Linda Ridgway American, b. 1947

Berggruen Gallery is proud to present Works in Black & White, a group exhibition that delves into the world of black and white as the primary, and often sole, colors. This curated collection explores the nuances of these two fundamental tones, reflecting on the various ways artists employ simplicity and complexity within this timeless palette. From bold abstractions to intricate minimalism, the exhibition reveals the artists' diverse abilities to convey emotion and provoke contemplation within the grayscale spectrum.

Works in Black & White will be on display from September 14 — October 13, 2023, featured on the top level of Berggruen Gallery.

Exhibiting Artists:

Robert Bechtle | Richard Diebenkorn | Lucian Freud | Michael Gregory | Philip Guston | Mona Hatoum | Al Held | Sarah Hotchkiss | William Kentridge | Anselm Kiefer | Matt Kleberg | Des Lawrence | Julian Lethbridge | Brice Marden | Sam Messenger | Martin Puryear | Linda Ridgway | Iran Do Espírito Santo | Richard Serra | Joel Shapiro | Kiki Smith | Jonas Wood

I am honored to present this exhibition, Her Voice, in honor of my late wife, Gretchen Berggruen. Co-owner of Berggruen Gallery, Gretchen was the heart and soul of the gallery. This group show features more than thirty artists, all of whom Gretchen championed, worked closely alongside, and deeply admired. This exhibition reflects Gretchen’s vision and her great passion in life. Those who had the pleasure to have known her know the deep level of care and attention with which she always acted. Her expertise, drive, kindness, patience, and perseverance drove the gallery to be what it is today. Gretchen was my partner and our leader, and I am proud to present Her Voice, celebrating her life and all that she built. – John Berggruen

Featuring artworks by the following artists:

Diana Al-Hadid | John Alexander | Jennifer Bartlett | Cecily Brown | Christopher Brown | Squeak Carnwath | Bruce Cohen | Roseline Delisle | Mark di Suvero | Richard Diebenkorn | Austin Eddy | Helen Frankenthaler | Jane Hammond | Stephen Hannock | Shara Hughes | William Kentridge | Clare Kirkconnell | Julian Lethbridge | Alicia McCarthy | Tom McKinley | Julie Mehretu | Elizabeth Murray | Tom Otterness | Martin Puryear | Linda Ridgway | Joel Shapiro | Judith Shea | Kiki Smith | Mark Tansey | Wayne Thiebaud | Fiona Waterstreet

Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present Linda Ridgway: A Story and the Poet, an exhibition of recent sculptures and works on paper by Texas based artist, Linda Ridgway. Berggruen Gallery has worked with Ridgway for over twenty-five years and this show marks her fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. A Story and the Poet and will be on view July 28 through August 27, 2022.

Linda Ridgway is influenced by the weight of prose and how literature and nature intertwine to uncover new ideas of selfhood and material expression. Since 1987, Ridgway has been working with bronze and stretching the medium in new directions. She is well known for her intricate bronze sculptures that ascribe the enduring medium to ephemeral themes. In her 2013 Berggruen Gallery exhibition, The Grand Anonymous, she juxtaposed the material with lighter lace and crochet textures, exploring themes of domesticity and heritage. Ridgway’s new body of work, A Story and the Poet, focuses on natural themes by creating sculptures that offer an organic break for the medium. With precise lines and delicate forms, her exhibition A Story and the Poet, includes both bronze sculpture and works on paper, and celebrates the artist’s use of poetry as her muse and nature as her grounding force for self-discovery.

Ridgway draws inspiration from nature’s cyclical patterns, often referencing shapes that allude to states of growth and decay. Her sculpture Brother Line bends long and upward, grounded in a rising state of expansion, while her quieter work, Glory, suggests a melancholic leaf weathered by storm. Throughout the exhibition Ridgway looks at how sculptures can capture movement and interact with the shadows they create. Her unique bronze casting, Diagram from the River Ouse, shows a gathering of grasses fanning outward. Ridgway intricately crafts the stems of the branches creating depth and atmosphere among their shadows. Ridgway juxtaposes her medium with temporal themes, drawing on natural tropes for understanding and insight.

Ridgway’s work emerges not only from natural themes, but from a deep appreciation of poetry. In Sounds of Trees, the artist threads Robert Frost’s poems directly into the work and incorporates the poet’s writing into her literary title. For other pieces, Ridgway creates sculptural poems through a curious trail of objects. Her eponymous sculpture A Story and the Poet presents a bronze domino piece and mesh wiring held within a tangled branch. The contemporary piece asks of imaginative thought, and playful interpretation through its alluring narrative. Ridgway’s long admiration of poetry stems from her childhood memories of a strong familial passion for literature. She continues to find great inspiration and comfort from its emotive power.

At the root of Ridgway’s work is her study of lines. She is fascinated by the simplicity of groves, and the way edges structurally assemble. The exhibition presents the artists new archival pigment prints overlayed with a fine graphite grid. Ridgway uses lines to create order and harmony atop her nature-based photographs. She also looks to grasslands, commonly referencing grass as nature’s signature, to guide her drawing practice. Ridgway’s Morning Light studies, two works composed of graphic and colored pencil on paper, elegantly expose the delicate bends of branches, and the slight shimmer of morning sun. Because it was grassy and wanted wear, receiving its name from a line in Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” visualizes the wildness of an untamed trail through scattered, yet controlled marks. Ridgway’s mastery of, and attention to, line reflects her desire to have her art whisper and present peace above all else. At its core, Ridgway’s A Story and the Poet is an ode to nature and all who find solace among its presence.

Linda Ridgway born in Jeffersonville, Indiana in 1947. Ridgway received an M.F.A. from Tulane University and a B.F.A. from the Louisville School of Art. Her work has been included in various solo and group exhibitions, most recently in 2021 in From First and Last Lines, To the River Ouse: Works by Linda Ridgway at the Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas and Linda Ridgway: Herself at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas. Other exhibitions include Art & Language: A Shared Conversation, Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas; Linda Ridgway: White Flowers, Dallas Visual Art Center, Texas, solo exhibition to recognize the 2001 Legend Award Artist; One Hundred Years: The Permanent Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas in 2002, among others. Ridgway currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas.

Linda Ridgway: A Story and the Poet, July 28 - August 27, 2022. On view at 10 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Images and preview are available upon request. For all inquiries, please contact the gallery by phone (415) 781-4629 or by email info@berggruen.com.

We are pleased to present Contemporary Women Artists, an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by eight of the most exciting female artists creating work today, including Tauba Auerbach, Carmen Herrera, Clare Kirkconnell, Suzanne McClelland, Julie Mehretu, Beatriz Milhazes, Linda Ridgway, and Kiki Smith. This show will be on view through October 9, 2020.

Contemporary Women Artists presents a compelling selection of works by women artists who have each pioneered facets of the contemporary art canon. While Milhazes fuses cultural elements from her native Brazil with influence from European Modernist painters, Mehretu completely reenergizes and renews 21st century Abstraction. Altogether, the works composing Contemporary Women Artists are intricate yet bold; delicate yet powerful.

Spanning an intriguing breadth of subject matter, Contemporary Women Artists showcases works that both allude to and subvert mainstream ideas of femininity. Kirkconnell, Ridgway, and Smith consider the natural world in their alluring renderings while Auerbach and Herrera compose works of rigid geometries. When viewed altogether, power between delicacy and boldness is shared. The viewer can appreciate how strength radiates from seemingly fragile, natural forms while a certain subtlety can be found in the linear components of abstract works.

Contemporary Women Artists, September 3 – October 9, 2020. On view at 10 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Images and preview are available upon request. For all inquiries, please contact the gallery by phone (415) 781-4629 or by email info@berggruen.com.

John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Dallas artist, Linda Ridgway. Linda Ridgway: The Grand Anonymous marks the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery and will be on view September 5 through October 12, 2013. John Berggruen Gallery will host an opening reception on Thursday, September 5 from 5:30 – 7:30 pm.



Linda Ridgway (born 1947 in Jeffersonville, Indiana) creates poetic bronze wall reliefs that convey both autobiographical and cultural imagery. Although educated as a printmaker, Ridgway continues to experiment with the limits of various media to create work that remains intimate regardless of scale. Ridgway’s bronzes emerge from a two-dimensional template to become new spatial objects that elucidate the artist’s personal experiences. These works span the themes of femininity, tradition, and heritage while establishing their own permanence through the medium of bronze. Ridgway juxtaposes the delicacy of the texture of lace, and crochet work with the monochromatic and industrial fortitude of metalwork. While some of her works emphasize a reverence for domesticity, Ridgway also uses the translation of knit pieces into bronze sculptures to underscore a disintegration of memory. Ridgway extracts the artisanship of crochet work to develop a history of herself as an artist in the enduring medium of bronze.

The artist’s work emerges not only from specific sentiments but also from a rich appreciation of poetry. This is exemplified in A whir among white branches great and small, 2013 which draws its name from the poem “Our Singing Strength” by Robert Frost. Ridgway uses Frost in her work frequently, both referencing and physically including his words in works such as Now Let the Night, 2013 and But the secret in the middle knows, 2011. Ridgway’s love of Frost, amongst other writers such as Mary Oliver and Harper Lee, is rooted in childhood memories of her mother’s passion for literature. Ridgway both references and physically includes literature in her sculptures by interweaving text in nests and using books as the stuffing of her pillows. In this way, she investigates how instrumental these works are to her identity as an artist, mother, daughter and friend. In this exhibition, Ridgway celebrates the anonymous artistic achievements of the women in her life by memorializing them in bronze.



Linda Ridgway (b.1947, Jeffersonville, IN) received an M.F.A. from Tulane University, and a B.F.A. from the Louisville School of Art. She has participated in various solo and group exhibitions including Linda Ridgway: A Survey, Poetics of Form at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas and the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas in 1997-98; and One Hundred Years: The Permanent Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas in 2002.

John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present The Time is Now, a group exhibition featuring Doug Aitken, Darren Almond, Diane Arbus, Richard Artschwager, Michael Craig-Martin, Hans Peter-Feldmann, Lee Friedlander, Philip Guston, Jasper Johns, Karen Kilimnik, Vera Lutter, Christian Marclay, Tom McKinley, Tin Ojeda, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Linda Ridgway, Ugo Rondinone, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Stephen Shore, Taryn Simon and Lawrence Weiner.



The Time is Now brings together a group of works that acknowledge and contend with the representation of time (past, present and future), and how it is reinterpreted and revealed across diverse media. Through drawing, sculpture, installation, sound and light this exhibition illustrates the continuing human fascination with exploring the concept of time, both in the metaphysical and physical sense. This exhibition evades easy classification, with each artist bringing their own experience to one of the oldest topics that defies the typical social, cultural and political context.



In its most literal sense, the clock serves as a common allegorical image to convey how we calculate the presence of time within our lives. Philip Guston’s colorful, almost whimsical portrait of a timepiece shows the city below, dwarfed and eventually crushed by the presence of a large clock. For a more abstract representation, there is Doug Aitken’s lightbox depicting a beautiful island vista glimpsed simply through the ominous word “END.” Both of these images speak directly to the fear underlying every artist’s curiosity and obsession with the progression of time.



Another interesting element is the effect of the passage of time on the work itself. In 1967, Lee Friedlander was documenting everyday American life, while today his snapshot of a television in “Aloha, Washington,” is an artifact, depicting obsolete technology rendering his image to a specific period within our history. This overarching theme is segmented even further as the work featured stretches from the early 1960’s to present day, created by artists both living and dead born between 1913 and 1982.



Grouped together, all of these images display the impulse to transcend our inevitable circumstances and capture or define the ultimate progression of time, an unstoppable force. The result is a group show that circumnavigates the expectations of typical group shows, turning the viewer into part of the experience, by reminding us all of the importance of each passing minute.



The exhibition will be on view April 4-May 4, 2013 on two floors of exhibition space. John Berggruen Gallery will host a reception on Thursday, April 4th between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m.



The exhibit will coincide with Christain Marclay’s film “The Clock” being shown at SFMOMA from April 6th – June 2nd.



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 new sculpture and photographs by Dallas-based artist, Linda Ridgway. The reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, February 1st from 5:30-7:30pm.

Ridgway's poetic bronze wall reliefs convey both elegance and beauty. Although educated as a printmaker, Ridgway continues to experiment with the limits of various media to create work that remains intimate regardless of scale. Ridgway's bronzes, inspired by organic and cultural imagery, emerge from a two-dimensional surface to become new sculptural objects in space. Her work often translates traditional feminine crafts and materials, such as knitting and lace, into prominent sculptures.

As a sculptor, Ridgway has a keen interest in other artists who share similar concerns in materials and content. Eva Hesse was one such artist and whose work influenced Ridgway's artistic development. Ridgway found that Hesse treated materials in flux and gave them solidity. In addition, Ridgway discovered the poignant expressive potential in lines draped across large blank expanses. In Ridgway's own work, her linear, often repetitive forms become strands of thought.

Linda Ridgway (b.1947, Jeffersonville, IN) received an M.F.A. from Tulane University, and a B.F.A. from the Louisville School of Art. She has participated in various solo and group exhibitions including Linda Ridgway: A Survey, Poetics of Form at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas and the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas in 1997-98; and One Hundred Years: The Permanent Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas in 2002.