles and
Ray Eames, Olivier Mosset, Joao Simoes, Anthony Balch,
William S. Burroughs, Brian Gysin, and from the Archives
of Lococo Fine Art
whiteflagprojects.org
Frieze, May 2008
Ann Craven’s Bird and Moon Paintings
April 23, 2008
Gallery Chronicles, The New Criterion, April 2008
The New Yorker, p. 11, April 14, 2008
Ann Craven
Goings On About Town, Art
April 14, 2008
The New York Sun, p.12, April 7, 2008
PACIFIC NORTHWEST SCHOOL OF ART, Portland
April 4, 2008
12:30 – 1:30pm, Room 125
Two Coats of Paint, April 3 2008
PNCA – PACIFIC NORTHWEST COLLEGE OF ART, Portland
The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space
April 3 – May 25, 2008
curated by Molly Dilworth and Amoreen Armetta
Nuno Cera, Ann Craven, AC Dickson, Joan Grossman,
Lucien Samaha, Jenny Vogel
Artist publications by Bill Brown, Gabriela Forcadell and Alejandro
Cesarco, LTTR, Josephine Meckseper, Aleksandra Mir, Lone Twin, Pruess Press
press release, Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, April 2008
Art, Gallery Chronicle
by James Panero
April 2008
YALE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ART, New Haven
Painting Department Building
Monday, March 31, 2008
7:00-9:00pm
Tony Conrad, Ann Craven, Leslie Hewitt, Haim Steinbach
Moderated by Matt Keegan
Organized by 2008 MFA candidate Bianca Beck
Knoedler & Co, New York
March 13 – April 26, 2008
PART II (2nd HANG)
The following essay was written for my friend Ann Craven. I tend to write how I talk. I do this because I am afraid that if I write any other way it would be fake. I hope that my sense of humor comes across in this little statement. I really do care about Ann.
—Josh Smith, January 2008
Ann Craven’s paintings are all different. When you get to look at one you feel lucky. If you put one of her paintings on the wall it just looks good. Whether you want something tough or something sweet, one of Ann’s paintings fills the void. When you see Ann Craven’s art somewhere, it really works to separate itself from everything around it. It exists in its own time. The paintings themselves are beautiful objects. Each one looks as if it has always existed . . . like caring hands have moved it from wall to wall over a period of time. This gives the work a warm weight. It is hard for me to say whether I like this type of work, but I then start to realize that Ann’s work is never “this type of work.” It is always its own thing. Ann’s art opens my eyes to other things in the world, which I might otherwise not have thought anything of. Her art is straightforward. She is always trying to portray it as having some sort of conceptual meaning, and it does . . . but not in the way she thinks. The conceptual aspect of Ann’s painting lies in the straightforward and driving process and style in which she works. She’s a very hard-working person. Often she sets out to do impossible things. But no matter what she does, its absolute quality prevails.
Ann’s work is capable of entering our consciousness at many different points. It can, at the same time, be both a cold symbol of modern times and the straightforward presentation of its subject. In one context, Ann’s work can be seen as colorful decoration; in another, the same painting becomes a biting comment on the state of things. Critics of Ann Craven’s work say it lacks the “cool factor.” All that means is that Ann gets to continue producing her work unfettered. She has managed to push hard through the challenges of being a great artist.
The birds look good. They serve as a perfect vehicle for color and expression. They are sometimes perceived as silly. A big painting of a bird is silly, but once you get over that initial stage of perception, things begin to change within the paintings. The scale and the alloverness of them stand out for me; also, the straightforward and casual assuredness with which the paintings are executed. A lot of the birds are somewhat sinister and dark. The moons are dark, but they are not so sinister. Ann painted these numerous times, in numbers ranging from one into the hundreds. I sometimes think she overdid it a little with the moons. But to really appreciate them one needs to see just one or two on a wall . . . or four or five. These paintings are just black squares—I think 12 or 14 inches square. Near the middle of each painting there is a white circle or a dash with some haze. It is a quick impression of the moon. To make these paintings, Ann actually goes out and paints the moon at night. This may sound romantic or glamorous, but it’s actually not. She always seems really nervous and agitated when she paints the moon. She is afraid the moon is going to go away before she can get it. Of course it’s going away; but it comes back. She also paints them large now—I think 4 feet square. The large moons come off differently—they are less immediate, but softer as well. Some of this softness appears to come from the larger brushstrokes. Ann’s way of scaling up her moon paintings is just to use a bigger brush on a bigger canvas.
Ann produces great paintings, one after another. She can make a painting from nothing. She does not take breaks to reflect on things. Ann manages to walk a line between writing a tell-all book and remaining completely detached. One common thread, which runs through Ann’s subjects, is a lack of specificity. Her subjects are all rather generic. Leaden metaphorical meanings and definitive portraits tend to be avoided. Ann Craven mostly limits herself to animals, moons, trees, stripes, and so forth. Currently, moons and birds are probably the most prevalent.
The problem with most representational art is that it is so sure of itself. What gives a subject so much importance that it warrants an artistic rendering? Often representational painters completely misunderstand the whole idea of art. They think art is about doing things competently with just a touch of panache. That is indeed one kind of art, but not a very interesting kind. Great representational art looks right through its subject. The subject serves as a vehicle for an expression or idea, not a crutch or publicity gimmick. Ann Craven’s work does not go around to openings with a limp and a cigarette between its lips. Playing games is not an option in her paintings. These paintings just come in and get the job done.
Because Ann Craven sets the bar very high for herself, she usually waits until close to the last minute to start working on something. She is always thinking of the context of her work. Perhaps she need not think so much about this, because often context is hard to control.
Ann seems in a way, unsatisfied with everything she does. That’s why she keeps working away constantly. The birds and the moons are both simple ideas. Is not the challenge to make something as simple and successful as possible? When it comes to painting, it is best to sneak all of the meaning in through the back door. Ann does not burden the viewer with issues or problems. The issues and problems are there, only they are disguised as the moon, a deer, a bird.
Ann takes tried and true ideas and portrays them honestly, as if she herself invented them. When she paints a bird, she does so as if she were the first person to ever paint a bird. She dashes forward with a firm innocence. Her skill as an artist is greatly enhanced by that innocence. She takes everything so seriously—that bothers me, and sometimes I hate her.
Josh Smith is an artist, who currently exhibits at Luhring Augustine Gallery. He lives and works in New York City.
This essay will appear in these publications:
Ann Craven Moon Birds Published by: Knoedler & Company, March 13 – April 26, 2008
and
Ann Craven: Shadows Moon and Abstract Lies, Le Frac Champagne Ardenne, Published by JRP/RINGIER Published with Le Frac Champagne Ardenne, catalogue Summer 2008
curated by Amoreen Armetta and Molly Dilworth, PNCA, Portland, Oregon
THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED VISUAL STUDIES MIT, Cambridge
March 20th, 2008 6:30 PM
265 Massachusetts Ave 3rd Fl
Knoedler & Co., New York, NY
KNOEDLER & CO., New York
March 13 – April 26, 2008
Catalogue with essay by Josh Smith
images
Knoedler & Co, New York
March 13 – April 26, 2008
PART I (1st HANG)
The following essay was written for my friend Ann Craven. I tend to write how I talk. I do this because I am afraid that if I write any other way it would be fake. I hope that my sense of humor comes across in this little statement. I really do care about Ann.
—Josh Smith, January 2008
Ann Craven’s paintings are all different. When you get to look at one you feel lucky. If you put one of her paintings on the wall it just looks good. Whether you want something tough or something sweet, one of Ann’s paintings fills the void. When you see Ann Craven’s art somewhere, it really works to separate itself from everything around it. It exists in its own time. The paintings themselves are beautiful objects. Each one looks as if it has always existed . . . like caring hands have moved it from wall to wall over a period of time. This gives the work a warm weight. It is hard for me to say whether I like this type of work, but I then start to realize that Ann’s work is never “this type of work.” It is always its own thing. Ann’s art opens my eyes to other things in the world, which I might otherwise not have thought anything of. Her art is straightforward. She is always trying to portray it as having some sort of conceptual meaning, and it does . . . but not in the way she thinks. The conceptual aspect of Ann’s painting lies in the straightforward and driving process and style in which she works. She’s a very hard-working person. Often she sets out to do impossible things. But no matter what she does, its absolute quality prevails.
Ann’s work is capable of entering our consciousness at many different points. It can, at the same time, be both a cold symbol of modern times and the straightforward presentation of its subject. In one context, Ann’s work can be seen as colorful decoration; in another, the same painting becomes a biting comment on the state of things. Critics of Ann Craven’s work say it lacks the “cool factor.” All that means is that Ann gets to continue producing her work unfettered. She has managed to push hard through the challenges of being a great artist.
The birds look good. They serve as a perfect vehicle for color and expression. They are sometimes perceived as silly. A big painting of a bird is silly, but once you get over that initial stage of perception, things begin to change within the paintings. The scale and the alloverness of them stand out for me; also, the straightforward and casual assuredness with which the paintings are executed. A lot of the birds are somewhat sinister and dark. The moons are dark, but they are not so sinister. Ann painted these numerous times, in numbers ranging from one into the hundreds. I sometimes think she overdid it a little with the moons. But to really appreciate them one needs to see just one or two on a wall . . . or four or five. These paintings are just black squares—I think 12 or 14 inches square. Near the middle of each painting there is a white circle or a dash with some haze. It is a quick impression of the moon. To make these paintings, Ann actually goes out and paints the moon at night. This may sound romantic or glamorous, but it’s actually not. She always seems really nervous and agitated when she paints the moon. She is afraid the moon is going to go away before she can get it. Of course it’s going away; but it comes back. She also paints them large now—I think 4 feet square. The large moons come off differently—they are less immediate, but softer as well. Some of this softness appears to come from the larger brushstrokes. Ann’s way of scaling up her moon paintings is just to use a bigger brush on a bigger canvas.
Ann produces great paintings, one after another. She can make a painting from nothing. She does not take breaks to reflect on things. Ann manages to walk a line between writing a tell-all book and remaining completely detached. One common thread, which runs through Ann’s subjects, is a lack of specificity. Her subjects are all rather generic. Leaden metaphorical meanings and definitive portraits tend to be avoided. Ann Craven mostly limits herself to animals, moons, trees, stripes, and so forth. Currently, moons and birds are probably the most prevalent.
The problem with most representational art is that it is so sure of itself. What gives a subject so much importance that it warrants an artistic rendering? Often representational painters completely misunderstand the whole idea of art. They think art is about doing things competently with just a touch of panache. That is indeed one kind of art, but not a very interesting kind. Great representational art looks right through its subject. The subject serves as a vehicle for an expression or idea, not a crutch or publicity gimmick. Ann Craven’s work does not go around to openings with a limp and a cigarette between its lips. Playing games is not an option in her paintings. These paintings just come in and get the job done.
Because Ann Craven sets the bar very high for herself, she usually waits until close to the last minute to start working on something. She is always thinking of the context of her work. Perhaps she need not think so much about this, because often context is hard to control.
Ann seems in a way, unsatisfied with everything she does. That’s why she keeps working away constantly. The birds and the moons are both simple ideas. Is not the challenge to make something as simple and successful as possible? When it comes to painting, it is best to sneak all of the meaning in through the back door. Ann does not burden the viewer with issues or problems. The issues and problems are there, only they are disguised as the moon, a deer, a bird.
Ann takes tried and true ideas and portrays them honestly, as if she herself invented them. When she paints a bird, she does so as if she were the first person to ever paint a bird. She dashes forward with a firm innocence. Her skill as an artist is greatly enhanced by that innocence. She takes everything so seriously—that bothers me, and sometimes I hate her.
Josh Smith is an artist, who currently exhibits at Luhring Augustine Gallery. He lives and works in New York City.
This essay will appear in these publications:
Ann Craven Moon Birds Published by: Knoedler & Company, March 13 – April 26, 2008
and
Ann Craven: Shadows Moon and Abstract Lies, Le Frac Champagne Ardenne, Published by JRP/RINGIER Published with Le Frac Champagne Ardenne, catalogue Summer 2008
New City (Chicago), February 28, 2008
Review: Ann Craven, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago
by Rachel Furnari
February 28, 2008
Triple Candie, New York, NY
Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL
SHANE CAMPBELL GALLERY, Chicago
February 16 – March 15, 2008
shanecampbellgallery.com
Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago
February 16 – March 15, 2008
Exhibiting the Stripe Paintings created from the unused paint of the Bird paintings in the Exhibition: Moon Birds at Knoedler & Co happening simultaneously
Opening reception: Saturday, February 16, 2008 6-8pm
Scene & Herd, Artforum.com, February 6, 2008
p. 7-11, Knoelder & Co., New York, 2008
curated by Christopher Eamon; Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York, NY
The New York Times, January 18, 2008
Art in Review: Accidental Modernism
by Roberta Smith
January 18, 2008
LESLIE TONKONOW ARTWORKS + PROJECTS, New York
January 12 – February 16, 2008
Curated by Christopher Eamon
Wayne Atkins, Ann Craven, Devon Costello, Vishal Jugdeo, André Masson,
Adam McEwen, Bill Morrison, Richard Pettibone, Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri, Josh Smith,
Rudolf Stingel, Agathe Snow, Jean Tinguely, Keith Tyson, Robert Watts, and others
tonkonow.com
curated by Matt Keegan + Amy Granat, Shane Campbell Gallery, Oak Park, IL
Dwight Hackett Projects, Santa Fe, NM
SHANE CAMPBELL GALLERY, Chicago
October 21-November, 2007
curated by Matt Keegan + Amy Granat
curated by Anthony Huberman, Galerie LHK, Paris, France
Dwight Hackett projects
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507 USA
13 October – December 1, 2007
with an opening reception on Saturday, 13 October, 3-5pm
Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, NY
Pitch, p. 9-12, Pre-Fall 2007
Galerie LH, Paris France
Curated by Anthony Huberman
September 8 – October 15, 2007
Afternoon of a Faun
by Katie Sonnenborn
Kentucky Arts & Culture
issue no.06 pre-fall 2007
Kantor/Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
The New York Times, August 9, 2007
The New York Times, August 3, 2007
curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany
New York, NY
‘Joe Bradley/Ann Craven/Dana Frankfort/Keith Mayerson’
July 10-August 24, 2007 opening July 10, 6-8pm
Zach Feuer Gallery
July 10 – August 24, 2007
Zach Feuer Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition of new paintings by New York based artists Joe Bradley, Ann Craven, Dana Frankfort, and Keith Mayerson.
Bradley’s bright canvas panels take Minimalist references and create imposing installations of color and scale, while his casual application of paint forgoes ideas of pictorial illusion. Rather than use the monumental size to suggest a certain grandeur, his paintings make reveal an utterly human, necessarily imperfect quality, which is magnified in his version of figuration. Craven adeptly uses repetition in her serial paintings, which depict familiar imagery often culled from commercial sources, revealing a reinterpretation of the painter’s traditional aims of singularity and original composition. She adopts these images of nature from generic representation, in place of the outside world, aware that both have become equally familiar to her viewer. Frankfort’s paintings use text and, more recently, symbols to challenge ideas of reading and communication. Obscuring the text as image with brushwork and disorienting color, Frankfort blocks the viewer’s facility of interpretation and forges a new relationship between language and audience. Mayerson’s lushly painted portraits based on familiar media imagery reduce the iconic to the intimate, and are exhibited in deliberate sequences that suggest larger narrative themes. In the group of paintings for this exhibition, he concentrates on the power of iconic images to portray human agency, spirit, and transcendence in times of crisis and war.
530 W. 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
Mandrake
Opening July 6, 2007
http://www.mandrakebar.com
performance by Felicia Ballos & Flora Wiegman on July 18, 8pm
Mandrake Bar
2692 S La Cienega Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90034
Opening July 6, 2007
performance by Felicia Ballos & Flora Wiegman on July 18, 8pm
Heidelberg Germany
‘re-dis-play | Non-Art-Collections from Artists and Curators’
curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers
June 29 – September 9, 2007
Kantor/Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles
June 28 – August 16, 2007
http://www.kantofeuer.com
Non-Art-Collections from Artists and Curators
HEIDELBERGER KUNSTVEREIN, Heidelberg, Germany
June 29 – September 9, 2007
curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers
curated by Amy O’Neill, Blancpain Art Contemporain, Geneve, Switzerland
BLANCPAIN ART CONTEMPORAIN
GENEVE, Switzerland
Curated by Amy O’Neill
May 25 – June 30, 2007
BLANCPAIN ART CONTEMPORAIN
Geneva, Switzerland
Curated by Amy O’Neill
May 25 – June 30, 2007
Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc., New York, NY
Gasser and Grunert, Inc.
May 14th- Saturday, June 30th, 2007
New address: 148 9th Ave 2nd floor NY,NY 10011
ORCHARD, New York
April 19, 2007
8PM –One night only
Orchids for Orchard
Program organized by Amy Granat
Cats, flowers,(a little touch of wild)…some sounds..almost hallways..
Pola Chapelle: How To Draw A Cat
A short film by Cinema Zero (with sound piece by Richard Aldrich)
Brian Wilson “Untitled”
Direct Art Product: Robot Movie
Performance Jutta Koether
Installation contribution by Ann Craven
orchard47.org
On The Collective for Living Cinema
Organized by Orchard in association with Anthology Film Archives
Dates: April 1– 29, 2007, Thurs-Sun, 1-6 pm
In 1973 a group of film students from the Harpur College Cinema Department looking to create a contemporary and fertile context for their work found The Collective for Living Cinema, an artist-run cooperative that would serve both as an exhibition venue and a center for production and discourse. Above the first program note was a miniature manifesto stating their intention to “overcome the economic, social and political burdens of an art in chains.” Lasting for 19 years, The Collective came to embody the under-defined moment between the canonized generation of “the essential cinema” and the transfiguration of film as “new media” embraced by the institutional hierarchy of the art world and subject to the theoretical, critical and economic tidal forces therein. Run as a multi-disciplinary venue, The Collective continuously engaged in a recovery of the recent past, championing the marginal and positing alternative film histories. The screening room was seen as a workshop in which this culture became immersed in its own brand of cinematic delirium. Annette Michelson pointed out that The Collective “attempted to break down distinctions between industrial film and avant guard film, between films that form part of a classical canon and those which are on the margins or periphery of canonical taste.” By “maintaining and constantly questioning an exploratory attitude rather than by embalming predigested classical canon”, Michelson stated, The Collective emerged in the 1980’s as the “liveliest” New York film venue of it’s time.
This exhibition will re-examine the Collective’s history and parallel it’s mission within the current set of “economic, social and political chains.” It has been organized as a series of individually programmed screening events at ORCHARD (April 6-8 to be held at Anthology Film Archive), a timeline of documentation and an installation specific to the ambivalent capacity of cinema to enter the gallery through production / distribution on video.
Screenings and Event Schedule at Orchard:
…
Thursday April 19, 8PM
Orchids for Orchard
Program organized by Amy Granat
Cats, flowers,(a little touch of wild)…some sounds..almost hallways..
Pola Chapelle: How To Draw A Cat
A short film by Cinema Zero (with sound piece by Richard Aldrich)
Brian Wilson “Untitled”
Direct Art Product: Robot Movie
Performance Jutta Koether
Installation contribution by Ann Craven
…
presented by Cinema Zero, one night only (April 19), Orchard Gallery, New York, NY
ANGSTROM GALLERY, Los Angeles
April 14, 2007
angstromgallery.com
Work in Progress: Moonlighting
Photography Jason Schmidt
V Magazine, Spring Preview 2007
P. 52-53
Angstrom Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Stavanger kulturhus, Solverget, Stavanger, Norway
March 9-May 6, 2007
www.stavanger-kulturhus.no
photography by Jason Schmidt, p. 52-53, V magazine no. 45, Spring Review, 2007
Volume 1 no. 4, p. 38, Los Angeles, March 2007
Reviews: Ann Craven, Gasser & Grunert
by Elwyn Palmerton
Vol. 1, No. 4, March 2007
Pg. 38
Solvberget, Stavanger Kulturhus, Stavanger, Norway
Collective Unconscious, New York, NY
Modern Painters, p. 84 – 89, February 2007
Erratic Systems and Irregular Cycles, Straight to the Moon Alice!
by Matt Keegan
February 2007
p. 84-89
Artinfo, January 30, 2007
Fair Report: Art LA
by Amira Brooks
January 30, 2007
Ann Craven: Quite Subversion
by Bede Murphy
January 2007
Centre Culturel Suisse (CCS), Paris, France
Centre Culturel Suisse
Ann Craven and Amy Granat collaborate.
December 17, 2006
6-8PM
Time Out New York, page 77, December 7-13, 2006
Ann Craven
Joseph R. Wollin
December 7-13, 2006
Issue No. 584
p. 77
Ann Craven in collaboration with Amy Granat and Dusty Santos, The Kitchen, New York, NY
CAC – Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati
November 17, 2006 – January 14, 2007
organized by Public-Holiday Projects, Los Angeles/New York, and CAC–Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH
Bunch Alliance and Dissolve investigates the structural potentialities of a group exhibition, and the temporal nature of correlations that are drawn by third parties between artists’ works. The show includes approximately twenty-five international artists. While a number of the participating artists have exhibited extensively, the majority are early-career artists, for whom this will be their first museum exhibition.
Ann Craven
“Moons (400 Copies), 2006”
2006
400 Canvases, 14×14” each canvas
Oil on Canvas
©Tony Walsh, courtesy Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
Ann Craven
Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc.
New York, NY
Opening November 13, 2006 6-8pm thru December 21, 2006
KLEMENS GASSER & TANJA GRUNERT, INC., New York
November 13 – December 21, 2006
400 Moon Paintings
EFA GALLERY, THE ELIZABETH FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York
November 10, 2006 – January 6, 2006
Curated by Molly Dilworth and Amoreen Armetta
Nuno Cera, Ann Craven, AC Dickson, Joan Grossman,
Lucien Samaha, Jenny Vogel; with artist publications
by Bill Brown, Gabriela Forcadell and Alejandro Cesarco,
LTTR, Josephine Meckseper, Aleksandra Mir, Lone Twin, Pruess Press
e-flux.com
curated by Shinique Smith, The Proposition, New York
Ann Craven, New York
by Lara Kristin Lentini
November – December 2006
Pg. 62
New York, Art Papers, review p. 62-63, November/December 2006
photography by Bede Murphy, ZooZoom, The Original On-line Glossy, 2006
True Colors Are Beautiful
by Nicole Busing and Heiko Klass
November – December 2006
Pg. 36
organized by Public-Holiday Projects, Los Angeles/New York, and CAC–Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH
Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels, Belgium
Ann Craven, Gasser & Grunert
by Nick Stillman
October 2006
Pg. 267
New York, Artforum, p. 267, October 2006
curated by Lene Burkard, Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark
curated by Lene Burkard, Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
curated by Scott Hug, John Connely Presents, New York, NY
New York Sun, July 5, 2006
Art On Paper, vol. 10, no. 6, p. 66, July-August 2006
Artists Review Their Exhibitions
by Ann Craven
July – August 2006
Vol. 10, No. 6
pg. 166
environment: Ann Craven, selection of short films with performances by Chuck Nanny, Fiamy, Sculpture Center, Queens, NY
Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc., New York, NY
KLEMENS GASSER & TANJA GRUNERT, INC., New York
June 20 – July 28, 2006
Deer Paintings
curated by Tanja Grunert, Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc., New York, NY.
Harpers, p. 96, May 2006
Findings
May 2006
Pg. 96
organized by Katie Holten, presented at: Participant Inc., New York, NY; Sundown Salon (in association with Art 2102), Los Angeles, CA; FOUR, Dublin, Ireland; El Particular, Mexico City, Mexico
Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc., New York, NY
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona
Tucson Weekly, February 9, 2006
curated by Paul Morris & Marc Selwyn, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA
curated by Leila Amalfitano, The Carpenter Center for the Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
The Boston Phoenix, November 18-24, 2005