Chuck Close American, 1940-2021

John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present Four Decades: Drawings and Works on Paper, a group exhibition that invites a new perspective on a history of drawing and painting by integrating works from both well known and emerging artists. This exhibition will open on Thursday, May 1st, and will run through Saturday, June 28th. An opening reception will be held on May 1st, from 5:30-7:30 pm.

From Willem de Kooning’s playful oil jitney to Sam Messenger’s meticulously rendered “veils”, Four Decades: Drawings and Works on Paper jumps around the various inspirations of the artists included to present a group of works in a fresh context. This exhibition incorporates the work of monumental and historical artists such as Chuck Close, Willem de Kooning, Mark di Suvero, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Longo with dynamic new work from emerging artists such as Diana Al-Hadid and William Cordova, both New York City artists who have received major exhibitions in 2013.

Mid career artists such as Peter Doig, Spencer Finch and Julie Mehretu balance out this topographical collection of works; their inclusion points to the range of various surfaces and textures an artist can explore within the expanse of their career. Mehretu’s careful drawings and di Suvero’s ink tinkerings contrast in each artist’s interpretation of an architectural perspectivism. Roxy Paine’s light hearted drawings work to inspire simplicity of style: his drawing Study for Line, 2014 is a study for his upcoming commission for the new Central Subway Yerba Buena/Moscone Station at 4th and Clementina streets in San Francisco. Ellsworth Kelly’s perennially loved flower drawings round out the show to underscore for the viewer a focus and appreciation for the artist’s touch inherent in a single line. Every work in Four Decades: Drawings and Works on Paper is inflected but not weighed down by each different artist’s past and procedures.

For further information and photographs, please contact the gallery at 415.781.4629 or info@berggruen.com.

John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by American artist Chuck Close. Chuck Close: Important Works from the Past Forty Years marks the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, and the first since 1999, and will be on view September 5 through November 2, 2013. John Berggruen Gallery will host an opening reception on Thursday, September 5th from 5:30 – 7:30 pm.

This exhibition focuses on several bodies of Close’s extensive oeuvre: rare drawings from the 1970s, important early prints, Polaroid maquettes, and two bodies of recent work, watercolor prints and felt hand stamps. Among the highlights of Chuck Close include an impression of Close’s first print of his career, Keith, which he produced at Crown Point Press, here in San Francisco, in 1972. Other highlights include three drawings from the 1970’s whose intimate scale demonstrate both Close’s technical mastery as well as express the conceptual foundations of his grid-based compositions. In a 1987 interview, Close revealed the systematic execution of his works to be “an invention of means. I invent thousands of little solutions to myriad problems every day, rather than the big solution, and, in that way, the whole problem eventually gets solved.”[i] Close’s relationship to photography and the historical innovation inherent in its usage is explored in Self-Portrait (Maquette) as the viewer witnesses the beginning of what will become a visual relationship between technology (the Polaroid) and painting. The watercolor prints and felt hand stamps each introduce a new technique; together, the two create a new conversation between the digital and the analogue, between the human and the mechanical. The watercolor prints mark the artist’s first in-depth experimentation with the possibilities of digital technology. Close uses approximately 14,500 of his own, hand-made watercolor marks, individually scanned in the computer, as the vocabulary for these works. Close organizes each image, and prints the works in watercolor on watercolor paper in layers of magenta, cyna, and yellow, never repeating a mark more than six times in each print.

Chuck Close (born 1940) began his career in 1968 with a black-and-white self-portrait painted from a photograph. This was the first note of the signature style which permeates his work. Since then Close has used a variety of media to create stark, hyperrealist portraits. They are closely cropped to eliminate body language and background, inviting the viewer’s attention. Close creates portraits by a process of transposing marks with a grid for reference. He explores a multitude of approaches to depicting his subjects, challenging himself by using materials and techniques that do not easily produce such realistic effects. Close immerses himself in the every aspect of his artistic process, from organization, to composition to execution. Each square is meticulously planned and every mark applied by Close. Close’s work investigates the history of the relationship between the roles of photographer and painter. Close begins every work using a photograph but defers to precise technique to execute his compositions. Among the media Close has investigated are etching, aquatint, lithography, ink and fingerprints, traditional Japanese woodcut and reduction linocut.

Chuck Close (b. 1940, Monroe, WA) received his M.F.A from Yale University and a B.A. from University of Washington in 1962. Close’s work can be found in over 65 major public collections worldwide, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Art Institute of Chicago; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Des Moines Art Center; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum moderner Kunst, Palais Liechtenstein, Vienna; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC; Osaka City Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; Staatliche Museum, Berlin; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, among others. Close lives and works in New York.

In 2000, Close was presented with the prestigious National Medal of Arts by President Clinton. Close is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has served on the board of many arts organizations, and was recently appointed by President Obama to serve on The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present A View From Above, a survey of works by American and International artists whose aesthetic styles and prolific works ask the viewer to slow down and consider their every detail as physical fact, artistic choice and purveyor of meaning. A View From Above will occupy the second floor of gallery space and will include work by artists Vija Celmins, Chuck Close, Mark di Suvero, Olafur Eliasson, Helen Frankenthaler, Tom Friedman, Anish Kapoor, Julian Lethbridge, Julie Mehretu, Martin Puryear, Iran Do Espirito Santo, and Joel Shapiro. The exhibition opens Tuesday, May 17th and continues through Saturday, July 30th.



Vija Celmins received international attention early in her career for her renditions of natural scenes, which often dispel romantic notions of the sublime in nature. Celmins deliberately chooses as her subject a kind of pictorial information that looks familiar but tells us almost nothing about the realities to which it refers. On display, Starfield’s (2010) mere pattern of white dots separated by areas of densely worked graphite fittingly presents the viewer a myriad of options: is it an image the artist invented, was it viewed from a telescope by an astronomer who then photographed it, or was it a record made automatically by the instruments themselves: no one's view.



In similar fashion, questions cannot be detached from one’s experience of Mark di Suvero’s sculptures, which is hardly passive. Di Suvero’s interactive sculptures like Evrard's Marc (2010) which is on display ask you to move different parts, to walk around, and to watch elements turn and tilt. In relationship to the viewer’s movement, the angles constantly change. These mysterious instruments are at once aerodynamic and clunky; whose purpose one can never quite deduce.



Another highlight includes the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Ellison’s Super Star (2008). A rainbow star wrapped in brass bands suggests elliptical orbits, recalls holiday decorations, religious symbols, and children's toys. It also resembles a giant jewel, with gorgeously cut facets reflecting every color of the spectrum. But rather than settling on any one of these interpretations, it evokes a more expansive experience. Ingeniously crafted from tinted glass, mirrors, brass, and halogen light fixtures, it casts kaleidoscopic patterns on the domed ceiling and shines soft beams of light on visitors, who then become part of the art.



Two works by the London-based Indian artist Anish Kapoor will also be on display. Double (2004) and Untitled (2007) with blazingly reflective metal surfaces dispense multiple visual thrills and mysteries. They carve, color and complicate space in different ways, creating an interactive experience.



Other highlights include Julie Mehretu’s 15-foot-long abstract etching Auguries (2010), a combination of delicate markings reminiscent of Chinese calligraphy and bolder architectural shapes. The work was also the centerpiece of Notations After the Ring (2010), an exhibition at the Metropolitan Opera’s Gallery Met, which grew out of the visual language she explored in a suite of six paintings that made up the Grey Area (2010) show at the Guggenheim Museum.



Works by Iran Do Espírito Santo, one of Brazil’s key contemporary artists, reveal his interest in industrial and everyday sculptural forms distilled down to their very essence. These sculptures, realized in deceptive “incongruous” materials belying the heavy mediums used to create his “cans” and “ice cream pots” - all strangely crafted in stainless steel and marble. The effect created is one of confronting a form’s pure essence.



Individual “views” of the world are expressed in this show in Helen Frankenthaler’s 1963 saturated painting September Image, Martin Puryear’s sculpture Face Down (2008), and Joel Shapiro’s Untitled (1986) falling figure. In all cases, these works provoke viewer participation, contemplation and individual responses.



For further information and photographs, please contact Tatem Read at 415.781.4629 or tatem@berggruen.com. Gallery hours: Monday - Friday: 9:30-5:30 Saturday: 10:30-5:00



Concurrent Artist Exhibitions:

Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster 1964-1966, LACMA, California through June 5, 2011



Mark di Suvero, curated by Storm King Center, Governors Island, New York through 2011



Olafur Eliasson: Din Blinde Passager (Your Blind Passenger), Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark through November 11, 2011



Anish Kapoor: Monumenta 2011, Grand Palais, France through June 20, 2011



Joel Shapiro, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany through May 29, 2011